Jesus Camp Trailer

[Gandelf]

Never mind bombs, remember that Tsunami **** god pulled a few years back. 250,000 dead, 3 million? homeless, loss of livelyhood etc etc.

That's one mean mutha****a u pray to.

Not to mention that should god exist, he created man and is also therefore responsible for the hiroshima bomb, that's one hell of a sick, evil god.

Not sure what your point with this is, the bible does say that god made it happen..correct? So if he did (and still does from time to time) can you please explain why these animals have to die? Did they quack in the wrong tone? Ate one too many flies? I knew about the meteorological phenomen already..but that has nothing to do with what I said.

Killing someone in the name of religious is just a way of trying to blame your guilt on somebody else.

/Ankh

Woohoo... three conversions in one night! All three of you are acknowledging the existence God now that it suits your argument! It's amazing how the tables can be turned so dramatically!

Final score: Gandelf 3.... Mojo, Ankh and Xest 0

I'm ecstatic. Now can we all just bow our heads and close our hands in prayer and praise the Lord, my dear brethren?

[<ankh>]

Woohoo... three conversions in one night! All three of you are acknowledging the existence God now that it suits your argument! It's amazing how the tables can be turned so dramatically!

Final score: Gandelf 3.... Mojo, Ankh and Xest 0

I'm ecstatic. Now can we all just bow our heads and close our hands in prayer and praise the Lord, my dear brethren? ]

Ehh...what?? Read back...I said YOUR GOD..and I also quoted YOUR bible..I said nothing about me accepting a god.
Actually, Im starting to agree with Mojo's earlier statement. Atleast in your case.

Edit: I suggest you actually READ the posts instead of making an arse out of yourself.

/Ankh

Yeah your right - would have been better if science had made it rain frogs and turned the water into blood. Frogs dropping from high altitude - alot of frogs dead (What had the frogs done wrong?). Try and grow plants or drink blood instead of water - and you will get really sick or die. (the plants wont really survive with blood). And not to forget the darkness to kill the plants..I can't remember the rest what YOUR GOD was supposed to have done to punish the egypths - but Im sure you know the rest of the story.

Edit: Not to forget Sodom & Gomorra. Its pretty impressive tbh.. "turn the other cheek" doesnt include God himself. With him its more like obey or else!

/Ankh

[Xest]

lol and I said "should god exist", that doesn't mean I think he does, that means IF he did.

TBH I think you're just proving more and more that god doesn't exist Gandelf, no deity would ever be cruel enough to make someone as stupid as you, even Satan himself wouldn't wish your level of idiocy on anyone.

[Genedril]

.... At least hiroshima was quick, unlike the gruesome slow torturous deaths which were far greater in number....

I'm not siding with Gandelf here, but that's not entirely true. It caused a great deal of suffering post impact & the effects of the radiation was far more than most people expected & went on far far longer.

The whole war thing is not a good road to travel, in the past wars were fought because of religious differences & those same religions were only too happy to use the 'science' at hand for developing more effective ways of killing the heathens. Then you've got the whole 'morality of war' question. It's not moral to go to war (whether or not you claim 'divine right' to do so) so why argue about whether one method of killing is more moral than another.... Anyway that's a whole different point.

I find it quite funny that Gandelf says - provide scientific proof about whether or not God exists & yet when people say the bible says this he takes offence or claims to have converted them. Does that mean by asking for scientific proof earlier he'd already renounced his God & accepted that scientific method was the way forward?

At the end of the day you cannot disprove faith (I believe in this therefore it is true), trying to do so is futile. If I claimed that I am the only human in existence & the rest of you are here to keep my mind occupied & I truly believed this then you'd never manage to disprove my faith in this (though admittedly that would mean my mind is more warped than I could have possibly imagined). It doesn't make it right (though it's always possible).

The thing I always struggle with is that so many people can read the Bible & yet there are so many different interpretations of it & that's before you get to the other holy scriptures. All claim to be right & yet how can each of those religions be so sure? Then there's the conflict between organised religion & personal faith (many people cherry pick bits of whichever religion they belong to for their own personal faith) & the fact that something personal (faith) is dictated to you by others.

By the by, surely the christian god that flooded the entire world because people weren't doing what he wanted killed more people in that story than the Hiroshima bomb?

[Tuthmes]

By the by, surely the christian god that flooded the entire world because people weren't doing what he wanted killed more people in that story than the Hiroshima bomb?

Any religion thats unable to question itself without losing it's faith is by all means wrong. Yes i do agree with most here on the religion point. To belief in something where there's no prove of, is just no good. Hade a discussion about nationality earlier and the same goes for here. The individual should be respeced as the highest beeing, not the community (or god) as a whole. The moment you loose this perspective you go wrong in any way possible.

To the quote of Genedril:

Yes it has, but. Those 2 bombs. Have bin thrown with the curtesy of "1" person. 1 man that dicide's the faith of ~200.000 people in an instant (not counting the radiation afterwards). Think of it, for a brief moment, cause it still gives me the chilles, whenever i grasp the thought.

[Kallima]

Yes it has, but. Those 2 bombs. Have bin thrown with the curtesy of "1" person. 1 man that dicide's the faith of ~200.000 people in an instant (not counting the radiation afterwards). Think of it, for a brief moment, cause it still gives me the chilles, whenever i grasp the thought.

Very true, and that is the difference that science has made. One man with a knife, or sword, or bow and arrow could kill. But he was limited, and he saw the person he killed, whether it was man, woman, or child. He saw the consequences of his actions. He did not drop a single bomb and kill unknown thousands.

At least hiroshima was quick, unlike the gruesome slow torturous deaths which were far greater in number.

Sadly it was not necessarily a quick death, thousands died from their injuries over the next few months. Babies were born with abnormalities from radiation exposure in the womb. Even those totally uninjured suffered trauma and consequences such as people being unwilling to marry those who might have suffered genetic damage from radiation.

Reported casualties vary because of course they did not know in the chaos. To quote an account from someone (ironically in view of this debate, a member of a german religious based medical team) in Hiroshima when the bomb fell and attempting to give medical aid to survivors. "Those who had lived through the catastrophe placed the number of the deaths at least 100,000. Hiroshima had a population of 400,000. Official statistics place the number who had died at 70,000 up to September 1st, not counting the missing....and 130,000 wounded, among them 43,500 severely wounded."

Reading eye witness accounts is quite unpleasant. I won't quote any harrowing stuff, but there was a great deal of suffering. Please do not belittle that.

[Mojo]

[quote="Gandelf"]

Final score: Gandelf 3.... Mojo, Ankh and Xest 0

I'm ecstatic. Now can we all just bow our heads and close our hands in prayer and praise the Lord, my dear brethren? ]

I was clearly being scarcastic, nice try though Gandelf.

Clutch them straws real tight now.

[Xest]

Sadly it was not necessarily a quick death, thousands died from their injuries over the next few months. Babies were born with abnormalities from radiation exposure in the womb. Even those totally uninjured suffered trauma and consequences such as people being unwilling to marry those who might have suffered genetic damage from radiation.

True, but it's pretty irrelevant anyway, the amount maimed, deformed, tortured and otherwise made to suffer because of religion absolutely dwarfs the figures all the same.

Reading eye witness accounts is quite unpleasant. I won't quote any harrowing stuff, but there was a great deal of suffering. Please do not belittle that.

More disturbing is that some people apparently haven't learnt their lesson with countries like the US making heavy use of tactical nukes and depleted uranium shells that leave radioactive tank/building corpses lying around for kids to play on in Iraq/Afghanistan. Sadly a lot of the same suffering happens today still, particularly countless birth defects, deformities, radiation poisoning and increased cancer rates as a result of these weapons.

[Lieva]

tbh

thinking on it..
yes religion has brought wars etc

*BUT*
it has also created the standard of life alot of people enjoy

in the western world at least.

I wonder, how would america/britan be like without a religion that says 'actually you really shouldnt kill steal etc'
most of the laws that govern our countries are from religious people who believed in what they were taught, that these things are wrong.

If you look at children..you kinda see what i mean

Most kids are selfish arogant brats - until theyre taught 'well actually its bad to hit that kid cuz your bigger, its selfish not to share'
Thats nothing to do with religion at this stage however but it did cause them to become part of our society.

So belittling religion and a persons beliefs no matter wether you have 100% evidence against it...not good really

Heck even the rules the terrorists go by.
They only attack people who arnt in their religion.
Ok..
But these people are willing to kill for their beliefs.
Surely they would be willing to kill even if they were not religious?

[Kallima]

True, but it's pretty irrelevant anyway, the amount maimed, deformed, tortured and otherwise made to suffer because of religion absolutely dwarfs the figures all the same.

That is a pretty sweeping statement. It sounds like you are comparing huge numbers of deaths and suffering from a single incident in a single war to those in the name of all religions throughout history. Even if it does dwarf the numbers its hardly a fair comparison.

Does it in fact dwarf the numbers? Remember that world population now is hugely greater than in past centuries, so what we do now harms a much higher number of people. The world population is now what, 6.5 billion? It was 900 million in 1800. 150 million in 1 AD.

In major situations casualty estimates vary. Pick a number for the deaths from WW2, a random one is 56 million. Thats just deaths, vastly more wounded. Estimates of unnatural deaths under communist rule in China are 80 million or even higher.

The big question is would the harm done in the name of religion, be done anyway, because religion isn't truly the motive.

My personal feeling is people abuse others for a number of reasons. Political, power, money, ego, racial purity, and just because they like it. A lot of those done in the name of religion are truly done for other motives. Often it is actually political/racial/national. Religion, science, they are all used by people with bad motives. If you take away religion, those things would still happen. If you took away money, they would still happen. The only way to stop them happening is to radically change human nature or take away people. We may yet achieve that through our own racial extinction.

Some people enjoy harming others and if they want to do it they can always come up with excuses why. The only question is how they are able to do it, how much they fear consequences, how far they will go, and how many people they are in a position to harm. That is what makes the difference between someone limited by circumstances or external control to abusive behaviour in a playground, on a forum, or in a game, or physically abusing one small child, and those able to extend their activities to physically abusing a nation.