Posts Made By: William Paolini

A pastor of a small evangelical Christian church in Gainesville, Fla has announced that he will be holding a Koran burning event in three days on Sept 11.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0908/Why-the-planned-Koran-burning-causes-outrage-and-alarm

Question...

I often hear the argument that when radical Muslim groups do something harmful why don't all the larger more establish and peaceful Muslim groups rise up around the world to publicly and severely admonish them? So now the shoe is on the other foot. Here we have a small Christian group doing something quite radical and extremely harmful to the Muslim community. So where are all the large and well established Christian denominations rising up to publicly and severely admonish that congregation? All I see is a small news article on it and nothing else.

So there are three days left...what do the Christians here think they, their local churches, and their denominations as a whole should do? Quick...the clock is ticking...

Over in the Intelligent Design Forum there is a discussion where the concept of "nothingness" came up. Was wondering what others thought about this concept from a Scriptual or Religious standpoint. Can there truly be nothingness? If there is a state or a time in the past when there was actually nothingness, then to me that would imply that there was also no God either, because if there was God then that is something so not truly a nothingness.

From a religious and biblical viewpoint I'm not seeing how there could ever be nothingness. Anyone have any other thoughts?

A precept of scripture is the eternalness and constancy of God. Seeing the headline on AMart news (http://www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=1112) gave me a chuckle, and gives good reason why science and theology are really two completely different domains, the former being concerned with the how of things, and the latter being concerned with the why of things. Clearly the more we know makes us realize we know less - seems obvious as an infinite universe would imply infinite knowledge possibilities so we can never even scratch the surface of understanding.

So...as we dealve deeper into trying to discover more about what seems evident that constants may not be constant, will this breath more life into the frenzies by some groups on science vs religion? I hope not. How do you think mainstream religions will react?

Was curious of what other Christians feel about coming across the Old Man when in Cyberspace? Online communities operate quite a bit differently from F2F communities and some people get more intimidated by the open long time viewing of their words whereas at the other end of the spectrum some people become a little more agressive as they have the veil of the Internet to hide behind so it seems less threatening.

In Scripture we find Christ reacting to him in different ways, at times witnessing, at times instructing, and at others casting out saying Satan be gone (reference Mark 8:33).

So was curious, since interaction in the online setting operate fairly differently than in the typical F2F setting, was wondering if your choice of reacting does as well?

Some of the words of the Chilean miners who have been rescued…recognition of that which many cannot see, do not see, or will not see, the presence of God…

--Kneeling in prayer one miner says he looked back on his life and is now a different and changed man.

--Another miner thanks God he is alive and says he now knows why he is alive.

--And yet another said that there were actually 34 of them, because God had never left them alone.

--For one miner, he explains the struggle, that he was with God and he was with the devil while down there, and they had both fought for him but it was God that won. He relayed that God took him by his best hand, the very hand of God held on to him. He believes that God does test people and is happy that this happened to him because it was the moment in which he was able to change.

--Finally, one praises with the poetic, "Under the earth there is a ray of light, my path, and faith is the last thing that is lost ... I have been born again."

Thanks be to God for His saving hand in the lives of these men, their families, and to those around the world who heeded the call of God either in person, in skill, or in prayer. There was much taught by God, and much to be learned by His children from this work. Special blessings to all those involved.

China...the sleeping dragon...is confirmed to have taken the top spot having the fastest computer on Earth! Previously the U.S. held this honor with its 1.75 petaflops per second speed (that's 1.75 thousand trillion calculations per second)! The new Chinese computer bests it quite decisively at 2.5 petaflops.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11644252

As amazing as the every day world is, at the micro level of life it is simply mind boggling, more so than anything cosmological IMO.

The link below is a Harvard video on "The Inner Life of the Cell" showing all the complexities happening inside the cell, very much a complete world of its own, and very much not random but with purpose.

How do you think the theology of your demonination would react to what you see in this video (scientism adherents also welcome)? Does what this protrays strengthen or weaken the understanding of God as explained by your denomination's theology?

When you load the link, it will come up with an intro screen. Be patient and it will automatically switch to a video.

http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_innerlife.html

We always have talk about the differences, what about the common grounds? In balance don't the similarities far far outweigh any differences?

As example, reported today on the "Express", a commuter paper by the Washington Post in an article titled, "Church a Refuge for Storm Victims", it went to say the major role that local churches are playing in the devestation in the US from tornados across the south. How people are going to the churches after services just to give thanks. How the churches are the organization points for relief and as community centers.

Also nice to see how the different faiths have no barriers: "Macolee Muhammed accepted the prayer of a relief worker who stopped by what was left of her Birmingham home. It didn't matter that she was Muslim and he was Southern Baptist. 'If you came here to help, the only person who sent you was God.' she said"

So while the debate in the forums here at times makes one think there is this great divide and great disharmony, in reality and in the real world when it is faithful meeting faithful, the vast majority of time there is only acceptance and harmony.

When I cross paths with others of other religions, all I generally focus on is what we have in common, belief in God, love of God, and being part of an organization that does so much good in the local community and well beyond. That has always been an effective rallying point.

I will be policing this forum. Not going to quote the TOS as everyone can read. If I perceive that you've violated the TOS, or the spirit of the TOS, then will delete your post with no warning. If you want to know why then PM me. If you plan to discuss any moderation action in this forum space those posts will be removed as well. You can discuss that via PM, or someplace else. If you want to complain, PM the appropriate AMart powers.

I'm not in here all the time, so will not be monitoring 24x7, but when I come in may review and take action as needed. Apologies in advance for the heavy hand, but too much of the past time here others have been heavy handed with their comments with no regard or respect. All things change, it's the way of things.

As a reminder, intolerance to deities, religions, or adherents to any religion is against TOS. So if you bad mouth (directly, indirectly, inuendo, etc.) a religion, its dieties, its practices, or any of that religion's followers past or present, it is discrimination. Note, bad mouthing and disagreeing are different things.

As a second reminder, this forum space is about religion and topics in religion. If you intend on taking an anti-religion or anti-deity position and want to argue that position, then you need to do that in the Non-Religion forum or the No Holds Barred forum, so any such post here will be removed since it is not in accordance with the split into the three forum spaces we have now.

If you want to have a respectful and safe interchange of ideas regarding religion, without fear of you, or your religion's followers, or your religion's beliefs/dogma being ridiculed or belittled, then that is what this space is for. If you want to ridicule/belittle, or argue a non-religion non-diety postion take it to the No Holds Barred forum as these posts will be removed here.

Special note - there are several people who have been permanently barred from the Religion forum. You know who you are as Herb has informed you. Under no circumstance can you post here. But good news, you always have the Non-Religion and No-Holds-Barred forums to post whatever you wanted to post here and everyone will be glad to join there that is interested.

Finally, mispelling will be welcombed and tolerated.

Questions are:
1. Does being religious or following a religion make one a better person?
2. Should being religious or following a religion make one a better person?

Of course to answer the context of the question the baseline standard is acts and actions by people that are not in the name of religion. So should not be hard to be better given how entirely awful and destructive people are for the host of non-religious reasons that have spawned wars and conflicts and genocides throught the ages that have been done in the name of country, power, wealth, position, money, and control.

So is it a reasonable expectation for a social conseqence of religion to make the people live together more harmoniously, or is it just defining a set of conducts and morals and laws that would be broken with or without the framework in place?

Some people I've run across seem to think that religious should be better than the norm for a population or culture. I'm not so sure this is a reasonable expectation.

btw - not a hypothetical question as this question was asked recently, during a real-life conversation. Not gonna tell you what their motivation was for asking, nor their opinion, not just yet anyway