Ted Bundy repented, I'm pretty sure.

I bet Jesus felt more at home with criminals and prostitutes than bankers and lawyers.

^True words there
What makes you a better person than Hitler? Perhaps he was open to God and his judgment? Perhaps he thought, in a misguided way, that he was doing God's work? Perhaps he was mentally ill? Perhaps God deliberately hardened his heart, as he did Pharoah's, and used him as a tool?

Whereas you think you are so holy, and other people so low, that

a) You are going to heaven
b) Other people are so horrible that they are beyond redemption
c) Other people are so odious that they don't get to share heaven with you.

You would cast yourself as a judge and spurn damaged souls so that you can have heaven without them. Heaven isn't a yacht club. Your view strikes me as blasphemous arrogance, the kind of stuff that gets people sent to the six circle of hell. There are many ways to sin. The doctrine of the seven deadly sins doesn't distinguish between gluttony and lust and pride and heresy and violence. They are all sins because they all take you away from his presence; arrogant pride does that just as well - perhaps more so - than violence.

If you read a bit of the New Testament, Jesus has some good words to say on this matter.

-pretty obvious the holocaust was way worse than anything I've done
-I think he actually did claim he was on a mission from God In Mein Kampf
-he was intelligent enough to know right from wrong. That's the criteria of American courts and religion
-we know God wasn't using him for genocide since he said He would no longer do that in the New Covenant and for other reasons
-glad you know something about sins. Presumption is a sin. Just in case I post #50.

1“Judge not, that you be not judged. 2For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Matthew 7

Since nobody has bothered to ask the obvious, what is this a test for?

Nope to the first; as such, the other two are irrelevant.

Bombay, Mumbai.

The crispness of that answer tips an awareness of internal complexity that these aren't things you tell others, just stick that ankle out and "uhhwellyeah."

Moody: God ****ing hates you so much he doesn't care who you are. Keep going.

1. yes

2. No single conversation or text really. It's just an intuitive sense that there is a God out there somewhere.

3. I think it helps me accept present circumstances better when they're bad an attribute them to being part of God's plan. When things go well I try to keep the perspective that God is doing these things through me, I'm not doing them myself, and that helps keep me humble. And it helps keep me honest a little because I find it easier to lie to myself than to lie to God, vis-à-vis prayer. At least in theory all these things seem to be true, in practice I'm far from perfect in executing them especially the last two.

1) I dont know

2) I combination of many factors, my upbringing, the thoughts and writings of many others, the uneasiness of physics coming from chance.

3) I think it makes me more aware of inherent faultiness of myself and everyone around me. I think it makes me less susceptible to hero-worship/disillusionment with others. Hopefuly, less arrogant and more empathetic.

gods plan, that's my favorite line.

tomorrow when I wake up, I hope he has something good in store for me because it's pretty clear I'm not making my own plans, really hoping I don't shoot someone tomorrow.

it's not your fault

It is funny how the answer to #2, for those that answer yes to #1 and for people in general, is some combination of the following:

- Just my intuition
- I cannot point it to a single text
- Some texts (but cannot name any)
- Just because
- He just has to be (personal favorite)
- I was given a sign (no proof provided)
- The Bible says so

It almost sounds like a child giving an answer about something they did wrong, doesn't it? Would these types of answers be accepted in any other part of life? School, work, etc. It still blows my mind to this day that these are accepted reasons to believe in God and if you challenge them then YOU are just an immoral scum bag that knows nothing.

Carry on, carry on.......

It's pretty encouraging that 80% of 2p2ers who read the religious forum and have seen this thread seem to be atheists.

I wish there were more voters and would love to see it broken down by geographic, age, and education level. My guess: Most live outside the U.S. and/or are under 30? Of those that live in the U.S. most are liberal or independents? I'm also guessing that I'm among a huge minority living in the U.S. who is over 30 and an atheist. But I am a liberal and/or independent voter.

I want to say the chance that a U.S. citizen with just a high school diploma who votes conservative/republican is an atheist has got to be less than 2%.

But it also isn't always a binary answer.

Just because I admit I don't know what "God" is doesn't make me automatically someone who believes He doesn't exist.

I feel that theology, beyond what we should do between each other, is way oversimplified and pretty much navel-gazing especially considering the kind of entity it is trying to quantify. To me it's highly lacking and almost ludicrous.

I am 42, an atheist, and registered Independent. I grew up Catholic, went to Sunday school for a few years, did some of the traditional Catholic sacraments, have read the bible several times, and took several Theology classes in college. I was very young when I started to make my choices of what I believed and did not, probably somewhere between 10-12. It just seemed overwhelmingly obvious to me at a young age the pure lack of physical evidence supporting the claims that religion made. I strive to be a moral family man with 3 kids and a beautiful wife.

Probably closer to 0%!

I believed it once, but now I know.

A painful but priceless experience in hindsight, my juvenile subjection to dogma left me unprepared for a true encounter with "The Big Guy" in which it was indubitably proven to me. Nevertheless via pure fear, I was somehow still miraculously able to muster up some semblance of doubt... perhaps I simply doubted my sanity? This too has since passed.

Texts? Immersing oneself in writings of the truly devoted/gifted can impart knowledge or inspire faith among other things. The presence of one having attained a certain degree of consciousness can point us to the higher realms where such realities are privately known. But the rational mind can only take us so far until, at last, it's accepted that higher faculties must be developed in order to engage the spiritual realm. Indeed, even these are only markers on a path which cannot embed conviction into one's very being like a direct experience of the divine. That experience and therefore the conviction becomes unceasing.

Conversations? They're one example of the many trust-building reinforcements that confirm it for me even now. The sneaking suspicion that one isn't alone in their thoughts is only the ego being made uncomfortable in its striving to dominate one's perception. Social interaction can appear to be mundane chit-chat, but at its root it consists of self better understanding self... self-reflection.

What I was once apt to superstitiously misjudge as some eerie phenomenon of telepathy , I now know to be nothing other than a man/woman in close communion with the Source. An apparent separation is enough to conceal that underlying truth and so it must when the One pretends to be the many.

A feverish apprehension of impending doom culminated in the glorious realization that I had simply been running from my true self. This is not to say i am the great I nestled into this temporal form... it is to say I've awakened to the tangible reality that, in essence, I and the supreme being are one. Among numberless mysteries of the spirit it is a disguised blessing to recognize that, in truth, there really are no secrets.

I can attest to what's commonly known as a "born again" experience, so it suffices to say I've become an entirely new creature. Naturally, a mere change in behavior is grievously inadequate to describe the totality of such a transformation.

Regards.

Just wanted to point out that it is not logically impossible that beings that are not God could read your thoughts.

Being married, I can tell you that mind reading by a superior being is a 100% certainty.
Carry on.

1 - of course
2 - my intuition
3 - it's not a thing, what I always think about. So my behavior consistent with my desires. And also I believe that all of us will be supreme. We will know all about people and help them to be better.

1. No, of course not.

2. It's the default position. I would need to see extraordinary evidence to accept such an extraordinary claim.

3. I'm able to live my life without the toxic influence, guilt, and psychological baggage that often comes with believing there is a magic, cosmic big brother reading my every thought and judging me.

I know you're just making a throwaway line, but this is a distorted view of the psychological impact of believing in god or religiosity. While the causal relationships are difficult to discern, most empirical happiness studies show a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness (here's wiki for some links.).

In a few decades, or less, it may be a possibility for us, and we are not Gods as far as I know:


they-might-know-what-you are-thinking/

The odds against anyones existence without a GOD, Must approach infinity to one.

JUST taking into acct your parents, fertalizing your egg, with your single sperm is a million to one at least.

Now repeat that perfect union for every one of a thousand ancestors, on both parents side since the beginnig of mankind, and the odds are beyond mathematical probabilities.

But then i guess someones hits the lotto, so who knows, still??

lol no...why would I?

Irrelevant

Not at all. My behavior is governed by my own innate sense of what is right and what is wrong. I treat people the way I expect to be treated by them. Period.

1. I do.

2. I believe Jesus Christ is who he says he is. (Bible)

3. I avoid sinful thoughts as much as possible; not necessarily because I feel guilty or like I am being watched, but because I want to live a holy life.

Not currently, but willing to examine new evidence when it comes out.

The null hypothesis is that none exists. There is no current evidence to support an alternative hypothesis.

I live life to the fullest, but probably am quite a bit more safety-oriented than religious folks, because i'm assuming this is the only life we get.