lolwut ... r u drunk bammy ?

I knew you would say that. My point however was that this is a "game developing" community network (says so at the top left of the page), not a "religious or anti religious flame war waging" community network.

anyway:
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To Dennis:

That is true. And in fact I've been programming a game all day long. Maybe 1/20th of that time was responding to this thread... but you're absolutely right. I wish bamccaig would stop writing flame bait posts... someone has to stand up and show what an ass he is, or people might actually take him seriously, and that would be very dangerous.

There exist people who would take him seriously? I thought that even I was more serious than he.

Well said Dennis. Wish I could restrain myself better. He makes it awfully hard :/.

Others are bad and so am I! Everyone is a sinner, that includes Christians. I've argued about that with Christian who think they're better than others, but I think the message comes across pretty clearly in the Bible that we've all screwed up.

Quite a lot of people try awfully hard to sell atheism.

King James Version, Jesus H. Christ speaking.

Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

God owns you all.

See, this is the trouble about giving any religion a name.

One calls himself a Christian with some belief of what he thinks Christianity is or should be, and thus every verse and passage in the Bible becomes bent to map his perception.

So instead of applying the Bible as your sense of morality, you apply your sense of morality to the Bible. There's no way Jesus can tell you to hate somebody, so therefore, it must mean something else. I find that most non-hardcore religious people are actually like that, and as such, could easily be Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist and be the exact same person.

Although, I agree that picking verses out of context is very misleading. However, people still have no problems dismissing entire passages and concepts that don't mesh with their opinions, so I think the whole "out of context" is mostly just a convenient excuse.

I think actually reading it in context, after having read the Bible, it meshes with the rest of it in its wording. But I'm no Bible worshipper... it has taught me some things though, such as

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

There are so many more positive messages in the Bible that it's just trolling to pick out a bad one and claim it to be representative. But again, not a Bible worshipper...

All I'm getting at is to say Christianity (or some religion) was responsible for some evil deed is fairly pointless. People use whatever means they can to accomplish their goals, even if that means adapting a religion and using it to their own advantage.

Yes, organized religions have done some terrible things, but so have non-religious organizations. It doesn't really matter. Even in the complete absence of the concept of God, I believe the same sort of people would be responsible for the same sort of things. They'd just use other means to accomplish their agenda.

Nationalism is just as an effective tool as religion... and in fact, most religious war machines were nothing but justified racism.

Well, that's one way to respond, I suppose. I'm pretty sure God doesn't hate everyone, though. If He did, why send Jesus in the first place? No, the way I read that passage is that loving the world will cause you to put the world before God. Look at Luke 16:13, the whole "No servant can serve two masters" passage that points out how loving one master will make you hate the other.

Erm... you realize I'm a Christian, right? I just don't think we should brush aside perceived issues in the Bible.

I agree, that's pretty much what I said too. Hate in that context means "love less", either it's for added drama or a quirk in translation.

A lot of my Bible study was done at a time when I was struggling with an undiagnosed mental illness, and the nature of the illness, as it was getting worse, caused some pretty irrational behaviour and extreme attitudes about things. Thus when I pick up a Bible now, I'm quite terrified by it. Afraid that I'll go back to those extreme ways of thinking and some pretty hellish times... I can only tolerate it in small doses and in the parts that I remember. Perhaps I'm naive, but I've done my 40 days of fasting in the wilderness, and I just want to read the warm and fluffy Bible quotes now .