answers to some questions please?

[just_anotherperson]

Hello everybody, As you can probably tell this is my first time here. I’m in the middle of a rather interesting research paper and I’d greatly appreciate it if you could answer some questions on your faith. Please don’t redirect me to introduction pages, I’m just as interested in the way the questions are answered as I am in the answers themselves. Oh and before you start reading this please know, the questions and the tone and the ideals presented below do not reflect me in any way, I have no opinions one way or the other here so do not try and engage in debate with me, I simply will not have it. I am here for collecting data and nothing more. However feel free to ask anything you like about me personally, as long as it does not have to do with debates on religion and such. If you do wish to ask me something though you can refer to me as “Hal” to make things easier… if you want, I don’t really care what you call me actually, whatever you prefer. A Little Introduction Just to clear up a few details in case you are wondering, I am looking at the more zealous ends of religious and scientific debates. This being said I am asking questions of more “extreme” groups such as yourselves, the Westboro Baptist Church (If they will even answer), and on the other spectrum scientists, and psychiatric majors to see both ends of the arguments. IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not mean to offend anyone and I hope I presented these questions in an impartial way. Please refrain from mindless insults and blind quoting of scripture and repeated condemning me to hell. We all have better things to do than read that over and over. As you may be able to tell I’ve spent a lot of time and thought on this and I would appreciate a certain level of maturity and intelligence. Thank you. Some Questions About Your Opinions on Outside Topics 1. How do you feel about the Westboro Baptist Church and their ideals? Also how do you feel about being lumped into a similar category as them by outsiders even though you may have different views? 2. How do you feel about the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Why do you think more “modern thinkers” are saying that FSM is more credible than traditional Intelligent Design Theories because it accounts for the discrepancies between the theory and real life findings? 3. How do you feel about other images or websites that mock your religion but do not have an actual following and are clearly only meant as an immature joke? For example raptor: jesus images, igod, etc. etc. Do you feel that these sites are harmless since they are not taken seriously and should be ignored or would you take action against them if you could? 4. What if someone follows every aspect of your religion except for one difference. That difference being that instead of desiring to kill all non-believers, they would prefer to care for them, provide the word of god to all, and allow them to make the choice on their own which faith to follow. 5. Couldn’t evolution and intelligent design coexist? What if God created everything in the beginning but then things changed over time? What is wrong with that idea? Some Questions About Your Responses in the Forums 1. I’ve looked over your forums and interestingly many new posters who have not completely agreed with you have received a large amount of harassment and anger. The Bible says to love thy neighbor so why all the hostility? Should I understand that you would sooner attack someone who is not fully committed to your religion than to try and make them understand through simple talking? 2. Many of your rebuttals are quotations taken from scripture, can you offer any other evidence of the validity of your religion or are you satisfied simply with faith and a book? 3. If God is the Creator and creates everything then he must have created all the religions and everything in the world for his own reasons. If you denounce those religions you are going against God’s creations. Why would you do that? A Hypothetical Situation In ten years nuclear war breaks out and the world and all of society is destroyed. The surviving humans rebuild what they can and move on with life, with all culture and technology forgotten. Centuries later someone unearths a largely undamaged copy of a Superman comic and the people take it to be some sort of gospel about a “god” named superman. Clearly these people are godless heathens worshipping just a book with no proof that it is real even though they believe it. In modern society we have a similar book called “The Bible” which teaches of another supernatural being who did great deeds for society. The Bible has just as little proof as the comic in the aforementioned scenario but the people are just as fervent in their beliefs of it. What makes the second situation better than the first? Both groups only have their faith in their god and neither has proof? Another Hypothetical Question Imagine for a moment that you die and go to heaven but find that your religion was not in fact the correct one, or perhaps irrefutable evidence is found that god does not exist. How would you feel? What would you do? Would you continue living your life the way you have or change to better meet this “real god”? (Please do not bother posting if your answer is “well that could never happen so it doesn’t matter”) More Hypothetical Questions You have a rebellious teenage child who does not want to follow your beliefs. How do you deal with this child Your child tells you he or she is homosexual. How do you react and what do you do? Your child tells you he or she is bisexual. How do you react and what do you do? A man lives his whole life never openly admitting or refusing the existence of God. He lives a good life and eventually dies. When he goes to heaven and realizes God exists he is truly repentant for having not zealously followed God’s word his whole life and pleads for forgiveness. Would this man be let into heaven or sent to hell? Questions about the Bible and religion 1. The Old Testament is also followed by Judaism as well as other religions, so are they not following the same religion as you? Even though in the olden days they may have been different. 2. The second word in the Bible was mistranslated. Genesis starts off “In the beginning” but it was meant to start “In a beginning”. The “a” implies more than one beginning. What are your thoughts on this? 3. Do you believe in the rapture even though it is not written in the Bible itself in any detail? 4. Do you only follow what is written in the Bible or do you also follow outside texts that support your views? 5. How do you feel about the Crusades? Questions about Life 1. What is your opinion of modern society? 2. What is your opinion on modern education and schools? 3. Do you feel that science and religion can exist together? For example, calculus, chemistry, etc. many aspects of science do not contradict religion but many zealous supporters of religion condemn all sciences. Questions about People 1. Do you feel one race is superior to another even if they are both the same religion? 2. If so, Why? (please provide proof and hard evidence, not stereotypes and nay saying) 3. Why do you insist on speaking English? Jesus would not have spoken English when he was on earth. 4. How does it make you feel that many consider your prosecution of others to be quite similar to groups such as the Nazis, using blind faith to convince people to hate and kill each other? Questions about Life not Directly Related to Religion 1. How do you feel about stem cell research? 2. How do you feel about safe stem cell gathering? (By taking the umbilical cord after birth which does not harm the infant in any way but still gives stem cells) 3. How do you feel about cloning? 4. How do you feel about genetic engineering for longer life or bolstered immunity against disease, etc.? 5. How do you feel about public schools teaching evolution and not intelligent design? (for the most part) 6. How do you feel about abortion? What if the person is pregnant because of rape? 7. What are your views on sexual education for youngsters? 8. What should the role of a woman be in the house? The family? The workplace? The world? Media and such 1. How do you feel about videogames in general? 2. Specifically how do you feel about games like Grand Theft Auto, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. (If you have a strong opinion on any other game feel free to mention it these are only examples.) 3. How do you feel about TV today? 4. How do you feel about movies today? 5. How do you feel about news broadcasts today? Miscellaneous 1. What is your favorite country in the world and why? 2. If you could have the choice of wealth and power, or love which would you choose? Please respond openly to the following quotation "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” -Epicurius, Greek Philosopher Thank you again very much for taking the time to read and hopefully answer these questions. If this goes well I may think of some more questions later.

[Bobby-Joe]

Re: answers to some questions please?

(wall of text deleted)

Are you even aware of what a paragraph is?

[just_anotherperson]

Re: answers to some questions please?

I'm really sorry about the whole block of text. I didn't realize formatting wouldn't carry over in the post, and it won't let me attach my file since it is in an odd format, terrible sorry.

[Rev. Jim Osborne]

Re: answers to some questions please?

Sweet Jesus, have mercy on this one! I believe you just broke the record for creating the world's biggest wall-of-text on this site! I couldn't gather anything from it except you have about a million questions. Here is some advice...

Use the Return key on your keyboard. It makes these things called "paragraphs" which make your words easier to follow.

Use the Search function on this site. All your questions have already been answered. Lurk around more.

[Nobar King]

Re: answers to some questions please?

Can we just do this one question at a time?

[just_anotherperson]

Re: answers to some questions please?

Hopefully this post keeps the formatting unlike the last one haha



Hello everybody,
As you can probably tell this is my first time here. I’m in the middle of a rather interesting research paper and I’d greatly appreciate it if you could answer some questions on your faith. Please don’t redirect me to introduction pages, I’m just as interested in the way the questions are answered as I am in the answers themselves. Oh and before you start reading this please know, the questions and the tone and the ideals presented below do not reflect me in any way, I have no opinions one way or the other here so do not try and engage in debate with me, I simply will not have it. I am here for collecting data and nothing more. However feel free to ask anything you like about me personally, as long as it does not have to do with debates on religion and such. If you do wish to ask me something though you can refer to me as “Hal” to make things easier… if you want, I don’t really care what you call me actually, whatever you prefer.
A Little Introduction
Just to clear up a few details in case you are wondering, I am looking at the more zealous ends of religious and scientific debates. This being said I am asking questions of more “extreme” groups such as yourselves, the Westboro Baptist Church (If they will even answer), and on the other spectrum scientists, and psychiatric majors to see both ends of the arguments.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not mean to offend anyone and I hope I presented these questions in an impartial way. Please refrain from mindless insults and blind quoting of scripture and repeated condemning me to hell. We all have better things to do than read that over and over. As you may be able to tell I’ve spent a lot of time and thought on this and I would appreciate a certain level of maturity and intelligence. Thank you.
Some Questions About Your Opinions on Outside Topics
1.How do you feel about the Westboro Baptist Church and their ideals? Also how do you feel about being lumped into a similar category as them by outsiders even though you may have different views?
2.How do you feel about the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Why do you think more “modern thinkers” are saying that FSM is more credible than traditional Intelligent Design Theories because it accounts for the discrepancies between the theory and real life findings?
3.How do you feel about other images or websites that mock your religion but do not have an actual following and are clearly only meant as an immature joke? For example raptor: jesus images, igod, etc. etc. Do you feel that these sites are harmless since they are not taken seriously and should be ignored or would you take action against them if you could?
4.What if someone follows every aspect of your religion except for one difference. That difference being that instead of desiring to kill all non-believers, they would prefer to care for them, provide the word of god to all, and allow them to make the choice on their own which faith to follow.
5.Couldn’t evolution and intelligent design coexist? What if God created everything in the beginning but then things changed over time? What is wrong with that idea?
Some Questions About Your Responses in the Forums
1.I’ve looked over your forums and interestingly many new posters who have not completely agreed with you have received a large amount of harassment and anger. The Bible says to love thy neighbor so why all the hostility? Should I understand that you would sooner attack someone who is not fully committed to your religion than to try and make them understand through simple talking?
2.Many of your rebuttals are quotations taken from scripture, can you offer any other evidence of the validity of your religion or are you satisfied simply with faith and a book?
3.If God is the Creator and creates everything then he must have created all the religions and everything in the world for his own reasons. If you denounce those religions you are going against God’s creations. Why would you do that?
A Hypothetical Situation
In ten years nuclear war breaks out and the world and all of society is destroyed. The surviving humans rebuild what they can and move on with life, with all culture and technology forgotten. Centuries later someone unearths a largely undamaged copy of a Superman comic and the people take it to be some sort of gospel about a “god” named superman.
Clearly these people are godless heathens worshipping just a book with no proof that it is real even though they believe it.
In modern society we have a similar book called “The Bible” which teaches of another supernatural being who did great deeds for society. The Bible has just as little proof as the comic in the aforementioned scenario but the people are just as fervent in their beliefs of it.
What makes the second situation better than the first? Both groups only have their faith in their god and neither has proof?
Another Hypothetical Question
Imagine for a moment that you die and go to heaven but find that your religion was not in fact the correct one, or perhaps irrefutable evidence is found that god does not exist. How would you feel? What would you do? Would you continue living your life the way you have or change to better meet this “real god”?
(Please do not bother posting if your answer is “well that could never happen so it doesn’t matter”)
More Hypothetical Questions
You have a rebellious teenage child who does not want to follow your beliefs. How do you deal with this child
Your child tells you he or she is homosexual. How do you react and what do you do?
Your child tells you he or she is bisexual. How do you react and what do you do?
A man lives his whole life never openly admitting or refusing the existence of God. He lives a good life and eventually dies. When he goes to heaven and realizes God exists he is truly repentant for having not zealously followed God’s word his whole life and pleads for forgiveness. Would this man be let into heaven or sent to hell?
Questions about the Bible and religion
1.The Old Testament is also followed by Judaism as well as other religions, so are they not following the same religion as you? Even though in the olden days they may have been different.
2.The second word in the Bible was mistranslated. Genesis starts off “In the beginning” but it was meant to start “In a beginning”. The “a” implies more than one beginning. What are your thoughts on this?
3.Do you believe in the rapture even though it is not written in the Bible itself in any detail?
4.Do you only follow what is written in the Bible or do you also follow outside texts that support your views?
5.How do you feel about the Crusades?
Questions about Life
1.What is your opinion of modern society?
2.What is your opinion on modern education and schools?
3.Do you feel that science and religion can exist together? For example, calculus, chemistry, etc. many aspects of science do not contradict religion but many zealous supporters of religion condemn all sciences.
Questions about People
1.Do you feel one race is superior to another even if they are both the same religion?
2.If so, Why? (please provide proof and hard evidence, not stereotypes and nay saying)
3.Why do you insist on speaking English? Jesus would not have spoken English when he was on earth.
4.How does it make you feel that many consider your prosecution of others to be quite similar to groups such as the Nazis, using blind faith to convince people to hate and kill each other?
Questions about Life not Directly Related to Religion
1.How do you feel about stem cell research?
2.How do you feel about safe stem cell gathering? (By taking the umbilical cord after birth which does not harm the infant in any way but still gives stem cells)
3.How do you feel about cloning?
4.How do you feel about genetic engineering for longer life or bolstered immunity against disease, etc.?
5.How do you feel about public schools teaching evolution and not intelligent design? (for the most part)
6.How do you feel about abortion? What if the person is pregnant because of rape?
7.What are your views on sexual education for youngsters?
8.What should the role of a woman be in the house? The family? The workplace? The world?
Media and such
1.How do you feel about videogames in general?
2.Specifically how do you feel about games like Grand Theft Auto, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. (If you have a strong opinion on any other game feel free to mention it these are only examples.)
3.How do you feel about TV today?
4.How do you feel about movies today?
5.How do you feel about news broadcasts today?
Miscellaneous
1.What is your favorite country in the world and why?
2.If you could have the choice of wealth and power, or love which would you choose?
Please respond openly to the following quotation
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
-Epicurius, Greek Philosopher
Thank you again very much for taking the time to read and hopefully answer these questions. If this goes well I may think of some more questions later.

[Nobar King]

Re: answers to some questions please?

Instead of asking so many questions, why don't you just publish your manifesto here and let us know how YOU feel about these issues, then we can tell you why you're wrong. Does that sound like fun?

[Bobby-Joe]

Re: answers to some questions please?

(another wall of text deleted)

So were did you cut and paste this from?

[just_anotherperson]

Re: answers to some questions please?

I wrote it myself but in microsoft word so I could save it in case something went wrong, good idea in the end eh? and if you read it you would see that I am not interested in my opinion and your rebuttal, I am simply trying to see what others think. If you don't want to answer just don't and move on with your life

[Rev. Jim Osborne]

Re: answers to some questions please?

Again, I ask you to use the Search function. All your questions have been answered on these boards.

[Jake the Papist]

Re: answers to some questions please?

Just Another Person- I thought for sure that presenting facts and questions in a way as you did would surely spark some realistic debate, but all they do is still condemn. Is there anyway to actually talk with you all without beeing condemned to hell based on a misinterpretation of the word?

[Deaner]

Re: answers to some questions please?

If this goes well I may think of some more questions later.

God no.

[just_anotherperson]

Re: answers to some questions please?

Just Another Person- I thought for sure that presenting facts and questions in a way as you did would surely spark some realistic debate, but all they do is still condemn. Is there anyway to actually talk with you all without beeing condemned to hell based on a misinterpretation of the word?

thanks jake, it's always nice to find normal collected people on the internet. but ah well, nothing ventured nothing gained as they say, and even if all i get is prattle about how no one wants to even read my post I still haven't lost anything. What I really like is how I specifically posted how none of this is my own opinion and I don't want an argument but they just ignore it.

[Rev. Jim Osborne]

Re: answers to some questions please?

thanks jake, it's always nice to find normal collected people on the internet. but ah well, nothing ventured nothing gained as they say, and even if all i get is prattle about how no one wants to even read my post I still haven't lost anything. What I really like is how I specifically posted how none of this is my own opinion and I don't want an argument but they just ignore it.

Seriously, are you that dense? You expect us to wade through that ocean of text and answer your 247238239 questions? You know, some of us have jobs, familial obligations, hobbies, Bible study, church, and a life and don't have six months to carefully look through your diatrebe and respond to every single one of your questions.

The problem is not with us, it's you. I dare you to go to any other internet forum, be it Jewish, automobile discussion, computer games, existential philosophy, etc. and write out a wall of text like that with a million questions and see how people will respond.

If you have a couple of really hard-pressed questions that have not been answered here, then we will gladly answer them. But you insist on us answering questions that have been gone over time after time, and you hold it against us because you are too lazy to use the Search function.

[just_anotherperson]

Re: answers to some questions please?

oh jimmy, you and you're caterwauling. I've said three or four times now, there is no need to post at all if you don't like my post. Why must you be so rude and unforgiving? After all the bible says "judge not lest ye be judged" as well as "love thy neighbor" and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and im sure you wouldn't consider yourself without sin since no mere man is perfect... but alas it appears I've come to the wrong place for intelligent discussion. As for the search function. I clearly stated I required fresh discussion and responses and specifically responses to certain questions. Once again, I also said I am not looking for a disagreement. If you have nothing nice to say please carry on. If there is no decent post to be had I suppose I'll just move on. Sorry to bother you all, good luck with your lives that cannot be interrupted to answer a few honest questions