Christian Cyclists

Have you read any of the Bible except the Gospels ? God does not require you to be an Idiot. C.S Lewis I believe had the same problem but he came to faith in Christ. JRR Tolkien was also a Christian. Perhaps you might want to read a book by Josh Mcdowell entitled evidence that demands a verdict. Take a look at the book of proverbs, Ecclesiastes or the Song of Solomon.You do not have to be dumb to believe the Bible .

 

I'm a cyclist and i'm grey, whos a greying cyclist? ANYBODY that starts a religonist thread is asking for problems and knows it. Certain things make people angry and this is one of them so dont start. And then you say no bashing,its like asking to be.

 

I have grey hairs.Religion should be discussed for it determines how we will spend eternity.Politics determines how we will live on earth.

 

I've tried to resist posting to this thread but in the end I have had to reply to it.

James, I am a Roman Catholic and I believe in Jesus Christ.
I do agree with your the view that you expressed that to reject Jesus Christ is indeed to sin against God.
However, you need to clarify exactly what this means.
To reject something, one has to have knowledge or experience of something - AND THIS IS THE CRUCIAL ISSUE.
In posting fixed statements like you have throughout this thread,
you have failed to explain the meaning of what you have posted.
Those who believe in Islam outnumber Christians on this planet by 2:1.
By their lack of knowledge or experince of Jesus Christ, are the damned for eternity ?
The billion people in China who have never heard of Christ, are they too damned ?

Your invocation of Scripture places you on very, very thin ice.
Scripture can be quoted, misquoted and interpreted in many, many different ways.
Koranic scripture is quoted by those who attempt to justify various acts of terrorism : in my own country, we had terrorists who used religion to try to justify the killing of other christians, in the 11th and 12th centuries the Bible wa quoted in order to justify the Cruscades.
Even Hitler used the Bible to justify the actions of his regime.

This thread by it's very nature is 'unchristian' because those who respond (either favourably or unfavourably) are automatically
categorised and judged.

The sort of proselytising that's going on here is devisive.

 

Which parts of the Bible would you have me read? Surely, if you've read the Bible you know that many parts contradict other parts and almost all of the stories in which God performs miracles for the people, in doing so, he defies the laws of physics -- that's what a miracle is. One might argue that God would easily be able to defy these laws, since, should he exist, they are his laws. In which case, in performing miracles, he's breaking his own laws - showing no respect for them. You might also notice that such miracles seem to be a thing of the Biblical past. What people refer to as miracles today is a joke. If someone is involved in an automobile accident and survives, "it's a miracle!". If a child is abducted and recovered uninjured, "it's a miracle!". Sorry, but that's just an overwhelming desire to believe. The suggestion is that nothing good can happen unless God makes it happen.

Let's assume that the story of Noah's ark is an accurate tale about an actual event. Where did the water go? Most people smile and tell you, "it dried up". They seem happy with that. Hopefully, most of the people here have the intellect to understand that when water "dries up" it enters and remains in the atmosphere in a vapor form. We don't have that much water in our atmosphere. Others proclaim that the planet was much flatter in those days and that it took far less water to cover its surface. The planet, as it is today, is already roughly as smooth as a glass marble, (proportionally speaking), and that's after gravity has had millions of years to flatten it out. The few thousand years since Noah's time would have little effect. Just no matter how you look at the Bible, when you compare it to the reality we see and understand today, it doesn't hold true. Almost no one would believe such things if released in a new, unsigned publication today, yet because the Bible has been around for so long and enjoyed such a grand belief system, people are quite happy to read things that are clearly unbelieveable and tuck them away as fact.

Science is quickly explaining away the mysteries that the Bible has proclaimed to explain. Rarely does anything from the Bible meet with the scientific explanation, so the church is quick to denounce and attempt to quash any new findings that contradict the Bible. Usually you'll find the phrase, "playing God" in those objections.

Einstein did much to explain the world and the universe around us. Before him, Isaac Newton offered realistic, proveable explanations. I don't know about Newton but if you read Einstein, he didn't believe in the God of the Bible. To him, "God", simply meant the universe in all of its simplistic, yet complex beauty.

One needs to do more than just read the Bible and accept what is there. One needs to think, to contemplate and on occassion to challenge the Bible or you play the role of a fool. Of course, challenging the Bible is considered blasphemy. Much as governments wish to silence those who challenge them. Any who know they can't answer a challenge will attempt to defuse them before they're issued. I perfer the view of Samuel Clemons;

"Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. For if God is as great as all that, he is above blasphemy. And if he is not, then he's beneath it."

Consider the commandments. In particular, "Thou Shalt Not Kill". The churches, for the most part, back politicians who go to war. It promotes the belief that animals were placed on the Earth for man to eat. Killing is a part of both processes. Most will tell you that the Bible meant "murder" and go into an explanation about the interpretation from the original Hebrew text. The point is, the Bible does say "Kill" and not "murder". Both words were available for the English translation and "kill" was the word chosen. If we are to believe that the word was a poor selection from the existing vocabulary, then how many other poorly selected words exist in the Bible which could significantly alter its meaning?

People who choose to "believe" in the Bible are very selective about the portions they choose to believe and the way they choose to interpret those portions.

 

See,i'm abit different how i go about it. Dont go to church{no need} and dont read the bible{no need} but if others want to,great,more should i suppose. I know god knows whats in my heart and will judge me on that. He doesnt guide me,the brain he supplied does that will make right or wrong choices. Things happen,because things happen.No miracles,just choices and the world working.

 

Just to calrify Sir Issac Newton did indeed believe in God.
I am currently reading a biography of Newton by Frank E Manuel
(Professor of History at Brandeis University.
Newton in fact produced several thesis on Biblical studies :
Observations upon the Prophecies and An Historical Count upon
Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture.

Take Michael Faraday (a greater contributor to science than either Newton or Einstein, in my opinion).
Faraday was a member of a small Presbyterian church called the
Sandaminions.
Faraday considered his work to be at the behest of God.
His famous statement upon the relationship between God and
science is very interesting.
Faraday compared mans quest for knowledge to be similar to one taking up a carpet from the floor.
One grabs a corner of the carpet and slowly lifts it to reveal the floor underneath.
He considered that he too was slowly lifting the capret because
God allowed man to achieve knowledge.
Faraday always maintained that God, by giving man this knowledge, wanted man to come closer to knowing God and his creation.

Science and God are not mutually exclusive.
Historically though scientists have suffered at the hands of the Church (look at Capernicous, Gallileo).
Thankfully, the Church has adopted the Faraday approach - that nothing is revealed unless God wills it.

 

Steven Hawkings also believes in God. I find that one a bit of a quandry but, growing up in a society which believes in God and has dozens of common phrases which include, "God", "Heaven", "Hell" and other references to concepts taken from the Bible, I suppose it's not so puzzling. The doctrines are so inter-woven into everyday life that acceptance is almost automatic.

I too believed in God for most of my life. I was 33 years old when certain events in my life brought me to the brink of challenging God and everything religion brings to the table. I originally reacted out of anger and fully expected that there would be a price to pay as I forgave and re-accepted my former beliefs. Such was not the case. As I floundered between belief and non-belief I found that ever increasingly, the questions that had long plagued me and many others I've spoken to melted away under the blanket of logic. Things happen the way they do because they're not guided by some all-powerful force. I can speak only for myself but phrases like, "the Lord works in mysterious ways", "the Lord helps them that help themselves" and the ever-present, "it's not for us to try to understand the ways of the Lord" aren't needed anymore.

My belief is that the Bible and religion came out of a need to understand things for which man had no explanation. As mankind slowly puts the pieces of the scientific puzzle together, the Biblical explanations and beliefs begin to fall apart. There are those who attempt to merge the two by confirming Biblical references and stories with science but most of these fall short and make enormous leaps of faith in order to connect one side with the other. Still, there are those theories which may explain stories from the Bible. As and example, the Ark of the Covenant being a large electrical capacitor and Moses being a bit of a flim-flam man putting his knowledge of electricity, feeble as it was, into practice to fool his followers. I've seen an entire documentary based on this theory and I can say that I didn't see any vast holes in the theory.

This is a wonderful example of what I spoke of earlier. Even to those who believe, there are parts which don't make sense. Even to the extent that some portions must be left behind in order to accept other portions. To be honest, it is my belief that people who have looked deeply enough into religion to believe that God, (assuming he exists), knows what is in their head and their heart, and can judge them in accordance with his own laws and doesn't need the formalities of the church, its rituals, or even the attendence thereof in order to separate bad people from good. This is, in my opinion, where thinking starts and blind acceptance stops.

 

And this is fair enough - if it works for you.

I was raised as a Catholic and as I get older I have become more convinced that God and Christ do have some impact on things in this world (at least from my perspective).
However, I feel that it is very very dangerous for people to resort to quoting the Bible to enforce their view of life on others.
The Bible is a collection of stories/texts written by people thousands of years ago.
To rely on literal veracity of what is in those texts is, at best, shaky.
We do not know the context in which those texts were written, nor do we know what the writer had in mind when he was written them.

If you read the book of Genesis, it states that God recreated the world and all it's creatures and the Universe, in 7 days.
Our fundamentalist Christian friends would have us believe that the literal biblical interpretation compels us to accept that God created the Universe in this time frame.

We know that the Universe is 13 billion years old and counting.
We know that the earth is perhaps 1-1.5 millions years old.
So what do we accept as being truthful - the Bible or science ?
Of course, in this example Science is correct but if Science is correct, we're guilty of blasphomy because it contradicts the Bible !
But how can this be blasphomous when God gave Man the intelligence to create the Hubble telescope which took the photos of the Universe which tell us that the Universe is 13 billion years
old ?
Literal interpretations of the Bible are thus misleading.

Yes, Scripture states that we should spread the Word of God (Gospel) but we can do this by leading a good and humble life,
by creating a good example to others, donating money to charity.
We do not need to resort to writing on a website, damning people to eternal damnation !
This need for people to shout out about their faith to others,
in my opinion, has more to do with their inadequacies than it is
to spread the message of God.
God manifests himself in many ways, the Bible states "for in my house there are many mansions".
Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh are as worthy (or unworthy) as any of us
so-called Christians.

 

I am a protestant of course I do not approve of the inquisition my religous ancestors were Tortured and killed by it . As to the Crusades I have to look into the history of that. About Islam if someone has never been exposed to the truth of the Gospel God will judge them on their Knowledge and how they have reacted to that. The Bible is read as you would read other literature,you interpret it with common sense and if you are a deep scholar study it in the original langauge .If you know the Truth and reject it you have rejected Christ.The Bible is simple enough to be understood by the layman and yet can be studied for a lifetime by a diligent scholar.The basic message though is very simple . Man sinned and was separated from God by his sin. God devised a plan to reconcile man to himself and it was carried out by his only begotten Son Jesus who died in our place on the cross.Man can avoid hell by accepting Christs sacrifice as atonement for His/ her sin. Good works will not avail because God"s standard is perfection only acceptance of Christs sacrifice can save us.

 

As to what someone said about the Bible being disproved by science.Bunk.Theology is also a science it is the study of God. If God be God then he made the rules of Physics and he can do what he wants. I am of the opinion that to believe in evolution requires much more faith than to believe in creation. Species do not magically become other species( the Bible states that living things reproduce after their own kind.),and 99.9 %or greater of mutations are not beneficial.The second law of thermodynamics states that things left to themselves proceed from a state of order to a state of disorder and do not become more complex and orderly. The complexity of creation demands an intelligent creator.If faith alone without validity was sufficient evolutoinists would all go to heaven.

 

I'm glad that you have agreed with the point that I made that to
reject anything, one has to have been exposed to or have had some knowledge of that which is rejected.
Therefore, the millions of people who follow a faith other than Christianity, if they are sincere in their belief in their own God will
not be damned to eternity.
I'm glad that you have conceded this point because your earlier invocation of the Bible was a dogma.

 

The Bible itself says that we will be judged by the knowledge we have been given.God is not unmerciful as some imply afer all he made a way for man to be reconciled to him.In order to reject Christ you of course have to know of him.I never said people would be condemned if they had no knowledge.You cannot reject what you do not know.

 

The bible is full of old stories. Think about it, what happens to stories over time? Fishing stories are a classic. Someone goes out and catches a puny 4 incher. He goes home and to save face says it was a footer that he ate on the shore. In a year that same fish took 5 people to reel in.

What can we learn? I have a feeling that once long ago some Israelite slave swam across a river to get away from his brutal master, and over the years the stories gotten bigger and bigger, eventually getting to the point that the hand of god came down and separated a whole sea.

On a separate note. Why is it that everyone blindly follows the bible? It's an old book. Do you really thing that Adam and Eve is real? If so, why aren’t there any dinosaurs in the bible? We've found more dinosaurs than rods that turn into snakes.

And what if Mary had been screwing another man and just didnt feel like telling Joseph about it. The whole foundation of modern religion would be gumbo, guess we'll never know.

Sounds like a lot of bullshinto to me

 

In utilizing science to study anything, a set of theories must first be established. The theories are then tested under sets of known conditions. When a theory is disproved, another may be formulated to take its place. When a theory has withstood the scrutiny of many, many tests, it may be said that it has proved itself, though scientists know that most any theory may still find a test which brings it crashing down. When you say that Theology is the scientific study of God, what theories are suggested and what tests have been utilized to confirm these theories? To my mind, the acceptance of an existance of God flies in the face of science. It suggests that no rules exist which God cannot change at will. The Theory of Relativity, of Gravitation, of literally everything crumbles.

Obviously, what you've heard of the theory of evolution was taught to you by those wishing to discredit it. Evolution never suggested that any species "magically" becomes another species - unlike the Bible which suggests that fully-formed mankind "magically" appeared by the hand of God.

As to your opinion that evolution requires more faith than a belief in creationism, that is your opinion. You're quite welcome to it. But evolution can and has been observed. The Galapagos Islands are perhaps one of the more common examples. Where are your examples of creationism? Please don't point to the Bible as an example. The Bible tells only the story of a claimed incident of creationism. It offers no proof and no tangible examples. I could point to "Willy Wonka" as proof that girls can turn into giant blueberries. It's a tale, not proof.

From where do you obtain the figure that 99.9% of mutations are not beneficial? I'm very willing to accept that well less than half are beneficial but your statistic seems to have been drawn out of thin air. Unless you can show otherwise, I must believe that it lacks any scientific validity. Aside from that, the remaining .1% still opens the door for evolution. In fact, it's extremely difficult to imagine a way for even .1% beneficial mutation not to lead to small, gradual changes to a species.

As to your law of thermodynamics, you must understand the difference between things truly left to themselves and those things which have influence and are influenced by other forces. Life is not simply a thing left unto itself. There are simple rules, and those rules are the basis of evolution. Mutations are a fact. Those mutations that prove beneficial have a greater likelihood of persisting than those that do not. What makes one thing beneficial and another detrimental depend upon interactions with the enviroment as well as with other organisms.

Life might well be compared to an elegant computer program. An inelegant program will require excessive code to keep things working while an elegant program -- one consisting of relatively few rules, will show itself to be almost self-sufficient, requiring little additional intervention from verbose coding to keep things moving along the desired path. The inelegant program will not fare well in co-existing with the elegant program.

One might be tempted to suggest that someone must have done the coding, yet in our universe there are copious examples of such simplicity. The simple balance between centrifugal force and gravitational force which causes a smaller body to orbit a larger body is one, simple example. No extremely complex set of rules is required to calculate the degree of turn required for every x-distance of forward movement. The balance between the two forces takes care of that. The start of life from a few strands of protein might very well have followed such similar patterns. Surely, given enough time, the proper combinations and interactions will always give rise to complex systems. Look at a relatively simple mandlebrot set. Then look at the incredibly complex design plotted by following the simple set of rules. Take a look at what is being done with fractal patterns - simple rules, recursive and evolving, eventually giving rise to the appearance of amazing complexity.

Dump a quantity of like-size spheres into a container. Do they position themselves into a random, chaotic mess or do you find them, for the most part, occupying a standard hexagonal matrix, six around one? Simple rules, highly organized patterns.

 

I, sadly, am an aethiest. I say sadly because I firmly believe that religion was invented to help the fragile and arogant human mind to deal with its own mortality. If you donot accept there is a daity then you accept mortality. I will die.

Unfortunatly in this time the human mind seems more fragile than ever, as now several religious Cults will no doubt battle to the death for world supremacy. There has been more evil done in the name of God, allah et al than anything else. I rate religion as one of the biggest killers of man currently...

this is the reason I dont believe this thread should be here.....hold your heads up high and proclaim your faith? most religous people should hide there heads in shame for the evil they have bought to man.....

I did not mean this as an attack on anyone or any particular religion, I know I will offend many, that was not intended but no apology.......Just my thoughts on why you should go to a religious forum and ask if anyone cycles rather than this way......

 

Good point. I like to think those of us who are Catholic can have the best of both worlds. I can still go mountain biking on a Sunday morning, enjoying God's good creation and one hell of a trail, and still go to Mass on either Saturday or Sunday evening. Uh oh, now the Catholic bashing will begin too. Ah well...

 

Twenty miles to get to church and back. I often talk to God along the way. Going to church started my cycling habit.

 

He, uhm.... doesn't talk back, does he?