chaosrage

I never said it was perfect now, but for the most part we're a LOT better off. 1,000 years ago the whole world was like Afghanistan. Now only about half of the world is. We've wiped out or controlled hundreds upon hundreds of diseases. Just 500 years ago 7 out of ten children died before they reached adulthood. Now we can reach ages that people wouldn't have even dreamed of. Torture, slavery, and a lot of other things used to be considered acceptable, but now isn't, meaning we not only improve technologically, but morally. You're not making a point for it, you're just excusing it. The people who suffer all the time would get to the same light at the end of the tunnel as those that hardly suffer at all. If there's no suffering in heaven, then that must be a horrible place, an eternity full of robots who just float through life and never learn anything, right? Otherwise, this life is superfluous, and suffering is unnecessary. Why don't you bang your head against the wall a few times to see how good it feels when you stop? It wouldn't be your responibility because there were so few people that could interpret the Bible. It was all up to the pope, and what the pope said was the very definition of Christian. Popes were supposed to have been ordained by God. So what he said was the absolute truth, don't you see that? Back then, Church endorsement = christianity. It doesn't matter if it was wrong or not. All that matters is if it was Christian or not, it was. Just because you believe that God wouldn't prescribe it doesn't make it change the fact that he did prescribe it according to the only authority that could say so.

It's a huge difference between preachers and the Pope. The Pope pretty much was Christianity. He wasn't supposed to be wrong ever. It's not like some random people went up and said "Hey you guys, go do this", this was an act wholly endorsed by the Church. No one else even had the ability to interpret the bible at the time. If the Church's truth (since no one knows any better, it is truth) says that the Crusades are for liberating the holy land, then it's the truth and Catholic doctrine. I just don't see why we should make excuses for it. He has the power to do whatever he wants but he lets millions starve and die. His motives for that are about as irrelevant as Hitler's motives were IMO.

You just said he was omnipotent, nothing is necessary or unavoidable for an all-powerful god of course. Ignoring that, why exactly would it be necessary say to have 40,000 children starve to death everyday, anyway? That God doesn't exist though. It's a contradiction. You can't be both omnipotent and omni-benevolent. But that's not something to worry about, because I don't even think the bible said he was omni-benevolent. I mean, according to the bible, with the exception of one family, God drowned the entire population on earth, including children and animals, he incinerating every living thing in two cities, tortured David's newborn son to punish David, killed all the first-born Egyptian children, tested Abraham's faith by seeing if he would kill his son as a human sacrifice, and sent bears to rip children to shreds. It's pretty sick shit. Actually, whether or not God is good or evil shouldn't affect your belief in him at all. All I'm trying to figure out is why people would worship such a monster. Edit: Scratch that last one. I see that you're just saying what I said above.

Well people have been suffering less and less as we go throughout history, with medical and technological advances and such, and we still have individual character and compassion. We actually have more of it than we had back then. At what point does it just disappear? No, even if I was a Christian, I'd still say suffering was in vain, at the very least excess suffering. There's absoloutely no reason for it. No matter how hard you look, it always comes down to being totally unnecessary. There's millions of people around the world that have known nothing but misery from the time they were born until the time they died. What's the point to that? Also, do we suffer in heaven? If 2F2F told people to go out and run people over, then you could say it contributed. But the difference here is that christians during the crusades were following the church's teachings, and the pope. For that time, in general what the Pope said was the correct thing for Christians to do. You couldn't question him. What they said was what was Christian.

About the wars, religion is a huge motivator. Saying it didn't out-right cause them is just being picky. The Crusades were over land, but would people have cared as much if it wasn't supposed to be holy land? The Pope told them the Holy Land had to be liberated at all costs. According to Church doctrine, the Pope does the will of God. Doing what the Pope said was just being a good christian in those times. Whatever he said was the truth.

And being god, he could have done that without creating suffering. That's the whole point. There's no greater good that comes from hurricanes or earthquakes. There's nothing good that can come from some people living out their entire lives in misery and in poverty. Imagine a world 500 years from now. Where science has advanced so far that all poverty and disease have been eliminated. Would we be better off then or not? Think about it. Would we be better of living in the Stone Age than right now?

Even if what you're saying was true, it would only be true because that's the way god set it up in the first place. He could just as easily created a utopia of learning where suffering WASN'T necessary.

Since all my posts got no-sold. I don't understand why anyone would worship an omnipotent being. No matter what other excuses you make for everything else, an omnipotent is always able to make the world as perfect as to how he wants it. He doesn't have to make anything any certain kind of way. Which means he WANTED to create a world full of suffering. He WANTED for there to be natural disasters and diseases. He WANTED to make a human sacrifice necessary for salvation. He WANTED to make a place of eternal torture for people who don't grovel at his feet, and yet still create those people despite knowing where they're going to end up. How sick is that? Besides, I don't think there's anyone that would try to argue that the God in the bible wasn't blood-thirsty. I totally don't get it. Someone explain to me how you can worship this character.

...and who's not even a guy. That too! Damn you internet.

So these "militant atheists" were basically just one guy who's not even an atheist. Alright, heh. And although it might be nice to think flinging insults automatically negates any logical points made and makes the other person look better, the fact is they don't. If you can't handle a little insulting (he's not even flaming you), why are you on this board?

Path of Destruction is really good, but get Barely Legal first. It's probably the best ECW PPV ever from top to bottom. But more than that, it was their first PPV. This is where they went all out to try to prove to people who haven't seen them that they were a legit contender to WCW and WWF. They don't even expect you to know anything about them beforehand. It'll show you what ECW's all about.

Militant atheists? We must be reading different threads. This is one of the most laid back religion arguments I think I've ever seen.

Yes! Isn't Christianity fun? They ate the magic apple! What else could a loving God do?

To punish Adam and Eve, duh

If hot was all that existed, then yeah, there wouldn't be a reference point. But since you're only taking out cold, cold to you would just be normal room temperature. It would still feel better than being hot and sweaty. Love would still feel better to you than indifference or just liking something.

Isaiah 45:7 "I make light and darkness, good and evil; I the Lord do these things."

How can they be aware of the possiblities of the actions when he FORBADE them from learning the difference between their choices? How could they make the right choice without knowing that it was evil to listen to the snake instead of God?

If he knows it already, then that would mean it's set no matter what. If our futures are set in stone, then of course we can't make a choice either way. We would just think we could. But that's not true. If you took away hate, you could still just feel indifferent, like, or love. Just like if you took away cold, hot would still exist. It would still burn or make you feel uncomfortable.

Oh come on, God doesn't need anything. Supposedly, there is nothing he can't do. He makes all the rules. An omnipotent would have the power to create whatever reality he wanted, including a world that has all the benefits without sadness and suffering. But he didn't.

The GAC match with Sabu was just awful. I don't remember why, but their 30 minute draw on hardcore TV was a lot better. I think the matter of respect match was their best. You got to see RVD use actualy psychology (and this was in 96!), spending the whole match going after Sabu's neck. Using moves that I don't think he's done before or after, like the brainbuster off the top rope to get the win. It started off a pretty cool stoyline too. Oh and you have to see some RVD/Sabu against Eliminators matches if you didn't see them yet.

I'm not saying he should be high on the list, just maybe on it. Flair is in the 300's, what did he do in the last six months that Shawn didn't?

Yeah, he only gave Jericho one of the best matches in his career, and had the best match in WWE since Benoit/Angle. But that shouldn't really count for anything.

The thing about that is in 96, Bret was at the tip-top of the company. A feud with Austin could only do good things for Austin. Angle isn't that far removed from a mid carder himself. He's going to have to pretty much squash guys like Cena to cement himself at the top, like Hart did from 92-94. He needs a run like that. Now that he's serious and he should be coming back as a face, there's no reason he shouldn't have one.

I can't see Brock holding the title until WM, and I definitely can't see Benoit ever beating him for it, especially with how they're treating him now. So what else can they do? Why not have Angle/Brock for summerslam? They can both be face. The storyline practically writes itself, they both want to see who is the better wrestler; however at WM because Angle had neck problems, it didn't tell us anything. We know they respect each other from the ending to that match, so a team at the same time wouldn't be too far-fetched. And WM is still fresh on everybody's minds. It would let Angle hold the belt until WM next year, giving him his first real respectable title run. Hey, they sound like they're serious about him with the videos. Maybe he would lose it to Benoit even, but that's probably hoping for too much. How long can they have a show with just two main eventers though, both on the same side? Of course this will all be for nothing when he comes back tonight and tries to run over Brock with a car.

It didn't make it worthless. The whole point to the ironman match was to show that they were in fact ironmen, that they could go an hour. If it wasn't for the ironman concept, they wouldn't have any reason not to go all out in the beginning instead of playing it cautious like they did and trying to wear each other down. It's different from other matches, it tries to be more real, that's why so many people love it. Anyway, I don't think I'd be able to take it seriously if Shawn and Bret pinned each other 5 or 6 times. I mean, this is the biggest match of Shawn's career, the moment he's been waiting his whole life for, how would it look if he got pinned with something like a clothesline or even submitted in the sharpshooter? The same goes for Bret, how often did he get pinned clean? Going all the way showed that they had the stamina to do it and also how much it meant for the both of them. Now for HHH/Rock, it was alright, but it made them look weak. When they use long wear down holds in the middle of the match, like someone else said that doesn't make me feel like they're building to anything like HBK/Bret was, it feels like they're just stalling because they're tired. Ross and Lawler made sure to tell us about a hundred times that the longest either one of them had been in the ring was 30 minutes. Then why do it? They could have did it in 30 minutes, took out all the brawling, the stalling, and sped up the action a little bit more and it would have been better. And it wouldn't change the entire match around like it would have for HBK/Hart.