Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Oct 22, 2006 12:34:00 GMT -5
Maybe we should make a religion thread in the General Board lol
The whole catholicism thing just makes me wonder. I don't know lots about it so don't get mad if I offend any catholics in here, but I'm just gonna say what confuses me. It seems to me that Catholics worship Mary more than Jesus and I think that's stupid. There's also all the saints you're supposed to pray to for different things. But what really confuses me is that Christians are supposed to worship God and God alone, so what's that saying when you worship mortal humans? I just don't get it lol And I don't get what the hype about Mary is other than she was a virgin mother.
*I think I'm gonna copy this stuff I just said and put it in a thread on the General Board so we stop talking about it in the worst book ever thread.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 22, 2006 12:43:28 GMT -5
lol, good idea Kristie!
I guess my feelings about religion are similar to poisonpen's - I was brought up a Roman Catholic as well but I basically disagree with everything this religion stands for, from the Bible to the Pope. I consider myself a Deist, but I respect people who practice as long as religion doesn't make them blind or close-minded.
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Oct 22, 2006 14:22:01 GMT -5
I label myself as agnostic for the most part I guess. The funny thing is that I still believe what I was taught, but I believe there are other things that are missing. I mean, come on. The Bible cannot be perfect! It was written by men that could have misinterpreted things or didn't remember things properly. Not to mention it's supposed to be thousands of years old. Don't you think there would be a little distortion from that time to this? I mean I did a paper last year about marriages in Christianity and Islam. I found that for the most part Islams believed what the Bible said, just that it got distorted over time and their Qu'ran is the perfect version. I don't think it's perfect either, because we're humans and that's just impossible. I don't know...there just seems so much that could be what we didn't think it was and that's why I don't completely trust it.
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Post by Dominique on Oct 22, 2006 17:12:29 GMT -5
The whole catholicism thing just makes me wonder. I don't know lots about it so don't get mad if I offend any catholics in here, but I'm just gonna say what confuses me. It seems to me that Catholics worship Mary more than Jesus and I think that's stupid. There's also all the saints you're supposed to pray to for different things. But what really confuses me is that Christians are supposed to worship God and God alone, so what's that saying when you worship mortal humans? I just don't get it lol And I don't get what the hype about Mary is other than she was a virgin mother. I've never really thought of it as worshipping Mary more than Jesus, I'm not sure that the denomination does that, but it does have more of a focus on Mary than any of the others. I guess it's because God picked her out of all us mere mortals to carry her son, and with all the Christmas stuff, celebrating the birth of Jesus etc I guess it makes sense to also celebrate who gave birth to him. I agree the saints thing is odd, but honestly I think it can probably be linked back to when the church was using the saints to make money by selling "relics" of them. You know like buy this finger of saint peter and find all those lost things etc.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 22, 2006 18:54:13 GMT -5
I agree the saints thing is odd, but honestly I think it can probably be linked back to when the church was using the saints to make money by selling "relics" of them. You know like buy this finger of saint peter and find all those lost things etc. LOL, I hadn't thought of that in a long time, probably since I studied the Canterbury Tales. I wonder how many bones of St. Peter's got sold throughout the years!!
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Bina
First novel published
Posts: 2,472
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Post by Bina on Oct 23, 2006 11:54:34 GMT -5
This is definitely a better place for this discussion:) . Well I´m Roman Catholic,too. But only on paper. The religion just seems like a big fat lie in most parts. Mary just getting pregnant? The holy trinity? Very weird and confusing. Then there´s the whole crusade and inquisition thing, I´m mean all through history they´ve been slaughtering and oppressing other´s, all the while preaching about giving the poor, healing the sick and loving your neighbour. It´s paradox. And I can do that without the church. Also, I don´t believe in an after life which is kind of a major criteria.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 23, 2006 12:33:08 GMT -5
Well as I said before, since I consider myself a Deist, I don't believe that Jesus was the son of God and therefore don't believe anything written in the Bible. To me, the Bible and the concept of religion is purely man-made and it has been grossly abused throughout the years. With that being said, I recognize that religion and some of its values can help people out by providing solace and support. One of my friends is a Baptist and I once when to church with him and saw that there was a positive energy in the crowd, a nice feeling of community. So that's why I wouldn't condemn religion as a whole, it can have a positive influence on some people as long as it's not taken too far and doesn't result in intolerance, which it sadly often does.
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Oct 23, 2006 18:15:47 GMT -5
Is it really hypocritical of me to sort of believe the stories from the Bible? I mean, I believe them to an extent and then they just start sounding sorta weird and that's when I believe they start to get distorted over time or by who was writing them. When I start to have kids, I plan on sending them to sunday school so they have a basic knowledge of it and can learn some good morals, but after a certain age I'll let them decide if they want to believe it or not. Am I really contradicting myself this way?
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 23, 2006 19:54:10 GMT -5
I don't think so, I think it shows you have faith but that you are also guided by reason, and you are definitely not the only one who feels that way. I also think it's sound to introduce your children to what you believe in, but then let them make their own mind about it. I think there is no right or wrong when it comes to personal beliefs, which is why I have a problem with atheists who look down on people who believe, as if it were some sort of weakness. I've known some people who felt so strongly about not believing, it's almost like their atheism became a religion and they were even more intolerant than the very people they blamed for believing blindly. By the way, I have to say that I'm very impressed with our little group - religion is a topic I usually shy away from because people get upset very easily. I'm glad we are able to discuss it in this honest and candid way
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Oct 24, 2006 12:44:59 GMT -5
Since a lot of the members aren't from the US, I was wondering: what do your countries view on same-sex marriage? I know that the US is really behind and needs to do something about it, but what are your guys' views and stuff...
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czarval
Collection of short stories published by an independent editor
Posts: 607
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Post by czarval on Oct 24, 2006 12:51:55 GMT -5
Canada is mostly alright with it. I, personally, don't see the problem with same-sex marriage. Why shouldn't they be allowed the same celebration of their commitment that I would have?
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Oct 24, 2006 16:18:18 GMT -5
I don't see the problem with it either. (My mother does though haha) I wrote a paper on it for English 111 just a few weeks ago actually.
I was just reading from my psych textbook about homosexual orientation (in the motivation and emotion chapter). It says that it's mostly genetics when a person is gay. They used the identical vs. fraternal twin study and found 50% of the time, identical twins were both gay or lesbian. I found that hilarious because I have a gay cousin and his identical twin brother is definitely not gay.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 24, 2006 19:26:41 GMT -5
One of my friends is gay and his sister is gay as well, but I don't know if that means anything. The touchy part about linking homosexuality to genetics is that it might be good in the sense that people might realize it's normal and it's not a disease or caused by drug abuse (yeah, I've actually heard that one before : , but at the same time I'm afraid that if they find out the gene that's responsible for it, people might say well let's find a cure, you know what I mean? But to answer your previous question, I'm all in favour of gay marriage, like most Canadians I believe.
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Post by Dominique on Oct 25, 2006 2:06:16 GMT -5
I think it's totally unfair to deny gay people marriage. Not should they be able to so they can have the same level of commitment to eachother as hetrosexual married couples, but also so they can have the same legal rights. Why should gay people have less property rights etc than straight?
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 25, 2006 7:19:43 GMT -5
Especially when we know how a lot of straight marriages end up, so stop pretending gay marriage is going to desanctify marriage, straight people have already done that by getting into ugly divorces or getting married 5 or 6 times.
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