> Jeff Fink Said:
>
> ...
>
> > You may wonder how good of a Christian I am? Well,
> > I am not as good as I need to be, but I am trying.
>
> I often wonder how good a human being I am to myself and to others as
> well. I know I could use improvement, and I am trying.
>
> > Bible prophesy, which has a habit of coming true, indicates
> > that at the end of the age there will be a one world religion
> > that will punish Christian believers, who refuse to deny Jesus,
> > with execution by beheading. Read: Revelation 20: 4
> >
> > I ask, "Is there any major religion on the fast track to
> > world domination that hates the concept of Jesus as God, and
> > that punishes infidels with beheading?" It would seem to
> > benefit most of us to postpone the arrival of that religious
> > system as long as possible.
> >
> > Jeff
>
> Collectively speaking when too many people at any period of history
> tend to take the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, or any religious "book"
> literally we will indeed experience the end of the world. If such a
> horrible "prophesy" were to manifest I suspect it wouldn't be because
> g*d finally came back and kicked everybody's ass out of the pool for
> peeing in it. The "prophesy" would come about because everyone
> will be
> shooting at their neighbors across geopolitical and religious
> boundaries, all in the name of their g*d, the one and only true g*d.
>
> At times like this I sometimes wish I could be an atheist.
or agnostic...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism
Apparently Thomas Huxley was the first to use the term agnostic:
"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.
So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took."
> But
> alas, I
> don't suspect a "godless" world would be any more of a solution to the
> world's woes. From what I can tell stupidity, ignorance, hatred, and
> bigotry know no geopolitical and/or philosophical boundaries. If there
> were no religion in the world I suspect all the idiots, bigots, and
> the ignorant would find some other all-mighty philosophy to hang their
> hang-ups on.
>
> I continue to hope that the Golden Rule for which Mike Carrell
> refreshingly brought back to our attention will eventually
> prevail. It
> is one of the most universally prevalent and respected laws known on
> our planet.
>
> Regards
> Steven Vincent Johnson
> www.OrionWorks.com
> www.zazzle.com/orionworks
>
>
