Cat you beat me to it. But this may be interesting too.
Damn, it's long...
Gia, this is the second time you post in a similar way. I skipped it the first time, because it goes into a lot of doctrinal stuff. The thread has since moved more into that area and you deserve a reply.
One of the points you bring up is the gender issue. As for me, I think God is both masculine and feminine. Every level of the world has some level of polarity. Men and women, male and female. So the cause has to be both too. Not dualist, but containing the contents of both masculinity and femininity. The Bible gives a clue. "... in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." So the image of god is both male and female, Parents.
The bible (old testament) was written appx. 6 thousands of years ago . Humanity is a lot older than that.
Well, not really. Moses "wrote" the Pentateuch around the time of the exodus, the time of Ramsis. He worked with many oral traditions that were around for ages before that. The Pentateuch was edited and re-written many times to give it the flavor of "chosenness", a mostly human construction that has some root in truth. It speaks of human society as having started some 6,000 years ago. I have seen the footprints of ancient humans in a pit in Managua, Nicaragua that are at least 7,500 years old and I am sure that "Eve" lived many years before that. Knowing how many exactly is a curiosity, but not an imperative for me
Before that .. what do you think about the religions older than jewism or christianity? why is there the gap - a big cap - between the appearance of the human race and "the" religion? there were many other religions that time, but most of them have died now. Why did _those_ religions (and do the actual non-jewish based religions) exist?
Many take it as some proof of the truth of the religion. I would say that due to man's fall, he became quite base and it took many many years to come to a point in the providence of restoration that could be receptive of the word of God (ten commandments). For what it's worth, civilization seems to have coalesced around the same time as the Biblical Abraham. Isaac Asimov wrote a very interesting analysis of the old testament and the dietary laws that he says are the basis for the survival of the Hebrews. His approach and conclusions are very secular, as one would expect, but the conclusions are rather interesting. I haven't read it, and can't remember the title, but I had a long talk with someone about it - and I respect Asimov, even if he did have a lousy barber.
In Gabon, the casava is the dietary staple. Malaria is the plague of the people and that presents a problem. Casava sweetens the blood and makes it more tasty to mosquitos. The religious tradition of Gabon calls the people to refrain from eating casava in September, a month before the main harvest, as an offering to the gods. The anopheles is most abundant in September, so the Bible is not the only place where religious tradition protects physical health.
What is the origin of god?
I don't know. Maybe we are all living in collar around the cat's neck (MIB), and God has his own issues of who his God is but so what. This is our reality and for better or worse it is here that we make our mark.
Why did god chose _one_ nation as his favorite?
The concept of chosen one is, IMHO, one of the most abused in all of theology. The old testament says that God's blessing would flow from Zion like milk and honey reaching to all the nations of the earth. Being "chosen" is being cursed with the task of loving the rest of the world in God's stead. Chosen means chosen to serve and to love, not chosen to be served and loved. The real root of it is connected to the principles of creation and the providence of restoration.
And, why did he choose some special people as his special favorites; moses, mary, jesus, all the saints, mohammed etc?
Maybe because when he spoke to them, they listened...
And why is there such a thing as "inherited sin"?
If you are born in Italy, are you not Italian? (OK, in Europe, it depends on whether your parents were Italian or not) If there was an original sin, and that has not been solved, then are not all the people born in that state? The question then is "was there an original sin?" The easy answer is no. The truth may be otherwise.
If he made the humans, why did he decide everryone was born quilty then?
Here we have a conundrum. Does God define sin, or do we? God defines goodness. When we act away from that goodness, we do so against His will. That is why it is called sin. One of the problems with many religious traditions today is that they blame sin on God, saying he tempted man or he knew he would fall. Even the doubters do so when they ask how they can believe in a god of goodness when the world is so flocked up, as if they weren't part of the flocking. When He created man he gave him a most precious gift. Not free will, but perfect authority over the outcome of his life. Perfect authority to be true to the moral imperative that Racer describes. Not being true to that moral imperative is at root of sin. It is not the root itself, but damn close to it.
Why does the church blame people of today for jesus' death? I was born 2000 years after he died, he would have died anyway.
(hope the edit is correct)
See the space time bits that Racer describes. Sorry to use you unwillingly in this apologesis Racer, but there's a kernel of truth in every heresy.
It is an allegorical thing, a catharsis for the believer, mixed with a bit of political maneuvering of guilt. (...cause the buyers and the sellers were no different fellers than what I profess to be...)
The contradiction is that traditional Christianity holds that Jesus was supposed to die on the cross. They base their theory of salvation on Jesus being the sacrificial offering. Believers in the old testament could receive benefit by making an offering. So whoever crucified Jesus should have gotten the best benefit. They should be heavenly heros. But the ones who did it were (according to early Christian dogma) punished and their nation destroyed. And then they use his crucifixion as that guilt trip to get you to believe. It was this contradiction that made me give up on Catholicism. There is a way to understand it all, but that gets too far off topic.
The origin of all, as explained in the bible, seems really to be written a few thousand years ago. I personally always liked more the (american) Indian explanations of the origin of the world: a big turtle egg and so on.
Perhaps because it is more clearly allegorical (or because no-one is around to try to say it should be understood literally.) Still, the Indian legend also deals with the origin of sin and the process of reconciliation between man and god (or at least the world that the first Indian came from.)
What does it matter _what_ is the origin of everything?
Great question. If there is an intelligent origin, a designer, then we have purpose that goes beyond our own determination of our life's goals. If that intelligent origin has been giving clues about man's purpose consistently through many different religions, we may need to pay heed to those clues.
Have you ever read any stories about how the humanity would transform, a few years before reaching the moon?
Hey, where would mankind be without Tang
has the humanity really turned to that (to the new man of the era of aquarius ..)? The man went to moon.. and there still are wars around, people who do everything in their life for money and so on
you're kidding, right? No external event will ever change anyone. No alignment of planets, celestial event. That's one of the reasons that religion is so necessary. It calls one to personal change, to a personal path on Racer's moral highway, the path of choosing to do good, at every moment. Again we are talking about religion, not some institution or organization.
If the human [race] was made by god, when will he release the human 1.0 where all the bugs of the actual beta will be fixed? When will all we be blond, tall, thin [whatever you think ideal], without having to worry about the heart diseases, obesity, PMS, IBS, EDs, FMS, rheumatism, arthritis ...? and where even the shortages species-wise will be fixed - more tolerance, no one looking only on surface (i.e. not ignoring someone only because he's not white etc), more patience, less violence ...
Oh, come on! You want to free of PMS!!??
Now there we go blaming God again for the problems of this world. Sin is an act that violates the moral principles of the world and is completely man's doing. I think he already released the GM human. Man is perfectly capable to do good if he decides to make the effort. The point is our growth to be able to realize the potential is completely within our own control. We can do it or take the easy way out and not do it. When will wars stop? When we stop fighting them. We, men and women. When we become Christians in the realest sense, we walk the way of taking responsibility; when we become Muslim in the truest sense, obedient to the moral principles of God, that we be absolutely responsible to be good; when we become scientists in the deepest sense, with a deep respect for the world that God created.
