it’s pretty easy to believe in something if you don’t ask questions.

believers have invested so much of their lives in utter ridiculousness and even when they are old enough to know better, it’s too late. (it’s kind of like the current financial meltdown. investing far too much in false /errant ideas and then insisting that it will somehow work if we just have faith in it, or sink more money into it (to pay for the wall street gods’ bonuses).

it’s like the victims of bank scams. even when they are nearly certain that they are being scammed, they keep giving their scammer money because they just can’t bring themselves to confront the facts.
that’s the power of faith!

Imagine the very first “god” that any person ever came up with. Let’s call that god Ernie. On the very first day of this religion, some skeptic said, “Yeah, really, there’s a god named Ernie? Prove it.”

The guy who invented Ernie thought, “Oops, nobody’s going to believe me, because I can’t prove it.”

So, in the second version of The Book of Ernie, the writer put something in there about faith. Ernie exists, but you can’t see him. You have to have faith.

That might’ve been enough to convince some people, but others said, “Who cares? Why should I worship Ernie?”

So then the guy who created Ernie tweaked the religion a bit more. He said, “Ernie exists, there is no hard evidence, you have to have faith…and if you don’t believe, well, sorry, but we’re going to have to kill you.”

Later, Hell was added, in the New Testament of Ernie. “Believe in Ernie or you will be damned for all eternity.”

But, of course, Ernie loves you. He’s a swell guy.

However….

Picture an early religion that had “flaws.” It wasn’t the “correct” religion. So guess what happens? Someone starts a new religion and “fixes” those flaws. If there is scripture, they rewrite it until it becomes more immune to criticism and logical attack.

Repeat the cycle over and over until—voila—you end up with Christianity.

No need to thank me for clearing things up.

Zeus commands, and loves as He will. He is a god not a toadying sycophant. That you deny Him only makes him annoyed. It is best not to taunt the true gods!

Like I said, non of them have claimed to have sacrificed my life for me because they love me so much. They did not come down to Earth here in the form of a human in order to relate to my pain, suffering and misery.I’m talking about Jesus.

John says: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The true light that gives light to every man coming into the world.” John 1:1-9. So the Light of all men is Christ, the Light that many meditation-based religions seek.”

But that’s not fair, you say, because all the other religions also preach love, faith and peace. Yes they do.I believe the reason why people come up with their own gods is because mankind was created to have a relationship with a greater being in the first place and that being does exist, only difference is that they look for him in the wrong ways.

They use their own ways to try to communicate with him and forget that the only way to the father is through Jesus Christ and that’s why you find that many of them have a god figure (like Zeus) in their imagination but totally ignore Jesus. The problem is not which god should be served, people do believe in a greater being (even Muslims believe in him), even if they give him different names, the problem is which way is the right way to reach him.

You find that people have different religious ways of doing things like meditation, being a monk, being a nun,etc but which one is the correct one? Jesus came so that he can build a bridge between us and God, which was broken because of sin.

If you ignore Jesus and think you can reach God by yourself,you are just practicing a mere religious act which will see no results.The problem is that other religions ignore the cross because they have not understood it’s power, that’s the problem. The Bible says Jesus is the Truth, the Way and the Life, no man comes to the father but through him. Sure they (all religions) believe there in a god in some way or the other, but which one is the way to get to him? Can you guess?

As far as Zeus, you didn’t really give much of an answer as to why you don’t believe in him. What about the thousands of other gods that man has created over the history of time? Why don’t you believe in them?

The people who believed in Zeus were every bit as certain of his existence as you are of Jesus’ existence. If you could go back and time and talk to them about it, they’d gladly kill you for your beliefs, much the way Christians have killed others for their beliefs over the years. It’s a silly cycle that repeats again and again. Some day, some other idiotic religion will stamp out Christianity.

Hermes,

Some of the people I have wronged are a result of them hurting me and I did it to strike back. It takes two people to create a problem. I did what I did because of some pain and anger inside me. It’s both a matter of forgiving and being forgiven. I can give you an example of a friend who went out of her way to make my life a living hell and I had beef with her for a few years because of what she did to me. She never came back to me to say how sorry she was because obviously she wasn’t.

I prayed and decided to forgive her anyway and forget what she did to me and send her a card saying “I’M SORRY” even though I felt she was the one who was supposed to be sorry.So it’s balanced, I forgive those who hurt me and I also expect to be forgiven. It wasn’t easy forgiving some people but I decided to put the past behind. There is no easy way out in forgiving people who have hurt you terribly and vice-versa.

God forgives the moment you say sorry, humans hold grudges and still bring up what you did to them yesterday (understandable human nature).For some people to forgive others, sometimes it takes a miracle. I’ve seen people who found it extremely difficult to forgive their parents or whoever hurt them and they only managed to forgive those people once they became born-again and that’s why I said with God’s help, you can overcome your weakness.

Did you apologize and make amends to the people that you wronged? If not, you cheapen human relations and are taking the easy way out.

Four thousand years ago, your ancestors probably said something like this:

“I’m a believer in Zeus and I’ve lied, cheated, gossiped and even done things I’m ashamed of which are too numerous to mention. But by Zeus’s grace, I’m now forgiven and it’s all in the past now. I may still not be perfect but with Zeus’s help, I’m working on my weaknesses as they come, thank you very much.”

So….how can you know they were wrong and you were right? How can you you be sure you shouldn’t be worshipping Zeus right now?