NightElf,

You and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to our spiritual paths.

-Kieran

The problems that I find with the different religions is that there are baptists, etc. who aren't christians. There are some people who think that because they sit inside a church they are a christian.

I myself (as a christian) would have no problem accepting a gay person. (I have my own sins to worry about. ) I think the thing is though, is that God meant for sex to be for reproduction. 2 women or 2 men can't reproduce.

I tried Christianity for a couple of years, after being a pagan almost my whole life. I couldn't get over the many contridictions in the bible, nor the hypocrisy of most of the people who claim to be christian. I have been legally dead 4 times and have never seen a bright light or any entity or beings, nor heaven or hell. It was like going to sleep and not dreaming. I believe in good and evil, but I believe that both are inately human, NOT divine. Even the first commandment states, "Thou shalt have no others gods before me", so that would leave me to assume that there is more than one god.

I have a question...Why would any god make something that feels so good ONLY for reproduction?

It's kind of hard to understand, but if you think of it like a book, it makes sense. A book consists of a bunch of parts. (cover, pages, etc.) God is 3 parts. (father, son, & holy spirit).

This is what I'm talking about...the bible says that god and Jesus are one and the same AND that Jesus was his only begotten son. Contridiction.

Unfortunately, I have a problem believing a work of fiction. The bible was written by MEN. In another couple-thousand yerars, Christianity may no longer have the huge cult following it does now - The Force may be the dominant religion (or Muchroom worship, or what-have-you) - it all depends on the control of the church(es) and how much influence they exert over the population.

I also have a problem with the fact that, despite what the religious organizations would have us believe, there is no actual [physical] Christ even exsited. None. They cannot even correlate his existence with known historical writings of the time period within a couple of hundred years.

Why is Christianity "better" than other religions? At least there's more proveable truth to some of them, and, if you read the very bottom line, the tenets are the same across the board.

It's only the trappings that differ, IMO.
C~

I'm not a Christian because I saw the overwhelming hypocrisy at a young age, and it repulsed me. Thnakfully, my mother is what I refer to as a "solitary Christian"...i.e, she belives in the teachings of Jesus, thinks the 10 commandments are alright to live by, but loathes the concept of church (and most of the people that go to church) and the contradictory nature of the bible, and it was she that encouraged me to find my own way in life. Hell, I never knew how she felt religiously until 1999.
I have a flaming distaste for the amount of atrocities committed in the guise of "god's plan", both past and present. I dislike the fundamentalists that come to my door and interrupt my dinner and the time I have with my family to yammer at me about the star in my window, and to tell me that clearly, someone that looks like me will burn in hell unless I fall to my knees and grovel before god.
Also, as a woman that has always had a maternal instinct, I cannot in good conscious get behind a deity that deliberately created a child simply for the purpose of destroying it (what god did to jesus is worse than any woman that gets an abortion, IMHO). The act of allowing jesus to withstand so much torture and inevitably death seems more the act of a vengeful demon to me than a benevolent, loving, and omniscient deity.

I've always had a strong belief in all things Pagan, but didn't know that there was a name for it (save for "mythology") until I was about 12 or so, when I found a book on Pagan spirituality in the local library. I voraciously devoured that book, and it was then I realized that there were others like me and that what I believed, what I felt, who I was had a name.

-Jenn

Incidentally, the best quote I've ever heard regarding Jesus came from a Pagan priestess by the name of Rae Beth (from her book "Lamp of the Goddess"). It says "if Jesus is indeed looking down on his followers today, he is weeping tears of blood for what they have become and what has been done in his name".

-Jenn