Futurama Fry

Those claims were effectively made by Christ himself. Christians trust Christ, and so are repeating his claim.

Go, Pagans!

Because Jesus Christ is the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the earth.

wow , ... your pinning everything on christ as the end all be all,christ is not god, christ is his son , so the question remains unanswered ...

Christ allowed himself to be openly worshiped as God. Thus, either Christ is God or he is a sociopathic liar.

Mark 14 establishes to my satisfaction his superiority over all other religious leaders and philosophers in recorded human history.

We're good here.

The only way for you to know is to learn for yourself but do it from an objective, non-religious view such as college Theology courses. Never learn religion from preachers, priests, pastors, rabbi's, etc or you will never see the reality. You will get the brainwashing version.

I like your approach. That's why I didn't learn engineering from professors and engineers - I didn't want the brainwashing version.

LOL, not the same thing. Nice try. I was religious for most of my life but then studied religions from an objective view at college. Different approach than someone trying to get another parishioner. As for engineering, remind me NOT to hire you for my next job. lol.

Oh, you think the people at colleges have an objective view of this subject?

VS a preacher? Absolutely. I learned from both and college was much more educational than the actual religion. Do what you wish. Don't care. Just trying to save you all the time and confusion I went through. Let me know how you manage after 40 years like I did.

I've gone both directions. I can certainly agree from experience that many fail to teach their own religion, even when it has a rich intellectual tradition to draw on. But the college professor is no better on this subject; he approaches the data with his own prejudices with predictable results.

You sound jaded. Maybe you should have found a better institution. My professors weren't like that. I had multiple professors not just one so there were many points of view. See how it works?

So what did these multiple points of view teach you?

For me it proved religion is a function for man to create world or people domination and control. Most are the same. As for an entity, I believe one exists but not what man has written. I'm still in "research" with my spirituality. I view Buddhism as the most conducive to human evolution towards understanding life but I'm not a Buddhist.

What specifically led you to that conclusion?

It wasn't one thing. The more I tried to find a reason for an entity the more I kept coming up with the same conclusion that it's to get as many people as possible with the same mind set. Much like programming. Eliminating free thought. If you really separate yourself from religion and examine the faithful you will see they can't do anything without approval from the religion or they suffer guilt, shame, expulsion, criticism, violence, death.

As for an existing entity I came to the conclusion that something exists. I just don't believe it's the scripture. It is written by man, about man, for man and full of chauvinistic behavior and entitlement. No God would want one to have domain over another when they were all created equally.

I can certainly see how it is often bad to shoehorn everyone into the same mind-set. But it's equally certain that some mindsets ought to be universal - a respect for human life, say, or an awareness of the importance of supporting children. If these sorts of universal norms exist, they are probably important - and why should there not be some sort of feedback mechanisms to promote them - both internal and external? Good rules are like the walls of a playground - they technically do restrict your movement, but only to allow you greater freedom of action within the safe space.
As for God, it seems to me that if anything like Christianity is true and a being not only created the universe from nothing but ordered it all to support some sort of life, we should expect that being to defy our expectations. It's a mistake to judge a proposed god by your own standards since any god worth following should know better than you about everything and thus would disagree with you about something when you first meet him or her.

Well, if that's all you object to then I am quite satisfied with the discussion - though that label has been used throughout history, so it hardly seems "prehistoric." Not that it matters either way, since we do not properly judge ideas by the calendar.

Strange how you label a god as "him" or "her". I find that label to be prehistoric when describing a "god". Any being capable of creation is far beyond the need for a gender.

What