If I'm a tea drinker and someone else prefers water. They are not a threat as long as they drink their water, they are only a threat if they dilute my tea a little at a time. If the crooked landowner only moves the boundary a foot each year it may be awhile before the neighbor wakes up and says hey, my field shrank.

I've come to think the danger is not outside the church but within. The world has got churchy and the church has got worldly.

Be easy on those JW's Scuba. Cults like theirs are CINO's. Christian in name only.
Age old Arianism heresy brought into the modern era.

Blessings,
Mark

My point was validated by Karl Marx in his manifesto. He pointed out that God was a major stumbling block to his plans for a secular society ruled by his brand of god. Man. The net result was that the Churches were removed as was the moral compass of those who ruled as gods. You might be & I suspect you are a very moral person Scuba but Secularist rulers of Marxist countries always import hate for God as their controlling option.

*** https://fee.org/articles/5-things-marx-wanted-to-abolish-besides-private-property/ *** "He recognized how radical this idea would sound to his readers, particularly since Communism does not seek to modify truth, but to overthrow it. But he argued these people were missing the larger picture.

“‘Undoubtedly,’ it will be said, ‘religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.

There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.’

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.”

There are strides being made to address this in MANY areas Foxpaw, but as you might imagine some of the church revitalization efforts are meeting with....
resistance.
Go figure.

Mark I could not care less, if the amish are happy with their two horses in front of their ride , thats fine by me. I like 400 of them in mine. Each to their own.
The magic word is tolerance. That together with common sense have become two rare superpowers these days i think.

I went for a walk with the dogs today and took a basket for shrooms along with me to see if I could find some morels. I did not see any but enjoyed the walk through the brush none the less and the morels would have just been a nice bonus. i stopped here and there looking at the fresh plants coming out from between the rotting leaves on the forest floor. Marveling at the intricacies of nature and how it all works and evolved. Thinking about the chemistry and transport of minerals from the decaying leaves and trunks back into the ground to be taken up by new grows supporting new life.
Wondering how long I will be the custodian of my patch here in the hills.

To me the notion of God did all that is like Biden saying that everything is Putins fault. It probably won't make any sense whatsoever to someone who believes in a god.

Same here. Almost to a T with everything you posted.

Yet they think that their way in believing in god is the right way, so do the amish , protestants and catholics have bean beating each others heads in over who is right for ages. These are just a part of the christian branches of worshiping their god. i have not even started on the plethora of other religions out there that worship one or more gods and you ask any one of those followers and they will tell you that theirs is the right way as you do as well. none say .... well we are just doing this to fill the weekend but its really just for squirts and giggles. They are all steadfast in their beliefs how ever different they may be. So by law of averages, the majority of people are doing the wrong thing. I would probably be on the wrong team as well if I was to join a religious group or adopt a religious way of thinking. So I don't mess with it and feel quite comfortable in the real world without people rising from the dead, parting oceans and whatnot. You can have all that spooky stuff for yourselves, whatever you believe in, it must be right for you, or you would quit i guess.

Understood. And I like the civil tone of this chat too. You do tend to lump a bunch of things together and label them the same, as far as the core Christian faith. Christians agree to a core of doctrines (handful) and they rest we should hold loosely, but some don't and that's too bad because God doesn't have Roman Catholics, and Protestants and.... in his Church. He has one "New Man."

Pakistan has in recent years joined ALL denominations into one called the Church of Pakistan. That's it. It's pretty incredible. And more incredible is that the missionaries that recommended Pakistan churches do this came from American and Europe. And then the missionaries went back to their denominations! Go figure. That's human constructs, not God's.

Bottom line, some of us see the vastness of Creation, the balance, creativity, and diversity and see a Creator in it.
Others look at it and say, wow, what a bang!

It was a bang. Ushered in by the Word.

Blessings!
Mark

"Let’s Get Rid of God" Lets not.

Scuba, I don’t believe in organized religion, but I am a believer, no one should tell you how to believe, that’s something you have to come to terms with on your own.

This is where I'm at also. All organized religions put their own spin on things. If one of those works for you that's great. I haven't found one that works for me, so I do it my way.

There is that aspect of it.

Well if someone says they are a "believer" and what they believe in is Jesus Christ, there's no such thing as the individual aspect of our faith. That's some sort of modern spin made by post-modern teachers. And it's gonna be a tough time upon a New Heaven and Earth for someone who just wants to be alone. There won't be such a thing.

The faith is built upon Jesus' Church. Not a building. A people. All people who are saved.
Jesus established His Church upon the rock of Peter, the Apostle, and the entire NT is written on the heritage of the OT so we know how the kingdom of God is all laid out from now to eternity.
Which isn't in Heaven. It's on earth, as resurrected people.

Has the Christian church been perfect? For 2000 years? No. It is Holy however and was started at Pentecost, (Acts 2), when the Holy Spirit fell upon the 1st Apostles, and then later onto Paul, a Roman citizen of Jewish heritage who was busy killing early Christians when Jesus spun him around.

Nope, but there is no such thing as an individual believer in the Christian faith.

We are a Body of Christ, and a body imagery means there are "members" of the body, and there is a Head to the Body and He is Jesus (Eph 1:22).
Sure members are not perfect, because all of us are sinners. But we are instructed to come together as the "One New Man," paid with a immeasurable price by God, to be His Church until Jesus returns.

There is no my faith, my Bible, or my individual salvation in the Christian religion and to consider so would be what Scripture calls false teachings.

Blessings,
Mark

Amen ........Jesus Christ has risen

Ya see that right there puts me completely out of the running. Because I am not only an atheist but also a non conformist. I don't play by others rule and regulations unless they make sense to me.
I hace told the admiral more than once. You can ask me to do something, but you cant tell me how to do it.

Someone define organized religion. I've never been a member of a church that wasn't an independent body of believers answerable to none but God himself. I've never had a pastor suggest I take everything he said without question, quite the opposite. Every pastor I've ever had wanted me to dig into the Bible and search it out for myself...and we occasionally had differences of opinion but nothing that made me feel like I had to flee the church. We don't major on the minor points. The Bible tells us not to forsake assembling with likeminded believers. That's what I do.

There are a lot of dead people who wanted to get rid of God.

God is always waiting untill that final breath.