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To be fair there isn't really an inconsistency there. Relapse isn't predicting the end of the world, the prophecies are, he's simply interpreting them as referring now.

That's predicting,,,,,?

 notprop wrote:
That's predicting,,,,,?

If I read a book that says that trees are blue, and then read it and say "This book says that trees are blue", am I the one making the claim? Or am I simply repeating the claim made by the book?

The prophecies also say that Anakin Skywalker will bring balance to the force.

While pedantics is really fun, the chap says he believes it. I merely pointed out an inconsistency.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:
The prophecies also say that Anakin Skywalker will bring balance to the force.

Not if Jar Jar gets there first!

The whole End Times thing won't happen for a very very very long time... or it'll happen tomorrow. Nobody knows.

 notprop wrote:
So Relapse believes in prophesies in a book that s/he states the world will end but no man will predict. Relapse also predicts the world is on its last legs. So has given the issue deep thought but not seen the obvious contradiction there.

The whole fire and brimstone bit is not something we see in the UK from religious leaders or indeed their followers as its all just a bit risible really, especially compared to the real hells that exist in the world. Conversely It always seems peculiar that the USA has so much doom and fear mongering despite being beyond secure and wealthy.

You can see why the educated/informed peoples of Western Nations turn away from religion it just seems a bit silly given the realities of the world.

The funny (sad?) thing about the Book of revelations is the people who quote it and believe it the most are the most ignorant about it. Many have no idea where and how it came about or how all of it pretty much directly contradicts Jesus Christ himself and has zero divine evidence as the word of god outside the ravings of a lunatic. John Patmos's revelations is not even included in all versions of the Bible.

And from a basic aspect... Christians claiming 'preemptive' persecution... when people stop following the Christian Faith, it *IS* the end times... for them. So the end of the world for them is when their children grow up, go off to college, have a family and say 'Mom, Dad, I don't follow your religion and raising my kids not to have any formal spiritual training or philosophy outside 'don't be a dick.'

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
The whole End Times thing won't happen for a very very very long time... or it'll happen tomorrow. Nobody knows.

WHFB is not real life.

The end times will come, but not in another billion years or so for us, and much longer for Earth itself.

nkelsch wrote:

 notprop wrote:
So Relapse believes in prophesies in a book that s/he states the world will end but no man will predict. Relapse also predicts the world is on its last legs. So has given the issue deep thought but not seen the obvious contradiction there.

The whole fire and brimstone bit is not something we see in the UK from religious leaders or indeed their followers as its all just a bit risible really, especially compared to the real hells that exist in the world. Conversely It always seems peculiar that the USA has so much doom and fear mongering despite being beyond secure and wealthy.

You can see why the educated/informed peoples of Western Nations turn away from religion it just seems a bit silly given the realities of the world.

The funny (sad?) thing about the Book of revelations is the people who quote it and believe it the most are the most ignorant about it. Many have no idea where and how it came about or how all of it pretty much directly contradicts Jesus Christ himself and has zero divine evidence as the word of god outside the ravings of a lunatic. John Patmos's revelations is not even included in all versions of the Bible.

And from a basic aspect... Christians claiming 'preemptive' persecution... when people stop following the Christian Faith, it *IS* the end times... for them. So the end of the world for them is when their children grow up, go off to college, have a family and say 'Mom, Dad, I don't follow your religion and raising my kids not to have any formal spiritual training or philosophy outside 'don't be a dick.'

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for those that want to believe to do so in peace and those that don't to do the same. My daughter goes to a CoE school and regularly we chat about God and such but it's her decision to carry on with that or not. I don't poo-poo the idea but I will make sure that it is only a positive experience for her. To date (and in keeping with the UK) its all good natured learning by biblical example and extolling the virtues of decent behaviour and society. No threats of hell or banging on about the end of the world, just as it should be really. .

I think the end times will come eventually, as that's the natural cycle of life. But I think it will either be manmade or just due to natural decay, not some doom and gloom prophecy. I also think the end times will not happen for at least another thousand years.

Because that's not gloomy is it?

This thread makes me laugh.

It's about Brits moving away from religion and along come the Yanks to show exactly why we're no longer bothered by it!

Cheer up, Brian. You know what they say:
Some things in life are bad.
They can really make you mad.
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle,
Don't grumble. Give a whistle.
And this'll help things turn out for the best. And...

Once again, I wonder if the survey is overly shaping the results. The question posed is religious identification, not belief. So it is very possible that those none would also say they believe in "God" or the supernatural (ghosts, etc.). But I don't think it was a disputed fact that the large Christian institutions and faith have been in decline in the west for some time. A 2013 Harris poll indicate that the US has seen a similar decline in belief with God, down to 74% from 82% in 2009
(http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/Americans__Belief_in_God__Miracles_and_Heaven_Declines.html). Interestingly, it also found less than half of Americans believe in Darwin's theory of evolution (47%). And that 23% define themselves as "not religious". Which is less than the percentage that believes in witches (26%)!

A subsequent poll found American teens trending more religious, with 80% stating a belief in God. (http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/U_S__Teens_More_Likely_than_Adults_to_Believe_in_God__Heaven_and_Angels.html). Bafflingly, teens also seem slightly more skeptical on UFOs and witches compared to adults.

Not sweating End of Times. Well till at least this guy shows up.

 notprop wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for those that want to believe to do so in peace and those that don't to do the same. My daughter goes to a CoE school and regularly we chat about God and such but it's her decision to carry on with that or not. I don't poo-poo the idea but I will make sure that it is only a positive experience for her. To date (and in keeping with the UK) its all good natured learning by biblical example and extolling the virtues of decent behaviour and society. No threats of hell or banging on about the end of the world, just as it should be really. .

I think Bible study is great. It allows people to learn about their faith and look at it with a critical eye and understand why they believe what they do which in turn creates a stronger faith. Critically investigating allows people who have problems with 'aspects' of their faith to understand that they are not bad at their faith if they choose to not see the divinity in John Patmos's unsubstantiated, contradictory statements.

What I don't care for is blind indoctrination when people thump the bible but have never actually read it or simply don't understand it because it is too confusing and live by what 'others' have told them it says. And in my experience, that is a majority of the 'end of days' crowd. They get what they 'KNOW' from an angry person yelling at them on Sunday, telling them what to think and how to understand it. They don't believe the Bible, they believe what someone else told them to believe about the Bible.

nkelsch wrote:

 notprop wrote:
So Relapse believes in prophesies in a book that s/he states the world will end but no man will predict. Relapse also predicts the world is on its last legs. So has given the issue deep thought but not seen the obvious contradiction there.

The whole fire and brimstone bit is not something we see in the UK from religious leaders or indeed their followers as its all just a bit risible really, especially compared to the real hells that exist in the world. Conversely It always seems peculiar that the USA has so much doom and fear mongering despite being beyond secure and wealthy.

You can see why the educated/informed peoples of Western Nations turn away from religion it just seems a bit silly given the realities of the world.

The funny (sad?) thing about the Book of revelations is the people who quote it and believe it the most are the most ignorant about it. Many have no idea where and how it came about or how all of it pretty much directly contradicts Jesus Christ himself and has zero divine evidence as the word of god outside the ravings of a lunatic. John Patmos's revelations is not even included in all versions of the Bible.

And from a basic aspect... Christians claiming 'preemptive' persecution... when people stop following the Christian Faith, it *IS* the end times... for them. So the end of the world for them is when their children grow up, go off to college, have a family and say 'Mom, Dad, I don't follow your religion and raising my kids not to have any formal spiritual training or philosophy outside 'don't be a dick.'

It's spoken of more than just in Revelations, you know.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I'm sure you've heard it all before, Earthquakes in diverse places, prophecies having to do with Israel, storms, the general breaking down of humanity, etc. so I won't go into detail on those, but they do shape my thoughts on this.

Earthquakes is an interesting one, I'll spot you that. Israel is a bit weak, though, because periods of time in which Israel has been peaceful have been pretty scarce - just going back 60 years to the foundation of modern Israel, there's been about a half dozen actual wars involving Israel. The general breaking down of humanity is a bit of a funny one - if measured on declining numbers of Christians it's right, but if you measure generally gakky behaviour - murders, assaults, property theft and so on then we're nicer than we've ever been.

How many times in history has humanity been sitting on enough weapons of various types to end all existence on the planet?

Is God going to end the planet, or man?

The fact that Israel has been reformed is one of the things spoken of coupled with the fact it has been repeatadly attacked and kicked major ass each time when people thought it would be overrun.
Nicer than we have been? I guess it depends where you live:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/20/armed-conflict-deaths-increase-syria-iraq-afghanistan-yemen

I would venture my own end is far closer than the world's, though, so the best I can do is try to live as well and kindly as I can, even though I fall far short many times.

As far as the world being ended by God or man, it's going to be a lot of both, judging from scripture. Man is going to run things into the ground and God is going to step in before everyone is totaly destroyed.

 sebster wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
@sebster... yeah, Millenial Christianity has been around in an organized fashion largely since the Reformations, but really has been around the whole time. FYI, "Millenial" here is a specific term for any denomination that believes we're in the end times, or near it, coupled with a belief of a literal second coming of jesus.

Yeah, they're called millenials because the end times stuff really spiked around the year 1000, but they'd been around long before then, and have been around ever since. It's kind of natural, really, many people think of themselves living at a decisive point in history, it'd be similarly natural to believe that the apocalypse predicted by your religion is going to happen sooner rather than later.

Actually, Millennialism has much less to do with when it spiked, but rather the biblical concept of the "1000 year kingdom of heaven" (1000 year reich anyone?)... Like I said, it's dependent on jesus coming back literally and physically, to rule the planet for 1000 years, and that biblical prophesy points to this happening "now" or "soon."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nkelsch wrote:

And from a basic aspect... Christians claiming 'preemptive' persecution..

Which is a strain of rhetoric that has been in American Christianity since the pilgrims landed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nkelsch wrote:
What I don't care for is blind indoctrination when people thump the bible but have never actually read it or simply don't understand it because it is too confusing and live by what 'others' have told them it says. And in my experience, that is a majority of the 'end of days' crowd. They get what they 'KNOW' from an angry person yelling at them on Sunday, telling them what to think and how to understand it. They don't believe the Bible, they believe what someone else told them to believe about the Bible.

This is why I personally am raising both of my kids without any religion whatsoever. Once they have developed their critical thinking skills and I can work with them on analyzing texts and whatnot (like I do with pretty much any history I read) and are exposed to religion, they can analyze and make the decision for themselves.

Relapse wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

 notprop wrote:
So Relapse believes in prophesies in a book that s/he states the world will end but no man will predict. Relapse also predicts the world is on its last legs. So has given the issue deep thought but not seen the obvious contradiction there.

The whole fire and brimstone bit is not something we see in the UK from religious leaders or indeed their followers as its all just a bit risible really, especially compared to the real hells that exist in the world. Conversely It always seems peculiar that the USA has so much doom and fear mongering despite being beyond secure and wealthy.

You can see why the educated/informed peoples of Western Nations turn away from religion it just seems a bit silly given the realities of the world.

The funny (sad?) thing about the Book of revelations is the people who quote it and believe it the most are the most ignorant about it. Many have no idea where and how it came about or how all of it pretty much directly contradicts Jesus Christ himself and has zero divine evidence as the word of god outside the ravings of a lunatic. John Patmos's revelations is not even included in all versions of the Bible.

And from a basic aspect... Christians claiming 'preemptive' persecution... when people stop following the Christian Faith, it *IS* the end times... for them. So the end of the world for them is when their children grow up, go off to college, have a family and say 'Mom, Dad, I don't follow your religion and raising my kids not to have any formal spiritual training or philosophy outside 'don't be a dick.'

It's spoken of more than just in Revelations, you know.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I'm sure you've heard it all before, Earthquakes in diverse places, prophecies having to do with Israel, storms, the general breaking down of humanity, etc. so I won't go into detail on those, but they do shape my thoughts on this.

Earthquakes is an interesting one, I'll spot you that. Israel is a bit weak, though, because periods of time in which Israel has been peaceful have been pretty scarce - just going back 60 years to the foundation of modern Israel, there's been about a half dozen actual wars involving Israel. The general breaking down of humanity is a bit of a funny one - if measured on declining numbers of Christians it's right, but if you measure generally gakky behaviour - murders, assaults, property theft and so on then we're nicer than we've ever been.

How many times in history has humanity been sitting on enough weapons of various types to end all existence on the planet?

Is God going to end the planet, or man?

The fact that Israel has been reformed is one of the things spoken of coupled with the fact it has been repeatadly attacked and kicked major ass each time when people thought it would be overrun.
Nicer than we have been? I guess it depends where you live:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/20/armed-conflict-deaths-increase-syria-iraq-afghanistan-yemen

I would venture my own end is far closer than the world's, though, so the best I can do is try to live as well and kindly as I can, even though I fall far short many times.

As far as the world being ended by God or man, it's going to be a lot of both, judging from scripture. Man is going to run things into the ground and God is going to step in before everyone is totaly destroyed.

Israel needs a Davidic king for any of that to be remotely true. And I am pretty sure Netanyahu isn't from the line of david

 notprop wrote:
So Relapse believes in prophesies in a book that s/he states the world will end but no man will predict. Relapse also predicts the world is on its last legs. So has given the issue deep thought but not seen the obvious contradiction there.

The whole fire and brimstone bit is not something we see in the UK from religious leaders or indeed their followers as its all just a bit risible really, especially compared to the real hells that exist in the world. Conversely It always seems peculiar that the USA has so much doom and fear mongering despite being beyond secure and wealthy.

You can see why the educated/informed peoples of Western Nations turn away from religion it just seems a bit silly given the realities of the world.

It says no one, knows what the exact time will be, not that no man will receive Revelation and give prophesy about it.

People in all ages have believed that exactly in their life-time, the world will end. It's been like this today, 1000 years ago, 2000 years ago and it will be so in thousands of years to come.

"Can't you see the signs?"

Baxx wrote:
People in all ages have believed that exactly in their life-time, the world will end. It's been like this today, 1000 years ago, 2000 years ago and it will be so in thousands of years to come.

"Can't you see the signs?"

Of course, there's also the old saying of "they only need to be right once."

 notprop wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for those that want to believe to do so in peace and those that don't to do the same. My daughter goes to a CoE school and regularly we chat about God and such but it's her decision to carry on with that or not. I don't poo-poo the idea but I will make sure that it is only a positive experience for her. To date (and in keeping with the UK) its all good natured learning by biblical example and extolling the virtues of decent behaviour and society. No threats of hell or banging on about the end of the world, just as it should be really. .

It could be even better discarding most of the crimes against humanity conducted by the omnipotent dictator of the bible.

It's good that your source of morality can trump the morality in scripture, specially for your daughter. But it would be even better without CoE school, and just normal school which takes into account all sources of good morality, not just the parts of the bible. And which also does not endorse a religion which has so much source of bad morality.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Baxx wrote:
People in all ages have believed that exactly in their life-time, the world will end. It's been like this today, 1000 years ago, 2000 years ago and it will be so in thousands of years to come.

"Can't you see the signs?"

Of course, there's also the old saying of "they only need to be right once."

That's a nice one, yeah!

And since there's always some person saying the end is now, eventually one of them is bound to be right. It's like playing lotto with all the numbers.

Baxx wrote:

 notprop wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for those that want to believe to do so in peace and those that don't to do the same. My daughter goes to a CoE school and regularly we chat about God and such but it's her decision to carry on with that or not. I don't poo-poo the idea but I will make sure that it is only a positive experience for her. To date (and in keeping with the UK) its all good natured learning by biblical example and extolling the virtues of decent behaviour and society. No threats of hell or banging on about the end of the world, just as it should be really. .

It could be even better discarding most of the crimes against humanity conducted by the omnipotent dictator of the bible.

It's good that your source of morality can trump the morality in scripture, specially for your daughter. But it would be even better without CoE school, and just normal school which takes into account all sources of good morality, not just the parts of the bible. And which also does not endorse a religion which has so much source of bad morality.

Relapse wrote:
The fact that Israel has been reformed is one of the things spoken of coupled with the fact it has been repeatadly attacked and kicked major ass each time when people thought it would be overrun.

Israel purely as the attacked is a fairly adventurous interpretation of history. Sues Crisis? Six Day War? The First Lebanon war?

Nicer than we have been? I guess it depends where you live:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/20/armed-conflict-deaths-increase-syria-iraq-afghanistan-yemen

Sure, at any given point in time there'll be something really gak happening to some group of people. That's just a product of being on a planet with lots of people. But taken across the whole, those really gak events are trending down.

As far as the world being ended by God or man, it's going to be a lot of both, judging from scripture. Man is going to run things into the ground and God is going to step in before everyone is totaly destroyed.

Ah, I see how that works with what you were saying. Thanks for the answer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Actually, Millennialism has much less to do with when it spiked, but rather the biblical concept of the "1000 year kingdom of heaven" (1000 year reich anyone?)... Like I said, it's dependent on jesus coming back literally and physically, to rule the planet for 1000 years, and that biblical prophesy points to this happening "now" or "soon."

Ah, I didn't know that. Thankyou.

 notprop wrote:
So Relapse believes in prophesies in a book that s/he states the world will end but no man will predict. Relapse also predicts the world is on its last legs. So has given the issue deep thought but not seen the obvious contradiction there.

The whole fire and brimstone bit is not something we see in the UK from religious leaders or indeed their followers as its all just a bit risible really, especially compared to the real hells that exist in the world. Conversely It always seems peculiar that the USA has so much doom and fear mongering despite being beyond secure and wealthy.

You can see why the educated/informed peoples of Western Nations turn away from religion it just seems a bit silly given the realities of the world.

Well this thread went from fun back to the usual diatribes. Clearly I picked a bad week to quit sniffing glue. On the positive the wife is in the process of baking 10 cakes. Yes ten cakes.

 Frazzled wrote:

 notprop wrote:
So Relapse believes in prophesies in a book that s/he states the world will end but no man will predict. Relapse also predicts the world is on its last legs. So has given the issue deep thought but not seen the obvious contradiction there.

The whole fire and brimstone bit is not something we see in the UK from religious leaders or indeed their followers as its all just a bit risible really, especially compared to the real hells that exist in the world. Conversely It always seems peculiar that the USA has so much doom and fear mongering despite being beyond secure and wealthy.

You can see why the educated/informed peoples of Western Nations turn away from religion it just seems a bit silly given the realities of the world.

Well this thread went from fun back to the usual diatribes. Clearly I picked a bad week to quit sniffing glue. On the positive the wife is in the process of baking 10 cakes. Yes ten cakes.

Can see this happening in Frazz home

I see it as a good thing that religion is on the decline here. Given the amount of unrest and bigotry it's caused over the centuries I think we are well shot of it.

If people want to believe in God, that's fine by me. But when they start forcing their beliefs on other people, through means of law, or simply by preaching at them, then I start to have a problem with it. Faith should be a personal thing, not a public institution.

 General Kroll wrote:
I see it as a good thing that religion is on the decline here. Given the amount of unrest and bigotry it's caused over the centuries I think we are well shot of it.

If people want to believe in God, that's fine by me. But when they start forcing their beliefs on other people, through means of law, or simply by preaching at them, then I start to have a problem with it. Faith should be a personal thing, not a public institution.

You're kidding, right? Don't get me wrong, religion has definitely done some bad, but people will kill each other over ANYTHING.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/2y8xoh/atheist-war

 jreilly89 wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
I see it as a good thing that religion is on the decline here. Given the amount of unrest and bigotry it's caused over the centuries I think we are well shot of it.

If people want to believe in God, that's fine by me. But when they start forcing their beliefs on other people, through means of law, or simply by preaching at them, then I start to have a problem with it. Faith should be a personal thing, not a public institution.

You're kidding, right? Don't get me wrong, religion has definitely done some bad, but people will kill each other over ANYTHING.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/2y8xoh/atheist-war

Unfortunately, the UK hasn't started a religiously motivated war in centuries. Christianity in the West isn't where we need to number of true believers to be reduced.

 feeder wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
I see it as a good thing that religion is on the decline here. Given the amount of unrest and bigotry it's caused over the centuries I think we are well shot of it.

If people want to believe in God, that's fine by me. But when they start forcing their beliefs on other people, through means of law, or simply by preaching at them, then I start to have a problem with it. Faith should be a personal thing, not a public institution.

You're kidding, right? Don't get me wrong, religion has definitely done some bad, but people will kill each other over ANYTHING.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/2y8xoh/atheist-war

Unfortunately, the UK hasn't started a religiously motivated war in centuries. Christianity in the West isn't where we need to number of true believers to be reduced.

You'd have to be blind not to see the religious motivations behind the troubles in Northern Ireland. Christian sectarianism has caused a lot of pain to a lot of people in the uk in the last 100 years.

 General Kroll wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
I see it as a good thing that religion is on the decline here. Given the amount of unrest and bigotry it's caused over the centuries I think we are well shot of it.

If people want to believe in God, that's fine by me. But when they start forcing their beliefs on other people, through means of law, or simply by preaching at them, then I start to have a problem with it. Faith should be a personal thing, not a public institution.

You're kidding, right? Don't get me wrong, religion has definitely done some bad, but people will kill each other over ANYTHING.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/2y8xoh/atheist-war

Unfortunately, the UK hasn't started a religiously motivated war in centuries. Christianity in the West isn't where we need to number of true believers to be reduced.

You'd have to be blind not to see the religious motivations behind the troubles in Northern Ireland. Christian sectarianism has caused a lot of pain to a lot of people in the uk in the last 100 years.

Oh, I'm not really familiar with the Troubles. I thought it was an independence from the crown thing? Right to self-rule?