My parents were actually raised Catholic (although I wouldn't necessarily consider them Catholics by any means). They don't go to church, they don't pray (as far as I know), they don't read the Bible, nor do they have any technical religion. So to answer your question, yes, I would still believe Christianity if my parents believed something else... Because that's what happened Prophets never prophecied for the Vatican. They prophcied against the nation of Israel to warn and minister to them. The religious leaders were so stuck on tradition and "following the rules" (kinda reminds me of the Catholic church today), that a prophet's preaching usually upset them a great deal. This usually lead to the prophet being killed by either the king of Israel (whoever it was at the time) or the religious leaders. Islam, when taken to the fundamentals, commands the killing of Christians. If, say, a child in a Muslim family converted to Christianity, it is in the Islamic religion, that the father is then to kill that child. Tell me where you'll find that in Christianity. No where is it commanded to kill someone simply for not believing the same thing as you. Also, Christians never went out to conquer. That was not the message of Christ at all. So you can't really say it was an excuse to conquer people, because it was never done... Unless you count the Catholic Church's crusades, which is NOT true Christianity, but rather, a corrupt church abusing it's power. I gave one of the signs already in this thread... it's the long one about the 4-fold prophecy in Matthew 24. Go back and read that post. I don't have the time to post another one of the signs at the time (there's a very large scriptural backing, and it would take me at least an hour to go through and type out all the verses). I will probably post another one later today or tomorrow. Sorry I can't do it at the moment.
Well, there's a little history behind that... When I was younger (about 7 or 8) I chose not to believe in God. I instead believed in evolution. Now, I went about this until I was about 15. After that I met this girl who was a Christian. She invited me out to church, without actually telling me it was church at the time. She asked me if I wanted to come to youth group, and seeing as how I didn't go to church, I didn't know what it was. So I figured I'd check it out and told her I'd come. When I found out it was church I wasn't too happy. But I met a lot of cool people so I decided to keep going. I didn't agree with anything anyone said, and usually debated the youth pastor (and others) while I was there. Then they started talking about how the world was going to end. They asked what I thought would happen, so I went on about how the sun will turn into a red giant, or a meteor/asteroid (or whatever) will hit the earth and destroy it. After this they started showing me prophecies written in the Bible that I could clearly see have come true (or are in the process of coming true). This caught my attention. I studied it a lot and eventually got saved. Since then I've seen so much it's unbelievable. As you can hopefully see, I didn't just blindly decide to follow religion. I actually did see a lot of evidence of Christianity being true (I don't have the time to list all the deciding factors, but if you want I can share some of them later). I found that it answers a lot of questions that science and human logic just can't answer. I've seen the miracles, I've seen the changed lives (myself being one of them), I've seen God do amazing things that just can't be "just a coincidence." If I didn't see any evidence that I made the right choice, I wouldn't keep that choice.
Nothing pisses me off more then religious people trying to scare and intimidate those of us who don't bother with religion. What the hell do you have to gain by saying dumb shit like this? If you honestly believe it just keep it to yourself.
I find that crap offensive. If I started prophesizing that Jesus is going to reincarnate and murder all christians, and then lead all of us true athiests into the land of fun and games I bet they'd be offended.
Okay there's nothing really for me to argue with here. I just don't believe it; it's very far-fetched. It could possibly be true, but my instinct and logic tend to steer me away from religion. I believe if there is a God, they would understand that humans would be very unsure about which religion or ideas to follow, so he would only judge us by our actions, and not by whether or not we were baptised or went to church, temple, a mosque etc. That makes the most sense to me, and preaching this would teach the good behavior of most religions while leaving out any formal institution that could gain power and abuse it.
Doomsayers have been around forever and we are all testament to thier bull. Secondly the bible to me is simply to be taken the same way as Aesops Fables (morality tales). Assuming you are out by 200 years the space exploration that is happening now will have advanced to a degree where this planet may no longer be our only home, if this occurs then sod this world we'll all move on to the next one (no pun intended). Why should we believe any historic document when scientists can't agree to the age and in some cases the translations of said information. Even the Shroud of Turin cannot be validated with 100% accuracy because no-one can agree if carbon dating is accurate or not. Why are there so many religious splinter groups if the bible has such irrevocable proof of it's own authenticity ?
I'm working on another one of the prophecies. It's a fairly large project, so I'm doing it off line (I tried just posting it, but there was an error in MSIE that made me loose a lot of what I typed) and will post it on-line in a couple days. Sorry for the delay, but my computer is crappy, and I've been pretty busy.
go here: http://forum.grasscity.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=414875#post414875 That's only got the 4-fold prophecy, and the return of the Jews to Palestine so far. I will add more as time permits. Sorry for any delays. I'm a busy person.