Originally Posted by BIG JIM MERRILEES
Sausage....If no one can change your belief then that is blind ignorant faith....you would still believe even if proof beyond any doubt showed you were wrong?......you would never let facts or truth get in the way of your ignorance or blind faith......that says it all.


Jim, I'm not sure that says it all. Besides, I guess that's you speaking for me. If someone showed me proof beyond any doubt, I'd recant. I don't think it will happen however so I feel confident in saying "no one's gonna change my belief."


Originally Posted by BIG JIM MERRILEES
Now with so many religions in this world having so many different views beliefs and practices and they ALL think they are right and everyone else is wrong how can you be sure you have picked the right one?....


I don't worry about picking the right one. It picked me.


Originally Posted by BIG JIM MERRILEES
if there even is such a thing....and would it not be embarrassing if SKOPTSY turned out to be the true religion.....I bet some of those Skoptsy guys are as sure and devout in their beliefs as you are in yours.....if there are any of them left.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoptsy


Just scanning that wikipedia page indicates those people couldn't be right if the wiki article is correct. The Bible refutes them. From the article: "They believed that after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had the halves of the forbidden fruit grafted onto their bodies forming testicles and breasts." There is nothing anywhere in the Bible that supports such thinking. If they were trying to fulfill the commands of Christ, they were hanging it on something that the Bible never mentioned. They were violating Proverbs 3:5.

The article also says "The Skoptsy also believed that a chief evil of the world is rooted in the lepost (bodily beauty, human sexuality, sex appeal, etc.) which prevents people from communicating with God. The way to perfection begins with the elimination of the cause followed by the liberation of soul. Castration ensured that all sins caused by lepost could not be committed." This is an unreal belief. You can't do anything to achieve perfection. Only Jesus was perfect. As for the lepost, much of that is in the mind and you cannot castrate the mind.

The Skoptsy were probably very devout but at best they were mistaken and at worst they were hypocrites. People do it but you can't say you're a Christian violate Proverbs 3:5 without committing a sin.