As I said to an Atheist friend of mine back in 1975: "If I live a life of trying to please God and I'm wrong, I guess I missed out on a lot of evil fun. If you're wrong and live of a life of evil fun, you're definitely screwed. I like my way better."

Well, for once, I'll say that we are closer to being in agreement here than anytime in this thread. Except:

Jesus being A prophet is different for Hindus and Muslims than him being THE prophet. So they wouldn't have to become Christians. They have eyes open to learn from more than one prophet not focus on just one.

As for God and homosexuality, does God say it's a sin or was it Moses who was horrified by seeing it and said that? Was it one of the 10 commandments or was Adultery one instead? Was the taking of another man's wife a sin worthy of being one of the Commandments because it was taking from him, or was a consensual but unnatural act of intercourse that doesn't lead to procreation just as bad? Why isn't that listed as one of the 10 rules to living a life pleasing to God? Yes, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because Lot, his wife, and children were the only God-fearing non-evil-saturated people left. But be careful there, just because men of the town wanted to "know" the male Angels, doesn't mean that was the ONLY reason the towns were leveled. I'd think it was only one sin of many that were going on, including many that were much worse. The area was leveled because the sick carnal minds of the inhabitants were too far gone to be redeemed. In reality, western civilization today isn't a lot better and is getting worse all the time.

True that Jesus taught from the OT but we don't know what the OT was at that point. Since the Bible as we know it today is the OT and NT combined, they've both been mistranslated over time. Today's OT represents God being a vengeful God who instructs Israelites to go to war, kill everybody and everything, and take over territories. Can you imagine the loving God of the NT telling world leaders to attack other world leaders and kill everybody and everything? I find that more than a curiosity. I want to know why a God that will open up the earth and have the ground swallow up tens of thousands of innocents as a revengeful tactic to punish a few is later in the NT claimed to worry about the eternal destiny of every one of us and "send his only begotten son" to save us. The OT and NT just don't line up. I propose that the OT has been drastically changed or had books added to it since the time of Jesus, despite what the Jews claim about not changing a word. And where to you see Jesus discuss any vengeful actions by his Father that he taught as being loving? I also find it suspicious that the Jews, formerly called Israelites, are the heros of everything in the Bible, the winners of every battle as lone as they believed in God and did it the way he said to, but then when they revolt toward the end, the 12 tribes are scattered by God throughout the earth never to return to their homeland en mass. Only two tribes calling themselves Jews dominate Israel today. They didn't inherit the earth, their royal bloodlines are completely infiltrated by other Gentile bloods because of intermarriage, and they're now incapable of having the promised land as a singular people. Did God just get sick of leading these dummies around on leashes to get them to act right and then change his mind and dump them as the potential winners of everything? I thought God didn't change his mind and remained consistent for all times?

I don't remember saying you thought Polygamy was wrong. Maybe I did but I don't have time to go back through this thread to find out.

I actually didn't say the whole Bible should be negated, but I said that it should not be believed as a whole as the only source of truths to live by. I encourage gnostic study of various potential sources of truth with open eye without using the Bible as the ONLY source to live by. I can learn from the song "What If God Was One Of Us" and it makes me think about how we would treat Jesus if he showed up today. Although I'm not saying it's about Christianity and I know they take great liberties that are not valid, I can learn things to think about from the three Matrix movies. The Tom Hanks movies about the Catholic church and the potential that Jesus was married and had children (there are texts and partial texts that seem to lead in this direction that have been found) are closer to reality than lie and there are things to learn or think about. Monotheistic Hinduism has a lot of valid teachings that parallel Christianity and are many times what Christianity should be but isn't so there are things to learn there. Deepak Chopra is an extremely good source of spiritual awareness for everyone if you can endure the depth of study required to understand him. He comes very close to blurring the distinction between Hindu and Christian beliefs in some of his writings and videos and I highly respect him. So I prefer to search far and wide for truths that my inner spirit's communication with God within me verify are truths that Christianity just ignores. Although it may seem crazy, even Sylvia Brown had a new spiritual church large congregation that focused on God and did not deny the importance of Jesus. Was she spot on and worthy of following religiously? I think not. I didn't even like her as a person but that doesn't mean she didn't express some truths. There were truths in her beliefs that are beneficial to everybody desiring to follow God faithfully. Edgar Cayce made lots of prophetic statements many of which can't be verified yet, believed in Atlantis, and other things that seem to be whacked but he also read the Bible every day and believed it. He somehow during a sleep state came up with cures for things like arthritis and cancers 50 and 60 years before medical researchers supposedly created those same cures in labs with no knowledge of Cayce. Do I believe every single thing he ever said and follow him religiously? Not at all. But I believe there are some truths that work for everyone within all the information he expressed over his whole life. The list goes on and on.

Concerning Satan, I believe Satan started evil with impressing us that we want and need power, financial gain, and control. If you believe the Garden of Eden story, why did Eve pick the fruit? To have herself and Adam gain something they didn't have. Notice what the Bible says Satan did to Jesus in the desert. Promised him power, wealth, and control of all people. But only by implication is Satan the source of all evil. Satan just instilled greed in mankind and mankind takes care of the rest of making as much evil as possible. The carnal desire for power over others, the desire to have more wealth than others commonly known as greed, and the desire to control others are what infiltrates the mind and causes evil decisions. Those evil decisions foster more evil decision of that person and those around that person who are affected by the decisions. So evil itself is a worldwide network of carnal decisions based upon what Satan started - the opposite mirror image of what pleases God. Taking instead of giving. I don't believe Satan personally infiltrates your mind with evil. I think evil is 99% man-made. As more and more evil decisions are made by mankind, the evil gets thick and thicker and more and more popular among humans who are naturally carnal. Look at any evil event, action, or words and you will typically see decisions made for personal gain of something unless its' just pure insanity - which is a cumulative reaction of extreme evil. Killing a dozen Amish school girls is insanity of a mind that was so filled with evil that the result was violence. You can recognize all the human evil factors that accumulate in one who commits a violent crime and list them to see how greed for recognition, power, financial gain, or something similar festered into an accumulation that resulted in violence. Unfortunately many times these evil thoughts are hidden and nobody is aware of them until it's too late. Other times the evil thoughts are expressed and people ignore them as just rants or not too bad when expressed singularly.

I suppose it's time to bury the hatchet on this soon. You are where you are going to stay and I'm where I'm going to stay. We can agree to disagree. How's that?

So thanks for rebuking those wiser than yourself so we can become more wise. You taught nothing. You added nothing to the conversation, which has admittedly gone off course into other areas like all long threads do, and then criticized the whole thing and all of us because you've kept your mind completely closed throughout the whole thing and learned absolutely nothing. Nice tactic. I suppose you do that at your church too. Hide under the balcony in the shadows, with a puckered frowning face, then jump out at the preacher at the back door when exiting and tell him how his long-winded sermon that he spent all week preparing taught you nothing of value.

Unnamed theologians? Try Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D., the James A. Gray Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's only featured at least once a year and sometimes more in Time magazine as a leading theological authority and is interviewed in most all documentaries about historic Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus. His Doctorate is from Princeton Theological Seminary. He specializes in early Christianity of the Greco-Roman environment and has special expertise in the textual criticism of the New Testament. If anybody knows about the First Century churches of the followers of Jesus, and the origin and corruption of texts of the NT, it's him.

Or maybe, why don't you try Luke Timothy Johnson, Ph.D. the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Chandler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. He is also regularly featured in Time magazine and in documentaries. He spent 9 years as a Benedictine Monk then earned his Doctorate in New Testament from Yale.

Just these two examples of "unknown theologians" know more actual factual information about the Heaven and Hell hoax of mainstream Christianity, the original texts of the OT and NT, and the multitude of Christianities that existed before the Roman church crushed them out of existence, than all the opinionated and misguided ministers, preachers, pulpit pounding evangelists, priest, and church leaders of every denomination in the U.S. combined. Those are not my only sources of what I believe but two that you might conclude are more than throwing out generalities.

Feel free to opt out of this conversation. You weren't in it anyway. Don't let the UHH door hit you in the butt...

So what did you expect the outcome of this thread to be? An end-all Doctorate thesis on Heaven & Hell from the world's leading theological researchers complete with footnotes as to whom each reference is attributed, when, and in what publication it first appeared? If you have that kind of time in your life, go for it, but I doubt anyone else on UHH does unless it's their occupation. For the most part I read or watch what seems to be beneficial to living a positive life, absorb the main focused theme, and don't create a library index system of every detail to have arguments, debates, and discussions about it. It's not my job to be a learned theologian with a library archive but to have my eyes open to find truths that help me stick to a path that pleases God and allows me to have eternal life with, and as part of, my loving God when I leave this hellhole. God verifies I'm doing that satisfactorily by rewarding my family and I on a regular basis. I never tire of those verifications that God is watching over us and happy with our dedication.

Nefarious once in your last post, but at least three times since this debate began. Putting my words into a definition of you? I'm not defining you other than what you make clear - your read and believe every word of the Bible and you have said in various ways that we who explore outside of it for truth are wrong. If that's not the definition of a mainstream Christian I don't know what is. I have no other way of defining you other than what you bring to this discussion and what you have brought is mainstream beliefs and nothing else.

You say you don't condemn gays for their lifestyle but you say... unless they "live the correct way." While I don't believe homosexual activity is natural because it cannot in any way lead to procreation and survival of any mammal species, it's made obvious repeatedly in the NT that God is most interested in your soul, your intentions toward others, your ability to love, and not your body. BTW, I'm not aware of Jesus ever broaching the subject of homosexuality in the NT at all. If you have knowledge of HIM saying something about it, let me know. I don't want to hear about Paul talking about it, if he did, because he's also the one responsible for Catholic Priests being saddled with the burden of being celibate, not marrying, but still having desire for sexual activity. You may jump on a bungee cord and hit your head to become a paraplegic and God doesn't condemn you to hell fires because of your stupidity that essentially ruins the rest of your life. You may get drunk and wreck your car and cause brain damage to yourself and God doesn't condemn you to hell fires for it. So why would God condemn a homosexual mindset that may not be controllable (most claim that it is not)? For all the talk of gays "changing and becoming heterosexual so they can be a Christian" that I've heard over the years, I've never heard of a "changeover" who actually became heterosexual but more commonly became celibate so as to not be a practicing gay. But the desire to go back to it is likely still there. So why bother changing a lifestyle that doesn't hurt anyone if it's handled with love, and not just for recreation, if they still have t fight the carnal desire for the rest of life anyway? It doesn't make sense because their walk with God is hampered by the carnal desire and they're still labeled as gay even if they aren't practicing that lifestyle. While I'm as hetero as one can be, I believe that gays who love each other and are in a monogamous committed relationship aren't harming anybody any more than a straight couple in a monogamous relationship are harming anybody. The ones God is definitely displeased with are straight men who "emotionally harm" dozens of women sexually every year, leave fatherless children all over the place, promise undying love to women but fake it until they score, engage a woman for marriage to "get" her and then dump her, have affairs that go on for years behind their wive's backs, and other recreational uses of sex for selfish gain. And vice-versa for straight women.

Polygamists who are in a committed and dedicated relationship with several wives are also not harming anybody because the women all know about each other, are friends, many times live in the same household, share family responsibilities, and accept the polygamous lifestyle. Polygamy was acceptable in the OT so it should be acceptable in the NT as well but those who rewrote it to their liking didn't want polygamy acceptable any more because it meant a man's possessions would be distributed among his many wives and offsprings upon his death and the Catholic church wanted his riches, one wife, and much smaller number of children to stay within the church for the church's financial benefit. That is documented and has been known for decades. You probably think the Bible is anti-polygamy but it isn't. Western civilization is doing it's best to suppress it and make it illegal by claiming it displeases God and he condemns them for it but that's not the case. So I don't condemn them or their lifestyle either.

About being judgemental... Yes, the Bible says that but I was not quoting the Bible specifically. Even monotheistic Hinduism says the same thing. So it's a common theme of any religion that has a one God focus where their God is the only one righteous enough and worthy to judge humans. It's also one of those common sense rules of living that you should have built in. Your spirit in communication with God knows it's harmful to another living entity and should not be practiced in your life.

About your Muslim friend. He's wrong. Here's quotes from the Quran itself offered up by a Muslim site I found:
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During his prophetic (NOTICE THE WORD PROPHETIC) mission, Jesus performed many miracles. God tells us that Jesus said:

“I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. I make for you the shape of a bird out of clay, I breathe into it, and it becomes a bird by God’s permission. I heal the blind from birth and the leper. And I bring the dead to life by God’s permission. And I tell you what you eat and what you store in your houses....” (Quran, 3:49)

Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified. It was the plan of Jesus’ enemies to crucify him, but God saved him and raised him up to Him. And the likeness of Jesus was put over another man. Jesus’ enemies took this man and crucified him, thinking that he was Jesus. God has said:

...They said, “We killed the Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of God.” They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but the likeness of him was put on another man (and they killed that man)... (Quran, 4:157)

Neither Muhammad nor Jesus came to change the basic doctrine of the belief in one God, brought by earlier prophets (THUS MUHAMMAD AND JESUS WERE LATER PROPHETS), but rather to confirm and renew it
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So they believe him to have been born of a virgin birth, to be a messenger of God, capable of miracles that no man was capable of, etc. That sounds like a prophet to me and NOT just a teacher.

You tell me to stop with the personal attacks and look what you do. Your whole reply is a personal attack. As well as an attack on my peace of mind which you apparently have none of. You even have the gall to attack my God, which is your God but you don't even recognize it. The God of most monotheist religions is the same but they understand "Him" in different ways. Of course I've read about Paul's conversion. I've read the whole Bible three times through so I'm not uninformed about it. Paul changed so dramatically because he was guilty about how many Christians he had killed, had no peace of mind, and his inner spirit was being nudged by God to recognize his atrocities against God. He converted to belief in Jesus and the resurrection to start doing good instead of evil and became obsessed with his new life.

Yes, we are to do good according to God's definition of good. Not to be rewarded but to please God, although we are rewarded for it as well. You believe that definition can only come from one place - a book of mostly fiction. I believe the definition of good is easily available to anyone, including non-Christians, just by looking inside oneself for communication with God. Once you have that inner relationship, you are guided continuously to what is good and what is bad for everything and everybody around you. You discipline yourself to think and act in those ways - doing good for others, doing good for the earth, doing good for the animal kingdom, etc. and doing it because it's the "right" thing to do to please God. It's acting and speaking in love. Jesus described that as acting as "these small children" who were innocent of any form of hatred, greed, or other evils. Somewhere in your nose to the grind stone reading you must have heard, or maybe heard in Sunday School, that God is Love. Believe that primarily, skip the 66 books of hogwash, and live it. I don't need a book to tell me what's good and what isn't. Good is built into all of us if we take control of our carnal minds to not fall into evil (which is simply opposition to God's desires) and seek what is positive, loving, right, and beneficial to all others in God's creation. If you have to check with your all important book every time you have to decide about something to do or say, you're completely missing the spiritual side of this and are depending on man-made mistranslated words to make it through this life - which is missing everything.

I can talk with a devoted religious person from India about life and easily see how they are living in loving Godly ways. Is their religion perfect? No but it's basis is the same as mine. i can talk to an American Indian and see how they are living in Godly ways by treating God's creations well and chanting (praying) to their God. Is their society and religion perfect? No but it's basis is the same as mine. I can talk with anyone with a monotheistic single-God belief and find how they are living in a loving Godly manner. The same "thread" of pleasing God by doing positive for all of God's creation is the same no matter what they call God or what path they travel to get there. Then there are those who claim to read the Bible every day, claim to live "according to scripture", claim to know they have everlasting life because of their belief in Jesus, and forget all that while they're having sex with their best friend's wife, or plowing their car into another family's car while drunk and killing them all, or beating their toddler and throwing him/her against the wall in a fit of rage. Jehovah Witnesses are out there every day preaching to those sinful people to bring them over to the other side while claiming it's Biblical that Satan fell out of heaven in 1910 and that when you die you know nothing and are still with your body until the Second Coming causes a "rising in the air" of all the decomposed liquified bodies that are regenerated to new. Everybody has their version of what the BIble says. So what's the point?

Unlike you, I don't condemn a gay person and tell them they're going to hell fires. God doesn't care if your body and carnal mind are gay or not if you are living a life as I have described and being as SPIRITUALLY like God as possible. Unlike you, I don't condemn people from other God-based religions if they are being as SPIRITUALLY like their loving God as possible. According to Christianity, all those people are wrong and going to hell while only Christians have the real scoop because they believe the Bible. Sorry, I don't agree. As I said before, and you likely didn't pay attention, it is now known that Jesus traveled throughout the middle east and studied other religions, spoke to audiences there, spent time with religious leaders discussing God, communicating with God, praying, meditating, etc. and is well known with great respect there. Even Muslims are aware of Jesus and respect him as a prophet. So he had an open mind to learn everything he could about spiritual fulfillment and maximizing communication with God from everywhere he found it. There's strong evidence he was also a member of the Essences, gnostic researchers who delved deep into finding truth wherever it was to be found. My goal is to follow his example and do what pleases God. His example includes finding truths about becoming closer to God that were all around him and that's my desire as well.

You choose to judge others like Harvey and me for being more receptive to truths worldwide. The title of this thread is "explored outside the Bible" and that's what we do and you don't. You'll notice that in the Bible being judgemental of others is wrong. Maybe you should read up on that some more and maybe dump the word "nefarious" that you use constantly.

Once again, you either aren't reading what I wrote or you choose to ignore the truth. My post doesn't make sense to you because you aren't reading what I spend a lot of time wording for you in the most understandable format possible. Here, let's try it again: MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, and JOHN were NOT written by them. They were written by fiction writers 80 to 450 years after the fact using those names as pen names. It is PROVEN, not just a guess. There is also NO VERIFICATION that "John" who wrote Revelations was THE disciple JOHN. That can't be proven although churches like to attribute it to him. You also can't explain why there are three distinctly different endings of the world as we know it from three different OT and NT Bible authors. Even if we skip over the trivial matters like No Wise Men in one birth story, 3 Wise Men in another, and many Wise Men in another there are plenty of other conflicts of much more pertinence. Jesus was from a Virgin Birth? Theologians now know there were 5 reported Virgin Births with a 50 year period of when Jesus was born. There's not even a valid useful reason for why a Virgin Birth is of any value unless someone is trying to imply he didn't have a physical father and that God was his father from the very beginning. Thus you have controversy among Christian denominations as to whether Jesus was God, Jesus was part human and part God, not God at all until he rose from the dead, etc. The Holy Trinity thing was also never discussed by Jesus and is a mainstream Christianity creation to explain what the Bible has conflicts about. I don't know why I waste the time because you aren't open to anything but what you have been programmed with.

Paul's writings were to correct others? What's to say his corrections were right? He didn't meet Jesus or any of the original Disciples and created his own Christianity that he was teaching based solely upon "what he had heard" about this Jesus guy, which was very different than the other Christianities of his time. Many considered Paul a heretic and refused to put any stock in what he said and wrote. Certainly the Roman Universal Church who became the Roman Catholic church was all ears though! His Paulian Christianity helped them stomp out all the competing Christianities that were offshoots and expansions of the other 6 churches of the region who weren't as politically and financially powerful.

My belief gives me peace, communication between God and myself, seeing things take place in my life that are results/rewards for my strong belief in God, hope concerning there being life after death, an understanding of what God is and isn't as well as where God is and where God isn't, a God-given ability to recognize truth or lies as they are presented to me - recognition in my spirit not my mind, an understanding of what Jesus was teaching instead of relying on what Christianity teaches about Jesus the person, the ability to recognize strands of truth that run throughout all positive-motive loving religions whether they are western or eastern or Native American or whatever, and a knowledge of how God wants me to act, react, and speak so I can follow the straight and narrow path leading to the same exact afterlife that Jesus showed us how to have. We are to live here IN evil but not be part of it. We are to have interactions with evil and learn how to overcome it for the benefit of self and others. We are to deal with evil that is done to us and come out of it unscathed by our belief in God and desire to do God's will. We are to do good, according to God's definition of good, to all living things, all people, and the earth itself - the definition of Love.

As far as personal attacks go, you are personally attacking us, so don't complain about reactions of the same nature.

You still don't get it. There are no words of the prophets or apostles in the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were NOT written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for example. The only one remotely connected to truth is Paul and he never met any of them and created his own Paulian Christianity that is not in sync with the behavior that was normal when Jesus was alive. Someone you may recognize, but maybe not since you keep your head in the sand, is Thomas Jefferson. He decided the Bible was fiction long before any of us. He cut all the words of Jesus out of a Bible, picked the ones that seemed to be in accordance with the personality and other teachings of Jesus, and then pasted those onto the pages of a blank book. That became his Bible for the rest of his life. He knew that what he was being taught wasn't right and did something about it.

See there. Now you started being nice and you just had to jump off the track and start your Bible pounding again. Just forget it. I don't read fiction and I'm quite confident in the information that has been learned in theological archeology over the last 50 years that adds to my understanding of all of this. And I'll continue to compare eastern religion main points with those that Jesus taught. If you want to stay blind to all that and much more that surrounds you, go ahead and limit yourself to fiction that you don't know who wrote it or when.

Well, if I have you wrong, it's because you now are calming down and not acting like a Bible pounding mainstreamer. "I believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly" doesn't work because you and I don't know what's translated correctly and what isn't. You also say "these other religions pick and choose one or two scriptures so they can do what they want to do. What did you just do with Isaiah? Same thing.

You aren't defending God and God's principles and teachings because you are only focusing on a Bible that you now finally admit is flawed and mistranslated. His power and authority have nothing to do with that. The plan of salvation is fine but if you use a mistranslated Bible built of mostly fictional writings to learn or understand the plan then how firmly can you stand for that plan without looking outside of the Bible for more understanding that either adds to your knowledge or validates from external sources what you read that may just be fiction.

Once again, you're talking nonsense. i do not deny God any power. God is all powerful. I don't see anybody else on here (the Atheists have not descended on this thread yet like normal) who is denying God power either. Did he create the earth? Yes.

Did Christ atone for the sins of the world? I believe Christ became "at one" (the real definition of at-one-ment) with God when he left his physical body and revealed himself as a spiritual entity, then ascended to "The Father" (according to the Bible you hang onto so tightly). If you believe the Bible stories, he also proves he became a spiritual entity and no longer his flesh body by walking through a wall into the place where the Disciples were and doesn't use the door. He can easily transform himself to be recognized or not recognized when walking and discussing with men later on. So the atonement was when he ascended to the realm of God after telling Mary Magdalene (BTW, she was not a prostitute as the Catholic Church has claimed for hundreds of years but actually the person closest to Jesus even beyond the Disciples during his ministry years. The Catholic church now admits that.) to do not touch him because he had not yet ascended to the spirit realm of God or "heaven" as you would know it. I believe Jesus' mission was to teach the way to God and eternal life, be crucified, reveal himself as a spiritual being afterward, ascend as the first Son of God into "heaven" which is the spirit realm known as God, and essentially accomplish blazing a pioneering path for the rest of us to follow as more Sons and Daughters of the Father when our spirits leave the physical bodies behind. Not redeemed by believing "in him" but by believing in what he taught, what he did to open that path of eternal life to us, and living in a manner that is pleasing to God so we can follow the same exact path.

As for manifesting faith, discouraging study and further learning in this life from other sources than just the Bible, which is what you're doing, is certainly not manifesting anything of value. We aren't trying to "fix" you but you are wanting to "fix" me (us) - who are more open to learn from sources outside the ancient book of mostly fiction you have glued to your hand as though it's a Holy Grail of all truth although it isn't.

I AM reading what you have written, contrary to your comment. But what you have written holds water about as well as a sponge. You are spouting what mainstream Christianity has programmed you with for many years and if you just studied unbiased writings of leading theologians and professors you'd see that it's twisted nonsense that doesn't even gel with itself. Contradictions in the OT are just that. Contradictions. There's no way to explain around it. If you opened your eyes and studied even well-known Deepak Chopra's books, you'd learn that Indian religion and Christianity have a lot in common but their religious leaders have massive spiritual depth that western Christianity doesn't have. I guess you don't know that Jesus studied in eastern countries during some of the "lost years" between when he was 12 in the Temple and when his ministry began. He is known as a great spiritual leader in India although they are not for the most part Christian. Christianity believes God is somewhere "up there" wherever that is. Indians believe God is within every living thing and every person. Then experiencing God is seeking for God within ourselves not "out there" somewhere. I believe that as well.

"You set up religions not to God but to yourselves." What wacko preacher or author did you hear that from? I (we that agree on this thread) are doing no such thing. Having a different approach to God and Jesus who became the Christ (but wasn't born as such) is not setting up religions to oneself. It's having a different approach and not letting mainstream Christianity drag us around by a collar and leash. If you had studied this stuff for 37 years like I have, been involved with more than 15 denominations and non-denominations, worked in churches to see the behind-the-scenes profit and expenses meetings with planning on how to boost income, watched numerous outwardly Saints having affairs with married women sometimes even during services, etc. you would have questioned the whole thing too. You'd have a better picture of reality and find truths out there in the real world instead of sticking your head in the sand and vehemently defending the undefendable.

I'll keep your post in my email box. I can't get to it until at least tomorrow.

You talk like a raving lunatic. Nobody promised you anything. Nobody here said they're higher than God. Quite the contrary. And nobody asked you to follow them. Nobody here said they have power - although believers have access to God's power with His full blessing to use it anytime to do good for his creations. Those of us who are discussing the original author's title of this thread are not breeding contempt nor squashing hope, we merely have open eyes to search for even more hope throughout this world. We are simply learning truths over time that the Roman church intentionally destroyed and hid as they killed off the competing Christianities in their ladder climbing to becoming the biggest and most powerful organized religion of the western world. I have faith just as strong as yours but not based on the standard mainstream Christian hoax. It's not up to you to judge whether I have faith or not, mine's just not the same as the way you think it's supposed to be so you consider that a lack of faither. Lack of faith in a hoax? Yes. Lack of faith in God and what Jesus showed as the way to God? Absolutely not. Sorry but mainstream Christianity, with all denominations stemming from the Roman Catholic church, is misguided mostly because of a disorganized collection of books put together into one and nobody even knows who really wrote many of them. God did NOT write the Bible. Besides there are many versions of the Bible and they are quite different - because of intentional desires to guide people to the likings of political and religious leaders of various eras.

Let's turn this around. You tell me what it was like in antiquity from YOUR personal experience. Don't give me the hogwash that the Bible was written right then and everything is an accurate account of it so that's your personal experience because it wasn't written then. Mainstream Christianity is meant to be mystical and have congregations lacking full understanding so you have to refer to the leaders for your understanding, which they don't even have in full. That way religious organizations keep you coming back and paying the bills. Everybody who cares to be open to the truth knows that most (but not all) the books of the NT were written 80 to 450 years after the fact by fiction writers who used the names of the Disciples as pen names. That's the truth whether you like it or not. It's the real history of the Bible. You can read about it, take college classes on it, or just watch very simplified documentaries on NetFlix to learn some of what you're missing that has been proven and verified. So you can stop raving from your soap box now because you've exhausted your real knowledge and nobody is listening any way. If you don't learn to think for yourself outside the church box, sometime between now and death, you've missed the train and it ain't coming back.

Now you have me curious so I'll have to get the trial. Personal I use Topaz ReMask 5 for my skies but they are always blue skies with white fluffies for my real estate photography work on gloomy days, so light direction doesn't affect me for that. The main problem I have is getting the foreground to look like it was a clear sky and there was sunlight coming from any direction at all because it wasn't and there are shadows on the house.

Were the replacements adjustable? Being that you can change the lighting in PortraitPro, I'm surprised you can't change it in this.