This is The Great Faith Debate I know there are a few other religion and faith debates floating around the forum, but I figured I would start this one so we can keep the debate in one place. However, this thread does come with some rules: No demeaning or insulting people for what they believe. You can disagree but don't lower yourselves to insults and childish behavior. In this thread you have the right to state what you believe, and you also have the right to disagree with someone. You do not however have the right to insult or flame people based on what they believe, and I hope the moderators keep this topic clean. State reasons why you believe what you believe. Give credit to those sources as well. Also, try to use creditable sources: well known faith or anti-faith sites, reputable writers or books, etc (just to give you a heads up, the Christian faith believes the Bible is without question a reputable book). I assume there will be more than one discussion going on at once, feel free to join into any of them. There, I tried to make it as non-bias as I could. Just a note, Christians are divided into denominations. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are the two major divisions of Christianity in the Western world, if Anglicanism is included as a part of the latter. However, Catholics do not describe themselves as a denomination but rather as a Church. The Baptist, Methodist, and Lutheran churches are generally considered to be Protestant denominations, although strictly speaking, of these three, the Lutheran denomination, is the only one of these founded as a "protest" against Roman Catholicism[1]. I state that because Catholic, Lutheran, etc are not religions, they are denominations. The religion is Christianity. A lot of people didn't know that, so I thought I would state it. I'll start out. I'm a Christian. I try not to be !@#$%^&*ociated with any denominations within the faith, as I think categorizing Christians is wrong, as well as the split within the faith since "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand[2]". However, I do belong to a Baptist church, before that an Evangelical church, and before that a Pentacostical church. I was not raised as a Christian and the faith was not embedded into my brain as a child. I never knew my father and my mom was not a Christian at the time, I also have no siblings, so my faith was not influenced by my family. I became a Christian when I was 13 years old, two years after my house burned down and the "father figure" (I use that term loosely) in my life died in the house. I ended up going to my friend's church because he kept bugging me to come to his youth group that met Wed nights. Anyway, long story short, I became a Christian, quit, did things my own way, nearly drank myself to death, and smoked more pot than I can recall 'till I was 21 and really had no place left to go. All my friends left me because I was a leech, and I ended up moving back in with my mom. Now, being 21 and moving back in with your "born again" mom wasn't the most fun, she became a Christian on 9/11. I'm babbling and story telling so long story short again, she said I could move back in if I met with her friend once a month as a kind of counciling session. So since the alternative was sleeping on the streets, I took her up on her offer. Ended up getting involved with her church, became a youth leader, blah blah blah and started trying to live right again. Now, the debate. Tell me why I'm wrong. What about my faith is wrong? Am I just blindly following the masses? Am I just a pawn? Am I weak for coming to the conclusion I have? Debate my faith, your faith, etc. I don't want this thread to become about me but I'll start it off. Sources: [1] Wikipedia - Western Churches [2] Biblegateway.com - Matthew 3:25