Because, the character called God as depicted in the Bible stories is described as being wrathful and vengeful, angry, easily irritated and so on and also because the character is described as being all-powerful and so can kill and murder on a whim without anyone else being able to prevent or challenge that.
The times were barbaric. You are second-guessing anyone under judgement. If you are a lawyer, fine. If not you've been presumptuous.
Who is "They"? Was that every single human being on the planet at that time? Was it also every living animal and creature? No, the Bible story doesn't mention anything of that. So the Biblical character called God is described in the stories as having wilfully murdered, terminated every single living thing on the planet except for Noah and his entourage. That's some unchecked anger and emotion going on there wouldn't you say? Imagine if Donald Trump were equally as fickle and had his finger on the nuclear missile launch buttons and decided that if a handful of people in Russia were irritating him then he would nuke the entire world in his frustration. Would you try to be an apologetic for Trump too?
Anger? You aren't great at the lawyer thing.
Good grief man! Are you really offering that as an argument ! That's utterly insane! Imagine if our law systems worked the same.
Let's send Mr X to the electric chair because he's murdered several people (oh the irony !!) but whilst we do that we should also execute his wife and 5 children who haven't murdered anyone so that they don't starve !
lain: You aren't making a compelling argument. You've compared apples to oranges for your counterpoint. It fails on all kinds of levels. Suggestion: Go after that lawyer degree. They'll help you understand justice, right and wrong, etc.
Goodness me, don't you fools believe that your god is all-powerful and that he gave manna to people in the desert so they wouldn't starve? Why would the women and children starve then or die from disease? Your appalling excuse for the wilful genocide of humans and animals has more holes than a collander. It's patently ridiculous.
Never read the wheat/tares analogy? If you could have killed Hitler as a baby, would you have done it? No? Just waited until he killed millions, THEN kill him? Do you ever think through your thoughts and entertain another's perspective?
Murder is murder Lon. You're choosing to worship a character from a book that is described as being an entity that has killed more humans and other living creatures than any other entity in the history of the world.
Um, no. Killing is justifiable. Murder is not. Do you know the difference? How deep have you actually been challenged on your ideas? At face value, I believe I've thought deeply and you've barely skimmed the surface. This is my life, it seems a bit casual to you.
I'm not made of the same stuff as the ancient peoples of the earth. I'd have a very hard time killing anybody, justified or not. If I killed a mass-murderer shooting up schools, I'd have a hard time the rest of my life. It doesn't mean I hate the man who could/would do that. It simply means I'm not made of that kind of stuff. I've a glass house, I don't throw stones.
Patently untrue for otherwise we wouldn't be here in physical existance. If your god wanted us all to be spirits in heaven then that's where we would be. Unfortunately that's not where you fond yourself. You're a spirit trapped in a physical body imprisoned on a planet you can't escape from and destined to be constantly re-incarnated over and over and over into each new human body, every time waking up and being programmed to be a slave in a slave world owned and run by wicked unseen forces. If you are ever going to break free from this prison then you're going to need to free your mind from the control systems that the planetary rulers have conditioned you with. Right now, you're trapped, you're exactly where they want you, believing ridiculous things so that you will :
a) Keep thinking that a life of slavery is the true natural way to live (instead of being free in abundance)
b) Keep thinking that death will deliver you to some utopia so that you don't make efforts to escape your prison
c) Keep coming back into the prison each time you die instead of choosing any other option
1) You are talking to the wrong guy. I've already told you 'freewill' isn't that important to me. Rather, I simply want to play my role. I find great meaning in trying to be what I was designed for. If I can help another, a child live, a man such as yourself learn what is true, I'm happy.
2) Freedom isn't something to be sought (I agree!). I'm a created being. I want nothing more than to be what I was created for.
3) It just so happens every part of what we are made for is the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
How old are you and did you pay attention during civics and world problems? Are you from the U.S.?
What causes all wars is a combination of power-mad despots wanting to preserve their own power bases and the constant struggle to own and control the natural resources of the planet (again to preserve their positions of power). There's no excuse for this. It's pure human greed and evil and it's still going on today.
Naive. You didn't pay attention during civics and world problems. Brush up?
vil
If a Maker sees fit to imbue a creen artificial robot today and power it with state of the art AI intelligence then undoubtedly that robot will soon compute things and ultimately question what you, its creator have done, are doing and will do in the future. It might even seek to destroy you if it believes or works out that you eventually intend to terminate it.
And it wouldn't matter. If the Big Bang: no problem. We are doing exactly what we were created to do. If God? Then we are supposed to be something accordingly. Look, it is obvious you've never wrestled deeply enough between atrocity and what we are supposed to be. The Bible is clear on this: God doesn't desire evil. Every book is an expiation of getting rid of it. When you look at the story of Jesus, everything everything everything is against the notion. You must read the O.T. in light and reconcile. You have not. your view is hasty, veneer, and dismissive, naive, and as swift as burning a supposed witch. You've done with God what you accuse yourself.
Life is a universal source, not something for any given entity to give or takeaway from any given living thing.
Initially "nope." Explain your source and thoughts and I'll entertain and be a sounding board to your ideas if you like. What makes you think there is any meaning in 'energy and source?'
The creation of any new life form is therefore an extremely serious prospect, not to be taken light-heartedly. Humans unfortunately treat life with distain. Stupid people intent on simply enjoying the pleasures of sex inadvertently give rise to new life without a moments consideration for that act and what it will mean. Thus are new babies born into a world without proper consideration or want of their parents, not are they cared for as they should or provided for as they should. Other humans purposely crete new life for their own selfish ends desiring to ultimately control that new life as if it were their own robotic pet.
A lot of imagery there that bespeaks of a lot of trauma. I get it, been there. If there is nothing better, we are dismal. Have you read C.S. Lewis? I'd suggest "the Problem with Pain" and his Space trilogy.
I tell you the truth.
No life that is created belongs to any human on this planet. Life is a universal source that pervades every living thing. It does not belong to humans. It is not human's to give or take away. No child belongs to its parents. Kahlil Gibram explains it well:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Rhetoric with some truism. All of it? No, a shade of it. My kids are 'mine' in every sense that they depend upon me. If they become independent adults, they are yet mine, but in a different sense: My responsibility. Anything less is careless and superficial. Your worldview and Hindu platitudes themselves need further reflection. They stop short.
Scaremongering nonsense in stories Lon. If you had the courage to stand back and the humility to entertain the notion that you have been hood-winked you'd start to think rationally and with critical appraisal and realise these kind of passages and stories are ridiculous.
Um, there is a God Who answers my prayers, intervenes in my life and ACTIVELY blesses me. You'd have better tack to convince me I don't exist. You are speaking from your 'truth' but it isn't mine. Hoodwinked? Er facts speak for themselves and you are gravely mistaken.
Let's demoloish that specific one in an instant of simple reasoning shall we?
Do you not agree that once die physically here on Earth, then that which is truly you, your spirit or soul will detach from the physical carcass and go somewhere else? I think most Christians would agree with this. Certainly you surely can not believe that all those dead people lying in graves are in some way still actually there in the ground right? That's just the putrefying remains of their physical body. The real person of each departed long ago and in your ideology, either went to heaven or hell or purgatory or some other mythical place yes?
Assuming you agree with this then tell me, in what possible sense does your real self, your spirit, your soul, have actual eyes that can weep or have actual teeth that can gnash?
You've separated that which you are. Being body soul mind and spirit is a whole. True enough we are to be separated from body, but you still enjoy ice cream AND it does some good for your soul, mind, and spirit. Don't jump the gun or you'll ever be falling to absurdities. The first is whether or not Jesus is God. Settle that one first or you'll have slipshod idealogy.
Think that through just for a second. Allow just for once your innate and wonderful human mind and intellect to process that simple situation.
Don't be afraid. Let it happen. Be courageous.
Yep. Been this road. It ended exactly where you are stopped. My road leads much much further. You, rather, think. You've come to a road that stops.
All you need to accept at this point is that the passge is ridiculous and that there can not be any weeping or gnashing of any teeth beyond physical death. You don't need to understand what it all means. You just need to have the personal honesty and humility to see that the BIble passage in question makes no sense whatsoever and thus that there must be something more to understand or that the passage is simply made-up nonsense to try and scare people into compliance. Such are the first steps to freedom. Most religiously indoctrinated people will never have the humility to even entertain that they might have something wrong. They cling to the need for absolutes, they need the comfort blanket of ignoring that which makes no sense, compartmentalising it, brushing it under the carpet. It's your choice. It's your prison. Only you can decide when and how you want to escape from it, if ever!
Again: You are separating yourself into 'parts.' You are one whole being.
What's the relevance of this? Doesn't the book you have chosen to believe state that all your good works are as filthy rags?
I read the O.T. for lessons, not direct application. You'd be wise to do the same. You mix when you shouldn't and separate when you shouldn't. 2 Timothy 2:15
I've done many good things throughout my life. I've helped the homeless, gotten them off the street and into accommodation. I've given up my Christmas holiday periods for such people, working Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day instead to give them clothes, to cook them meals, give them drink, give them social interraction and some kind of temporary succour from their otherwise miserable existence. I run a social club for elderly people which dispels their loneliness, keeps them coming together all through the year, particularly over the winter period. But none of this is relevant to this discussion. This is simple humanitarianism.
Yes, but why is it 'good?' You are playing from that road that goes nowhere.
I am who I am. Would the maker of a cat be disappointed when it goes off to catch and kill a mouse? How perverse! How stupid. What kind of self-delusion would that maker be engaging in when the maker imbued the cat creation with the need and instinct to catch and kill mice?!!
I'm expressing this not because I believe it, but simply to explain to you the perverse stupidity of the scenario your present there.
If your god created humans in such a way then why be surprised if they act in that way?
Because He didn't. Remember the wolf lying down the with lamb? Your suppositions are all wrong. You came, frankly to a hasty shallow conclusion and looked elsewhere in your disdain. At the end, you have clearly arrived in a spot and never examined it exponentially. It is very evident.
No I really don't think I understand everything. That's a pretty silly assertion. Nobody on Earth understands everything.
Neither am I preoccupied with myself for otherwise I wouldn't be expending hours of effort in exchanges with people on forums like yourself.
Yet you aren't offering anything but a veneer you haven't examined nearly well enough:
1) You exist (supra of your own)
2) You have values and problems living accordingly as we all do
3) The tension suggests something
4) You nor I created ourselves, something else did.
5) You have attributes that are exception in all of creation, an intellect, a set of real values
6) It is nowhere unreasonable to assume we came from something that purposefully instilled those and it points in every sense to an intelligence and purpose(r).
7) it is likely that such being would communicate and explain #3 and repair
8) He has said if you seek Him, you will find Him. You sought and didn't like what you saw, but it was a veneer reaction.
9) What is our responsibility then? You are either on point or neglect for it.
I've quoted the very same to numerous people here on the forum over the past few months but sadly most don't understand what the Bible stories are saying. I DO have eyes to see and ears to hear. It's taken many years for I too was lost in stupid religious conditioning for many years, but I eventually had the humility to entertain the notion that I might have been duped, that many things were not right about the religious doctrine and the Bible stories when taken literally.
Or, as 2 Timothy says, you didn't rightly divide and understand the difference. Functionally, you looking at Judaism alone.
I eventually had the courage to consider that I might have been trapped in a very clever and divisive system of human behavoural control and began to seek answers. The phrase "seek and you will find" turned out to be true. I sought in places that the Church and religion would try to prevent you searching (for obvious reasons).
Obvious, but correct? All roads aren't true roads, they don't answer the questions, not the important ones like the prospectives above. I've looked.
Each step revealed another step, the way was hard and narrow was the path and indeed very few there are that find that path. But it IS there to be found. It is Ariadnes Thread, lying there for any to find and pick up and follow their way out of the maze in which their minds have been imprisoned. Only then, only when your mind has been freed, when you figuratively speaking have taken the "red pill" to leave the Matrix instead of taking the comfort blanket of teh blue pill to stay in your trapped paradigm, do you see things as they truly are. Only then do many of the passages in the Bible make absolutely perfect sense and start to reveal the really important messages that are otherwise hidden allegorically in the text. Yes, I do have the eyes to see and ears to hear. I am on that very narrow path which few find and I am walking forward, working through the thickets of misinformation, perverse doctrines and obfuscations.
Where are you Lon?
Are you sitting in your comfy world of promised bliss thinking that billions and billions of other like-minded people are on the path to glory? Really? Tell me how does that stack up with your Bible passage that patently and clearly states that the path is narrow and VERY FEW there are that find it? Hmmmmm. Careful now, don't think too hard or the illusion might be dispelled !
Er, you think all who say they are Christians are God's? You have not, at this venture, demonstrated critical thinking that is careful.
If we are to assume as you do that Jesus was a real person then whether he had fault really comes down to who and what you believe him to be. Your religion unfortunately tells you what you are allowed to think. You don't have any choice. It would be sacrilege for you to suggest that Jesus had any fault. Why then do you think this is something to be debated? If you're going to come from a position where you're not allowed to entertain the actual question itself then what's the point? Therein lies the peril of religious indoctrination. It requires, nay demands that you set aside your own intellect and innate reasoning and critical thinking and instead that you simply conform and adhere to a set of beliefs and "facts" that are given to you by other humans. Have you in fact ever genuinely considered whether Jesus had any faults or that he might not be who the Bible describes him to be (when taken literally of course) ? No I doubt you've ever done that because it's not permitted. Your religion demands that even if you start to think about such heinous things that you must quickly invent some kind of apologetical excuse for it, just as you've already done for your god's genocide of all living humans and animals on the planet. What's the point of existing at all if you are going to suppress your innate ability to think and reason and instead allow other humans to dictate what you must think and believe? You might as well be a robot or a statue. Do you really think that this is how humans are supposed to be? Is that how you think Nature operates?
Go ahead. Name one point where you found Jesus wanting that wasn't a kneejerk on your part.
Just false. Really really false.
The universe simply is. You are a part of it just as I am. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed (the Law Of Conservation Of Energy). Everything that is YOU, every atom in your body, every particle of your spirit or soul, has been here since the beginnign of the universe. You are billions of years old. You were born in a star, a seething ass of Hydrogen and Helium which spawned other elements through the constant chaos of energy transformations and transmutations. You've lived countless lives to get to where you are now in human form. This process will continue ad-infinitum. That is what the universe is. It is you and you are it. You are the very expression of the universal life source that pervades every living thing. You can not die. Death is the greatest lie the "devil" ever told. You are already immortal. But you go through constant change. Form is fleeting. Nature can not hold onto any given form due to the constant chaos of energy transformations, transmutations, entropy.
Do you think the human form is the pinnacle of existance? It's weak, vulnerable, fickle. Your skin can be cut by even a piece of paper. Your bones can be broken by just about anything. Your ability to breathe can be stopped by a peanut. The human form is simultaneously a wonder to behold and an absolute farce of survivalist nature.
Do you see your mistake? You assume a physical universe is all there is in this appeal. Is 'spirit' energy? Physical? See your problem? You are trapped in physical parameters. Metacognition alone should shake you loose from such faulty speculation. You've tried to separate yourself from your body, but see your spirit, mind, and soul as physical energy extensions. God 'dwells' nowhere.
The fact that you exist in your current form doesn't mean there is any mythical human-like god. That's a myth that has been fed to you by other divisive humans to control you. You've allowed them to take that control of you. Why, only you can answer. You had needs at the time, you wanted some kind of answers to your existence, you wanted to be loved, accepted by others, you wanted some kind of meaning in your life. So you were exploited by other humans only too willing to spoon-feed you with "answers" in which they indoctrinated you into a system of belief which uses well known well worn psychological techniques to ensure you remain trapped in their synthetic paradigm. This is wasting and degrading your given time in human form. Ultimately it won't matter because you'll eventually die and then be reborn in another new form, be that human or otherwise and this will go on for eternity. The universal life force is indestructible and immortal. Wicked human despots can't change that. They can only pervert your time here in human form and then you're gone and set free again. The problem is if you then come back, start all over again as a new human and again allow yourself to be enslaved and conditioned again by this oppressive system of control. Your choice.
You are the one who says we cannot cry nor gnash teeth, then in the next breath relegate us back to physical existence again.
Yes please please please, THINK ! Think freely, without fear, without guilt, with humility and courage to entertain the notion that what you've been fed is not real.
This is your life and experience. You haven't walked in my shoes nor have the ability to entertain another, just your perspective. I'm on a higher cliff than you and see a lot more of the view (by decision). You need to walk on up.
Technologies are used either for good or evil (in the sense that humans define and need these attributes). The technology itself is impartial.
Hitler and other despots throughout history murdered millions of people and animals. Your Bible recounts your god character doing likewise. You happily make excuses and apologies for your god but not for despots like Hitler. Why? Why doesn't your innate intellect and reasoning apply the same standards consistently and universally?
Because I've read the whole book. You are stuck in Judaism.
Answer . . because your religious conditioning forbids you to apply it to your god. Not because you think it. Only personal honesty and humility and courage will let you oppose that conditioning and properly appraise that situation and apply your moral standards to ALL entities whether human or otherwise.
Courage is to look above a cursory glance and initial gut reaction. I've been down that road but I believe had a LOT more courage than you did. You walked away.
Do you despise Oppenheimer? Do you despise the Americans that used the atom bomb? Didn't your god specifically PERMIT both the invention of the atom bomb and PERMIT its use against millions of Japanese people? Hmmmmm. quick, stop thinking that through, don't go there, it's uncomfortable, you're not allowed to think it through, you'll end up going to hell if you even start to think about it! It's ok for your deity to engage in such attrocities, it's not ok for humans to do it. Just concentrate on that and if someone asks why, just say "Cos free will, cos God is just, cos it just is thats why" and move on quickly.
I'm the one who brought it up. You rejected, and I kept looking, deeper. I've a lot to say about my conclusions given time and space to do so. You've knee-jerked. That is our difference.
No it doesn't necessarily mean that at all. That's your religious indoctrination speaking. There are in fact numerous possibilities if you have the honesty and humility to contemplate the situation. Those possibilities include, but are not limited to:
- We were designed by more intelligent beings who are more advanced than humans but who themselves are just another life form, not any kind of god and it would be foolish to call them gods just because they are more advanced than us. Such advanced entities might be benevolevnt or inherently malicious. They might have seeded the Earth with their designed life forms and then shot off across the galaxy elsewhere leaving the planet to develop randomly, chaotically. Why? who knows. A testing ground for their designs, an experiment is social interraction or as some kind of crop planting exercise so that they can extract our souls/essence later on.
- We were not designed at all but are simply the end result of billions of years of life on Earth that began with very simply forms which mulitplied exponentially and suffered mutations from environmental factors around us like radiation, explosion of meteors, earthquakes and so on.
Answer in brief: I'm much too complicated, intelligent, value-oriented to think I didn't come from the same.
- You are not at all who and what you think you are. In fact you are not here at all, you are just a mind or cosciousness strapped to a supremely advanced computer system which supplies inputs to your brain that mimic senses.
You realize, of course, such implies intelligence and meaning in intent? I've been through this class.
Those inputs simulate vision and smells and sounds and physical feelings. In effect you're in a Matrix that acts as a prison for your mind. The real you is elsewhwere. Of course in this scenario you can legitimately ask, "well who or what created the real me that is strapped in somewhere else?" but then that question is infinite isn't it? With the creationise ideology you assert there is a creator, but then who created the Creator, and who created the creator of the Creator, ad-infinitum. It's gets you nowhere.
Again, have you thought through this very well? You'd have no remorse for taking Hitler's place. What makes better sense is that you were not produced to do so!
So as can be seen there are numerous possibilities to our existence. However you're not allowed to think about those. Not in any real sense. You can trifle with them on a flippant basis, happily deriding any and all theories but you're not allowed to really contemplate them because your ideology which you have voluntarily accepted requires and demans that you believe you are the product of one specific Creator and that there is no other creator in existence. Do you dare to actually think? Do you have the humilty to consider that you might have been psychologically duped?
Been through that class. I found it ultimately thin, shallow, intellectually resistant, impotent, immaturely irresponsible.
In universal terms there is no good or bad, no good or evil. The universe just is, it doesn't "care". Life is an integral part of that universe. That life is indestructible and immortal and you are a part of that. You cannot die Highlander ! You can only change forms.
See? It leads to "Hitler was okay" and "God is a despot." "...ultimately thin, shallow, intellectually resistant, impotent, immaturely irresponsible."
It leaves one in a chaotic mess of meaninglessness. Every instinct of who I am objects rightly.
We consider genocide to be bad because we are currently in human form and that form comes with emotions and societal needs for existence in that form. But there is no good or bad universally.
Cake and eat it too? You reject God on this very principle! Show me your thoughts go further than a thin veneer of uncritical conclusions.
You're following a script given to you by other humans. You're a slave in their system. They have you exactly where they want you. Subjugated, suppressing your innate ability to think and reason. That's why you and countless others have failed to see the secrets and mysteries hidden deliberately in the Bible texts. It's why you don't have the eyes to see and ears to hear. You're not free. You're entangled in shackles and chains that you have voluntarily allowed to be placed upon you because at the time your were naive, needy, weak and undeveloped in your capacity to critical think. That can change. But only if you have the humility and courage to contemplate that you're actually in that situation.
If that is what I'm made for. The difference: It makes no sense that I am what I am without purpose behind every part of the unique. It is intuitive. Books? Script? Who cares? As you say, I am what I am. Rather, I've looked for the 'reason' I am what I am and find it 1) confirming (God does indeed interact if not with you). 2) The message of the cross is love and it wholly appeals to my worldview to make sense. Scripture matches those expectation very well. It isn't that you are one of a thousand brilliant men, but that you are one of a thousand of billions you've somehow believed you are 'better than.' #'s alone would assume you are deluded, no? Every statement you've made I can turn against you. How far have you actually 'thought?' To me? I was smarter than my philosophy professor: His arguments were thin and not thought out. He just settled. You have a bit of him in you.
You'd likely disagree? "Love" informs every action and decision. Good enough?
The universe is what it is and you are a part of it. You have no choice in this. You live because the universal life force flows in and through you as it does in all living things. Again you have no choice in this. You are what you are. You can pretend all day long that you are something else that you are somehow special and have a special pal that looks after you, but this is simply delusion.
Ah, He didn't answer any of your prayers or interact with you. Ever read the book of James? Give it a go.
You might just as well stand in a bucket and try to pull yourself up by the handle.
Fear nothing. Know yourself. TEMET NOSCE.
One cannot 'know' themselves unless there is no conflict. Simply excusing behavior and lack of synch isn't 'knowing' yourself. I'd also intimate we weren't built to be islands, we are social beings, all of which suggests purpose and meaning.
You are neither. You are just acting in accordance with your current life form, in accordance with your humanity. Notice that the trees didn't come to your aid, nor the wind. Nor the birds of the sky nor the animals of the field. You do what you do because you are in human form and you have no recollection of the past forms that you have been in the past millions of years. You are acting Naturally. The trees, birds and animals likewise act in accordance with the form they find themselves in. All life works this way. Welcome to the universe !
You made an assumption I don't share. I'm not 'magic' but it'd seem you think my world reality isn't reality, living fantasy. "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed," promises are meant to be pursued. "You will find me if you seek me, if you truly seek." You know you don't seek any more. We can examine whether you did to begin with. You'll insist that you did, but 'all your heart' is obviously not today.
Already covered earlier. And irrellevant. We act according to our human form. Our sense or right and wrong comes from that form.
Yet that implies 'purpose.' You weren't made adverse, you made that.
It's the same planet (unless you are contesting otherwise) so no it's not different at all. As humans we must accept that murder is murder in whatever form otherwise we are being hypocrites. Stop making excuses for your god. You've been hoodwinked. You have no morale compass while you are hoodwinked. You only have a morale compass once you set yourself free properly and then start making your own decisions.
No. YOU think better! Longer! It is your turn to have your world shaken a little bit. You are wrong. I'm asserting from 1) knowledge 2) experience 3) interaction (which forgoes all discussion and relegates it to 'no' by necessity. I did seek Him. I did find Him, or rather He found me. I didn't have the luxury of an easy life. I had to look hard. God easily answers my prayers making it impossible today, to entertain anything else. He is there. He is real. He is not silent. -Francis Schaefer 4) You stopped looking
All war is unnecessary and atrocious but that's how we feel because we are humans. The trees and birds don't care, unless they are adversely impacted by stupid human actions. Wars as described in the OT are no different. You're just making excuses for them, as you are required to do in your conditioned state.
Cake and eat it too? "Atrocious?" Yet you help the needy and say there is no good nor evil.
Again already answered. Again irrellevant. I act humanely because I am a human and because I am free of religious conditioning. Religious fanatics and zezalots the world over are killing others in the name of their religions, justifying their terrible actions using their false doctrines. Do you think they can all be right in what they do? Are you so blindly arrogant and naive to think that your ideology must only be the true and right one and that everyone else is wrong? Now? Yes. Ask me how I know? Wake up man ! Way ahead of you. If you want to help humanity, if you genuinely sincerely want to be part of the solution and not part of the on-going problem, then for goodness sake wake up from your indoctrinated slumber and have some courage to accept that you've been duped and are not free to think or act freely. You're in chains. Shackled head to toe. YOU are part of the problem, not the solution.It is a simple as this: You are either aiding or abusing (even if you do nothing).Anything is real if you choose to believe it so. Your mind makes it real. Santa Claus was 100% totally real whilst you CHOSE to believe it in your naive childhood.St. Nicolaus actually existed. But you got older, you got wiser, you started to think and wonder how a big fat man in a red suit could actually whizz through the sky on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and drop down everyone's chimneys in one single night, even those houses that didn't have chimneys !!You are now choosing to believe in the next Santa Claus.True. I believe in the old one 0.o Let's go down the avenue so you can see where you are dismissive and I keep entertaining for meaning and enlightenment: True, I did believe in Santa (evidence suggested it). True, I realized later that was my parents (no harm done). So he didn't come down my chimney but I was able to appreciate the value said man gave to the world: A sense of wonder and anticipation (no bad thing). A man who actually existed and impetus for the myth. An idea of love, gifting, meaning, peace on earth goodwill toward men. When you quit believing in Santa, you became antagonistic. I did not. Am I living a lie? Not at all. Rather I looked to the meaning and purpose and embraced it (by the way, you've ruined it for any child that 'may' ever read this). This is the next leg of your human evolution. A test to see if you properly figured out the first Santa Claus and fairy tales test. Apparently you've failed. You still prefer and have a need for a comfort blanket of made-up entities to endure your time here on Earth. You're not alone. Millions likewise are failing the test every day.I do! Well, not in delusion as you once were. I went much further. You gave it all up and that is the difference. Meaningful is meaningful. Does it have to be true? It is! Is Santa true? Depends who you ask and what they mean by 'yes.' "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. -Francis Church
Are you poorer or richer for the meaning?
Again already answered. Yep I've been involved with foodbanks, in fact bvery nearly set up a new and revolutionary type of foodbank. One with dignity. But all these things are utterly irrelevant. Your god deems your good works to be as filthy rags.
Er, in comparison to what? Universal peace? True likely enough, even if you said so. If you don't get the point (up until now you did not), then it is lost and used as badly as Santa Claus used as a negative.
In fact all actions of these kinds are simply humane things to do. One doesn't need any god complex to undertake them. One simply needs to be a Humanist. The notion that you need to be a Christian or have a god to act compassionately towards others and humanity as a whole is pathetically wrong and arrogant in the extreme. It is part of why the world is riddled with conflict and problems. Quit being part of the problem. Please . . .
Completely opposite. You are being foolish.
Oh I got help
I was granted the eyes to see and ears to hear the real messages. I was freed from religious oppression.
Good on the latter! Not so good on the former veneer
Where the heck does killing children in wombs come into this discussion?
Simple: Is she wicked or not? Your veneer does not account for any kind of necessary evil: the answer to anything Jewish and O.T. You simply didn't think!
Remember, life is immortal. You can not die. You can only change form. Does it then matter who dies and when or how? You can only answer those questions from your human form position. You have no other capacity to think or rationalise. If, as a human, you deem killing people to be a bad thing then you must be consistent in that position.
Again, you haven't thought long enough or far enough. Proof? Your own words. They aren't thought out nearly deeply enough by a long shot. Not at all. You use hasty thoughts all over the place. I told you to think. I don't care if you have a PhD. You just haven't gone far enough nor deep enough to be of any use. This thread is your waste of time on your ill-thought crusade. It is as thin as a sheet of tissue paper it is written on.
By "the world" you of course just mean this planet. You presumably don't think that what you do here on Earth has any ipact on the planets surrounding say Acturus yes? Is this planet significant in some way compared to all the other myriad of planets in the infinite universe?
Do you think the universe cares about anything you do here on Earth?
It is an impersonal. Do you think about the extent of your own ideas? Just throw them out there like they are gold? I don't care if you have a degree or not: You simply do not think very deeply, not nearly deeply enough. That is fact, evident in thread.
Don't you realise that once upon a time this Earth didn't exist at all. It was something else. It only formed and became the Earth after billions of years of universal chaos and transformations. The Earth's lifespan as a planet is but a drop in the ocean of infinite time. This planet will cease to exist in the future. The entire planet. It will be gone, disintigrated, changed into something else. Can't you see this? You're trying to justify your life. You're desperate to have some kind of meaning, you're expressing needs that are in fact the result of your current human form. You didn't care about the Earth in your previous forms. You didn't even know it existed. Know Thyself. TEMET NOSCE.
That's your story and you are sticking to it. See my points to ponder above. You haven't thought long enough nor hard enough about implications. You really haven't. Your veneer is far too thin for traction.
No don't do that for to do so is to oppose your god's will.
Doesn't matter if you think so. God does, in fact, listen to my prayers. It is a fact at present I cannot get you to believe or entertain, but it is true nonetheless. It doesn't make a huge difference at this venture if you believe or not. I believe enough for the both of us. Dear Lord God, help this man see that he sees but doesn't perceive.
Your belief system requires that you accept that all that happens is the direct result of your god doing it or permitting it. You must only pray that you are given understanding of why your god wants things to be as they are.
As per
THIS THREAD
Free yourself or else remain stuck in this planetary prison endlessly working for despots who control it all.
Instances of other's failures are of not incident for all consideration. A pause? Fine. Use them to sift and think deeper, longer, better.
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