Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
So you never feel angry yourself? Your alleged void, having supposedly been filled, precludes you from being mad? If not, then the corollary is not true, and you have leveled a baseless accusation at plad
Even God gets angry. That is well documented. The difference is how long you stay angry and what level of annoyance triggers that anger. When a person feels that something is missing from their life, or that they are unfulfilled, or whatever term they choose to use to describe their personal level of dissatisfaction, they are more easily irritated and are demostrably more angry with everything they come in contact with.
People that I have known that live their lives according to a christian lifestyle that is in accord with the teachings of Jesus tend to be less prone to these temperamental swings and require much more stimulation to trigger that angry response.
I have also know many people who claim to be christians and do not always live that christian lifestyle. These people share many tendecies as the self described non-christians I have known. Perhaps a bit less extreme on average, but still close enough to notice. I would accept the conclusion that these 'christians' really aren't, but just put on a face. We have to be careful in what we accept as fact and examples of facts.
Last edited by johnrex62; 05-24-2007 at 03:48 PM..
For those of you who have this personal relationship with Jesus or God or who ever; and for those of you who claim to know God or know Jesus; introduce me to him and we'll sit down and discuss things.
Ohhhhhh, I see, you can't really see him. You must have faith. What you call your faith, I call your hope. You hope he exists, and you hope you have a relationship with this figment of your imagination.
Let me be sure I have this all strait. You believe in him, you talk to him and he talks to you, and no one can really see him, you just believe in him. (Except for some that say the KNOW he exists and they talk to him and he talks back)
Now that I've got that all strait, let me introduce you to a word in the science of psychology. That word is schizophrenia, and there are professionals out there who can help you.
All of us "schizophrenics" will pray for you. Hopefully you will some day have a change of heart and will avoid the fiery hell.
Take Ray Comfort's argument for god. He shows people a coke can, and then says there is no way such a thing could exist without a designer. He points to its complexity (color scheme, poptop, etc) and being impossible through random processes.
Now, his analogy works as far as it does because we know how coke cans came about, they do include a designer, and we can compare them to raw aluminum ore, which is not designed. But this is NVX's point. Coke can is designed, and we know it is, because we can look at it in comparison to something that is not designed, like a rock.
Comfort's analogy falls apart at this point, because there are ways for complexity to arise without a designer. He willfully ignores them, and they are (and have been), the topic of another thread, but there are mechanisms.
I can follow that logic, but then NVX makes the point that there is an underlying belief that the entire universe is designed. I presume that is due to the complexity issue more that any other argument. How do we dismiss this? It is arguable that complexity can arise on it's own, but the interrelation of all these complex systems to each other? Random chance would seem to prevent that unless there was some other force at work.
It has been argued that the mechanism for complexity are tools of a creator. Let's assume for a minute that there is no truth to the bible and it is all delusioned ramblings of insane hermits. Why are there so many insane hermits throughout history in different cultures that felt compelled to write very similar ramblings. Even cultures that did not recognize a monolithic deity have many similar core beliefs. It seems odd that random, insane thoughts would be so similar across so many cultures and times.
Even without faith, it seems that the odds of so many coincidences would decry the absence of an intentional organizing force.
So when someone says "I'm absolutely sure there's no God!", that's the same thing right? Because that person can't be absolutely sure there's not something that they can't prove. Is that right?
I am not sure what you are getting at. I will try to address what I think you are saying.
I am sure that I have said exactly what you have quoted above. At the same time, I will admit that I am not absolutely, 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt, ironclad positive. I am only 99.9% sure, which is good enough for me, and for all practical purposes, absolutely sure.
But you are correct. I do not have 100% knowledge of everything. Nobody does. But admitting ignorance of some things does not mean that one cannot be relatively confident about other things. And simply saying that I do not know everything does not mean that there is a god either.
I can follow that logic, but then NVX makes the point that there is an underlying belief that the entire universe is designed. I presume that is due to the complexity issue more that any other argument. How do we dismiss this? It is arguable that complexity can arise on it's own, but the interrelation of all these complex systems to each other? Random chance would seem to prevent that unless there was some other force at work.
But there are other forces at work. For the formation of solar systems you have gravity. For the formation of heavy elements you have nuclear reactions. For the complexity of life you have natural selection. To say that it is all random chance is to ignore much of what we have discovered about the nature of things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnrex62
It has been argued that the mechanism for complexity are tools of a creator. Let's assume for a minute that there is no truth to the bible and it is all delusioned ramblings of insane hermits. Why are there so many insane hermits throughout history in different cultures that felt compelled to write very similar ramblings. Even cultures that did not recognize a monolithic deity have many similar core beliefs. It seems odd that random, insane thoughts would be so similar across so many cultures and times.
To characterize them all as insane hermits is also to ignore half of the equation. There are political and religious bureaucracies with entrenched interests to take into account. Lets take the timing of Christmas for example. We do not know exactly when JC was supposedly born, but we conveniently say 12/25. Why? Could it be because that date is conveniently close to the winter solstice? And if christianity did not have something to offer in the depths of winter, people might celebrate other things? So christianity co-opts the event.
Same thing with other things. They could be copied from one another. I am no expert in this, but it is my impression that many of the similarities (virgin birth, resurrection, etc) between religions involve Mediterranean area cults. Egyption, mithraic, christian. But not buddhist or aztec. This tends to indicate cultural borrowing, rather than universal truth.
So when someone says "I'm absolutely sure there's no God!", that's the same thing right? Because that person can't be absolutely sure there's not something that they can't prove. Is that right?
This is such a good point...and obviously I'm not alone in thinking this since citydata won't let me give you a rep point.
I haven't even read the responses to this yet--I just wanted to put that in quickly.
To characterize them all as insane hermits is also to ignore half of the equation. There are political and religious bureaucracies with entrenched interests to take into account. Lets take the timing of Christmas for example. We do not know exactly when JC was supposedly born, but we conveniently say 12/25. Why? Could it be because that date is conveniently close to the winter solstice? And if christianity did not have something to offer in the depths of winter, people might celebrate other things? So christianity co-opts the event.
Same thing with other things. They could be copied from one another. I am no expert in this, but it is my impression that many of the similarities (virgin birth, resurrection, etc) between religions involve Mediterranean area cults. Egyption, mithraic, christian. But not buddhist or aztec. This tends to indicate cultural borrowing, rather than universal truth.
Stretch, I am with you on that last statement. I too am no expert on these things (first off I am too young to have read up on all these other belief systems to the point of a comprehensive understanding)
I would like to state that I do not consider the co-opting of dates and times for religious ceremony to be significant evidence of a lack of credibility on the part of the early christians as has been expressed by others in other conversations on this subject (not in CD to my knowledge, don't go looking for threads yet) but rather is only evidence of men taking shortcuts to force their beliefs on "subjugated" people with a minimum of effort.
It does not matter to me that we do not have any memorials of Jesus' birth as he did not seem to think it was important enough to recommend. The bible makes a great deal over the circumstances of the birth, but not so much any other detail. We don't even really know if the manger was actively in use or just something they found laying around. Why didn't the wise men recognize the importance of such an artifact at the time?
I fully concur with belief sharing, but beyond specific similar event recordings there is a great deal of commonality of general morals across many different cultures that cannot be explained by belief sharing as many of these cultures were well documented (at least orally) well before christianity ran it's conversion program on the peoples. More than a few share common threads with other cultures that have never interacted with each other and predate christianity.
I wish I could recall specifics, but a while back I watched an anthropological evaluation of the impact of the Spanish on the Aztecs and there was a good portion on how the church supplanted the Aztec religious icons with the Catholic replacements and how the Aztecs were able to secretly continue their worship of the old gods because the new icons had very similar imagery associated with them. The story of Christ's crucifixation and the communion story of the last supper was readily accepted by the people. This was consistent in their minds as one of their ceremonies where one of their dying gods would eat their filth so that the newly born god would not have to look upon it. This was a really interesting program on the Discovery channel less than a year agon, but I don't recall the title of the program.
I am sure there are a great many stories of other similarities amongs the various religions throughout time. The specific stories are not as significant as the fact that they exist at all.
But you forgot one important detail there in the end...they didnt rid him, yes they nailed him to the cross, they thought he was dead,but what happened on that third day...the one we refer to as Easter, changed eternity my friend.
Oh, you mean the holiday the Christians stole from the Pagans.
Easter = Beltane. Beltane was celebrated long before the first Christian was even thought of. Beltane is the celebration of fertility. I wonder why an Easter Bunny hides Easter eggs.
It's ironic that Easter (the Resurrection) is celebrated at the same time Beltane is, and that the celebration of Easter has all the 'Ear Marks' of Beltane. Shall we compare Christmas to the Winter Solstice?
Just out of curiosity, can anyone name a war fought for the sake of Paganism?
We are in hell. Heaven is only a state of satisfaction; a place in your mind.
Heaven and hell, as taught by organized religions, is a controlling mechanism.
If you're in Idaho, you're not in Hell. It's such a lovely place and gets very cold. You will not find cold in the real Hell.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
