13 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinI never said that I was inerrant. What I said is that I believe that the Word spoken by God, if you believe in such a thing, is inerrant. Unfortunatly you then have an inerrant message given to mankind who is anything but inerrant. And there you have it, it is nothing more than a belief which is nothing more than any of your beliefs about me.
Here we get to the nub of it -- do as I say, believe as I say --
Why, whodey, I didn't know you had so much of Savonarola in you.
Next, perhaps you will become a new Torquemada -- both of these most religious followers of the "Living Christ" inerrantly told others exactly what God had said and what it meant.
How nice it must be to be so certain.
...[text shortened]... and and showing it to the camera, said "This -- THIS is what men do when they are certain."
Now in the spirit of Savonarola, off with your head!!! 😛
13 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinAll I have is the story of Jesus Christ and his message to all of mankind. It has changed me and saved me in many respects other than just my belief in a salvation to come after this life. I neither mandate that you believe the way I do or manipulate me to believe the way that I do. All I am doing is sharing my beliefs and experiences.
[b]Who says so? Who says I need Jesus Christ?
And why should I believe him?
13 Jul 08
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Originally posted by ScriabinIf you study the life of Christ, I think he might agree with you. After all, he only attacked the religious leaders of his day. Of course, not all of them but a good many of them by saying they were hypocrites for the most part and that they preferred on being served rather than serving their fellow mankind.
I don't care what the brand name is -- I'm not buying the kool aid. I categorically refuse to belong to any school of thought, any religion, and I repudiate the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, because I am dissatisfied with traditional philosophy and religion as superficial, academic, and remote from life -- it is vanity and power mongering.
13 Jul 08
1 edit
Originally posted by ScriabinOf course, suffering is not easy to explain, especially when you are the one suffering. In fact, when you are the one suffering, it becomes very personal.
Excuse my French, but what the f** are you even talking about?
Absolutely nothing real -- just words that make you feel good. They don't do squat to fix what's wrong for me and the billions of other people suffering on this planet.
When I read of the story of Christ on the cross, I can draw comparisons to our current suffering. All of mankind can be compared to the two men dying on opposite sides of Jesus. They were all in the same boat. They were all condemed to die as we all are and they were all suffering as we are to varying degrees. However, one man inexplicably turned to Christ and asked that he remember him when he enter paradise and the other cursed him and said if you be the Son of God to get them the *$*$*$ off the cross and end their suffering!! Well, needless to say they all died together and for various reasons Christ did not heed the man cursing at him. At times our prayers are answered and at other times they are not. For example, Christ pleaded with the Father that if it were possible, that he might be spared the pain of the cross, however, his prayer went unanswered as well for various reasons.
14 Jul 08
Originally posted by whodeyok, I'll answer my own question as to what you are talking about.
Of course, suffering is not easy to explain, especially when you are the one suffering. In fact, when you are the one suffering, it becomes very personal.
When I read of the story of Christ on the cross, I can draw comparisons to our current suffering. All of mankind can be compared to the two men dying on opposite sides of Jesus. They were all in the s ...[text shortened]... e spared the pain of the cross, however, his prayer went unanswered as well for various reasons.
You are talking about stories, fiction, myth, and the intellectual equivalent of junk food -- consumed for comfort and to divert one from being aware of what is actually happening as it happens.
Your religious beliefs are your own business, of course, and you've a right to them.
What I get all bothered about is when people represent these beliefs as in any way related to, say, the suffering of those in what used to be called Burma after the storm. Or the suffering of those who cannot get enough to eat, or who cannot escape from the genocidal attacks of Arab marauders sent by the government of the Sudan to rape and kill them.
In other words, your beliefs do none of these people any good at all -- your beliefs make it possible for you to live comfortably, donate a little to charity now and then, and go on with your life without any further thought or regard about the causes and possible cures for all this suffering. It makes you a passive aggressor, in other words.
That's why religion bothers me so very much -- it doesn't help and causes more harm than good, usually speaking. Of course, there are always exceptions -- nothing that happens on this planet appears to do so in a completely uniform manner, there are always variations and variables.
So, there are a lot of good people, probably you are one of them, who happen to be religious. One wishes they all would wake up one day and increase their awareness of what is real without reference to the thoughts and beliefs between their ears. that would be a good start.
14 Jul 08
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Well, if I now write an Epistle to some modern day analog of the Corinthians, bury it in a time capsule and it gets dug up and read 2000 years from now, does that make what I write now true as the revealed word of God?
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You analogy is flawed. The New Testament is not a document that was lost for a long period of time like a time capsule and only recently read.
It was written an enjoyed continual use vertually from the time it was written and for the last 2,000 some years. So your time capsule analogy is incorrect.
Now I answered 95% of you other questions but lost to post for technical reasons. I was timed out in the library. Maybe, I'll re-write some of it.
Most of that lost post was written to explain to you that the closing chapters of John and Luke show how Jesus trained His disciples to live by His unseen presence. He appeared. He vanished from their eyes. He said He came to live in them. Sometimes He appeared as someone else until they recognized it was Him.
In short Jesus Christ over a period of about 40 days after His resurrection trained His disciples to live by His invisible presence. This is the age when we know Christ as the life giving Spirit which He transfigured Himself into - "the last Adam became a life giving Spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45)
The Apostle Paul also writes to the church in Corinth - "So then we, from now on, know no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer.
So then if anyone is in Christ he is a mew creation. The old things have passed away, behold, they have become new." (See 2 Cor. 5:16,17)
This age is not the age for us to enjoy the physical presence of Jesus. This is the age for us to enjoy His indwelling presence and power to make us a new creation. We know Him in the way He is able to live in us and from within us make us a new creation morally and spiritually. We know Him in His way to cause the old negative things of our fallen nature to pass away and a new life in righteousness to arise.
This is learned gradually and with patience. But we know Christ in His indwelling and life changing power as the life giving Spirit He became.
After His Second Coming then I will enjoy the physical presence of the One whom I have learned to live in union with spiritually.
At that time I will see His hands and face. In this church age I see Him as He is living in the spiritual inner being of thousands of my Christian brothers and sisters who have received Him as Lord and Savior.
14 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinThere is plenty of reason behind what I wrote. I reason with God. My reasoning includes what God is and does. My initial premise includes God, my process of thought includes God, my conclusions include God.
You are unreasonable, illogical and every proposition you have presented here in this thread is flawed, invalid on its face.
You stand accused of committing the logcial fallacy of the appeal to authority, which is used when someone making an argument can't put any logical reasoning behind it. Instead of supporting an argument with evidence, the argument ...[text shortened]... ther way, if there's no reasoning behind the argument, it is fraudulent and illogical.
You reason without including the possibility and power of God's personality. So you start out excluduing God in your thought. You continue without considering God. And of course you arrive at you conclusions without considering God.
But Christ knew where He came from and where He was going. He had a very definite idea of why He was here, why He had to die and why He had to rise from the dead.
If I asked you why you are here or where you are going I don't think I will get an answer. I think you will tap around like a blind man and whine why do you have to have a purpose anyway.
Then you may talk some junk about evolution and complain that there is no meaning to life.
So I find Jesus more belieable than you on these crucial matters of human life. Though I may see your freckles and your wrinkles on your hands, as you say, there is little else that is as real as what Christ Jesus taught.
So I may see you physically but I find Jesus more believable.
Jesus has built up a kind of pristine credibility which you can't touch. He definitely cared nothing for Himself. He cared only for the truth of God.
I think you're basically looking out for your own skin and that's it. I find Jesus more believable than you on the major questions of human life.
14 Jul 08
Originally posted by jaywillyou say "I reason with God. "
There is plenty of reason behind what I wrote. I reason with God. My reasoning includes what God is and does. My initial premise includes God, my process of thought includes God, my conclusions include God.
You reason without including the possibility and power of God's personality. So you start out excluduing God in your thought. You continue without c ...[text shortened]... and that's it. I find Jesus more believable than you on the major questions of human life.
Nope. You are talking to yourself, again. Everything you've said is comprised of thoughts that exist only between your own ears and have no referrant outside of that in the real world.
You are not even aware, apparently, of what is happening as it happens.
So you make assumptions based on the little you know and fail to observe and also fail to distinguish between thought and reality.
Of course I believe my life to have meaning. I reject the existentialist conclusion that life is absurd. As I have written extensively elsewhere, I'm much more impressed by the thought of Viktor Frankl than Albert Camus.
One has the power and the responsibility to choose to live a meaningful life. Even while suffering most severely, we still have the choice of facing reality, however unpleasant or painful, with dignity and grace.
It is natural to suffer from grief after one loses a loved one. It is proper to mourn and it is natural to go through a complex process in so doing.
For a long time after my son died I was in a state of mind best expressed by T.S. Eliot in these lines from Little Gidding from Four Quartets, his greatest work:
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.
Then, I decided to accept the reality of what has happened, and learn to live with the pain of the loss of my son, bearing it as I did the pain from a kidney stone and later a gall bladder attack.
I will not turn away from this pain of loss – I will make it the very focus of my meditation and thus confront it. I will understand it as reality, which I must accept.
We have to say "Yes" to reality, because to say "No" and hide behind some book or someone's robe or ritual garments is to delude ourselves and also to rob ourselves of the opportunity to transform our lives, heighten our awareness and ultimately to share what is good in life thru expressing our compassion.
It is too bad that you've lost the ability properly to use the word "reason" and instead merely mention it in reference to thoughts whose only relation to the world around you lies between your own two ears.
I choose the purpose and meaning of my life: to serve and protect my family and make their lives better; to do the same for my friends and community, and, through my work in enforcing laws against pollution, the world as a whole. I've no problem with this and no need of the sort of mental crutch, the fantasy, the dream, the insubstantial and irrational system of belief that you use to absolve yourself of the responsibility to make such choices for yourself.
It is easier to leave all that to others, to take comfort from someone else's choices, from words in a book, from a drug, from a bottle, from anything except grasping that everyone. bvy themselves alone, are responsible for choosing their own path and must bear the consequences -- that is what freedom means. There is no freedom without responsibility. So while your expressions of faith sound quaint and no doubt comfort you, you strikes me as an extremely immature and almost childish person who avoids looking at the world and that which is happening outside of yourself as it happens.
To prefer or "find" Jesus, dead these 2000 years and more, over anything physically still here, is almost a confession of a form of mental disorder.
Rather than reach that conclusion, I choose to interpret what you are trying to say to mean you take more comfort in your belief system than you do in what lies outside of yourself in the world. To a large extent, one can hardly blame you -- it gets tough out here in reality.
Some day, perhaps, you will find a way to both cope with reality while holding onto that which is not irrational in your faith: the values and modes of right behavior that Jesus is said to have taught and with which no one rationally should have a problem.
15 Jul 08
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Originally posted by ScriabinI used to think as you do. Who really cares what one believes? After all, it is action that effects change in this material world and not simple thoughts. However, after spending a great deal of time thinking about this and walking in my own faith, I have come to the conclusion that what you believe is all that really matters. Your beliefs are like a road that you have paved that you are predestined to travel down, unless of course your beliefs change. Before action comes thoughts come to initiate those actions. In fact, the two are inseperable. Therefore, before one takes action to effect change in this world one must have beliefs that dictate such actions in terms of their rationality, purpose and value. In other words, you can either believe that you can effect change on a small scale by only giving a few donations here and there or you believe that you can change the world! I think this is why Christ spends so much time dwelling on what people believe because it will dictate in large measure how one will live their respective lives as well as their eternal future as I believe. In fact, Christ believed that he would change the world and did!
In other words, your beliefs do none of these people any good at all -- your beliefs make it possible for you to live comfortably, donate a little to charity now and then, and go on with your life without any further thought or regard about the causes and possible cures for all this suffering. It makes you a passive aggressor, in other words.
That's why re without reference to the thoughts and beliefs between their ears. that would be a good start.[/b]
I think what bothers me about your view of faith is that you view it as mere wishful thinking and fruitless. However, if one has faith to take certain action one will effect change that mirrors that faith. For example, a scripture come to mind which is James 2:14 which says,
"What does it profit, my brethren, though a man say he has faith, and has not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say to them, Depart in peace, be warmed and filled; notwithstanding you give them not those things which are needful to the body, what does it profit? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being alone. Yes, a man may say, you have faith, and I have works, show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my fiath by my works. You believe that there is one God, you do well; the devils also believe, and tremble, but will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?"
This aspect of faith is undeniable. If one believes that something should come about that they have direct control over even though the reality of the situation dictates otherwise, one can and will effect change. Of course, the other situation is when one feels "powerless" to effect change. I think this is the type of faith that you ridicule and disdain because you view it a mere wishful thinking. However, one thing I do know is that most of the success that has come about in my life has been a result of raw never ending persistance. It is the stubborn belief that one can change the world through the shear power of ones will alone no matter how unlikely it may appear that you are nothing short of a nutcase. People say that you simply can't do that or you simply are not looking at the reality of the situation. However, what they don't see is that reality is ever changing and who says it will not change in the direction of your faith? In a way, believing that your hope about something is misplaced is placing faith in the assumption that your hope is an impossibility. Either way, you are using faith, but the difference is that one can either place faith and hope or pessimism and unbelief. The way I see it is that some people may have the illusion that certain situations are beyond their control when they are not and others have the illusion that things are within their control when, in fact, they are not. This leads us to things beyond our control.
Of course there are "impossibilities" that not even faith can conquer. For example, we are all going to die. Without a doubt, this will occur no matter your belief. In fact, my faith is in agreement with this ascertion, however, my faith also says that one need only have to die physically and not spiritually. Now we face a reality in which we are powerless to effect change which is physical death, therefore, if there be no power beyond our own in which we place our faith to deliver us in such a circumstance, our faith is indeed misplaced and fruitless. However, assuming your belief is true which is that there is no God behind the scenes to effect change to mirror our faith, I contend that my faith up until this point of death has been fruitful even though in its completion is steeped in sheer vanity.
15 Jul 08
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Originally posted by ScriabinI got news for ya, I am not "good". In fact, just like everyone else I have the natural tendency to look out of a #1, if you know what I mean? As the scriptures say, "All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way" What my faith has allowed me to do is to reflect upon this condition and realize that at its core is rooted a selfish nature. For example, so long as we are "comfortable" we are happy with the way the world is in large part. However, when fortune turns on us, what a miserable world this becomes even though the world has not changed in the least. All that has changed is that you no longer are getting your way, so to speak. All I can say is, God help me because I struggle with it every day!!
So, there are a lot of good people, probably you are one of them, who happen to be religious. One wishes they all would wake up one day and increase their awareness of what is real without reference to the thoughts and beliefs between their ears. that would be a good start.[/b]
15 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinScriabin,
you say "I reason with God. "
Nope. You are talking to yourself, again. Everything you've said is comprised of thoughts that exist only between your own ears and have no referrant outside of that in the real world.
You are not even aware, apparently, of what is happening as it happens.
So you make assumptions based on the little you know and fail ...[text shortened]... said to have taught and with which no one rationally should have a problem.
Do you not realise that the central image of the Christian faith is that of God walking right into suffering and death itself. You seem to portray Christianity as a coping mechanism but in it's raw form it's right in there with all the grief , loss and hurt that is in the world. Jesus was acquainted with grief and suffering. He knew what hurt people. He went to those who were shunned and who suffered.
Jesus walked right into death and suffering itself. Chrisitianity encourages us to face up to our mortality and humanity.
15 Jul 08
Originally posted by NemesioThe other possibility is that you are flawed to think that reality is limited to what you sense with your five physical senses.
Whether I am deceived or not about the power or lack thereof regarding Jesus is not material to
your bizarre claims that 1) You met Jesus; and 2) This meeting was 'more real' than I am.
Either you are using non-standard terms of 'met' and 'real' or you are delusional.
Nemesio
15 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinDo you believe the universe around you was came from nothing?
Why do people accept, without evidence, as fact that a human being called Jesus was conceived by the union of the deity of monotheism and a virgin human woman?
How is this different from the story of Hercules? What if the name of God was Zeus or Jupiter?
In other words, defining reality in terms of faith, any faith, simply baffles me.
Kelly
15 Jul 08
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You are unreasonable, illogical and every proposition you have presented here in this thread is flawed, invalid on its face.
You stand accused of committing the logcial fallacy of the appeal to authority, which is used when someone making an argument can't put any logical reasoning behind it. Instead of supporting an argument with evidence, the argument is supported by simply saying, "Because so-and-so said so."
You allege to have an authority that can appeal to for anything that youy want: God. Since God knows everything, anything you say can be "proven" correct by appealing to God. It isn't enough for you to quote the Bible, but you claim to have "met Jesus."
Pardon my incredulity. Either you are nuts or you are selling something.
The other authority that you like to appeal to is the Bible. Because Matthew said so, and Mathew's gospel as written by men inspired by God, it must be correct. This is known as a Biblical appeal to authority, while the former is known as a deistic appeal to authority.
Either way, if there's no reasoning behind the argument, it is fraudulent and illogical.
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I find the evidence overwhelming that we are on the right track to believe what Christ taught about Himself.
It is harder work for me to not believe the Gospels rather than to believe them.
Perhaps you could propose to us what would be the motive for some Galilean fishermen to concoct the fictional character of Jesus and put phony words into His mouth.
Propose to me a motive for them doing so fraudulently. We'll see how logical your explanations are.
Did Matthew want money for the fraud? If so why would Matthew record that this fictional person taught that we cannot serve God and mammon?
What did faking the resurrection do for Peter except get him crucified by the Roman Empire?
Did being an announcer of the Gospel lead Paul to have a comfortable life? Forty lashes with a whip, shipwrecks, imprisonment, hunger, nakedness, prison time, etc. were these the coveted benefits Paul enjoyed for propogating a hoax of a resurrected Christ?
15 Jul 08
Originally posted by jaywillHmm. Church members [in the book of Acts] were selling all their possessions and giving the money to the apostles. Nope, no motivation there. 😛
Perhaps you could propose to us what would be the motive for some Galilean fishermen to concoct the fictional character of Jesus and put phony words into His mouth.
Propose to me a motive for them doing so fraudulently. We'll see how logical your explanations are.
Did Matthew want money for the fraud? If so why would Matthew record that this fictio ...[text shortened]... c. were these the coveted benefits Paul enjoyed for propogating a hoax of a resurrected Christ?