religulous

That's for sure.

And I wasn't trying to be an nice person, by the way. I really am amazed that otherwise bright people can have irrational beliefs. Anybody know what Psychology has to say on the matter?

 

miscrms: You have included an entire paragraph that I did not write, within quotes under my name. I suggest you take a look at your posts after you post them, and correct bad formatting.

 

This amazes me as well. Who was the one who called whom "dumb?" This is the blindness that accompanies the humanistic mindset, like I said before. I was clearly called "dumb" (based on someone's opinion) for believing the Bible and that was an arrogant statement. No question about it. I defend myself, and I am called arrogant for it.

I don't damn anyone to hell. People damn or banish themselves to destruction (to non-existence). You may believe it's arrogant for God to save some and not others (which is not based upon any good in the "some"), but it is His sheer prerogative as the King considering He is the One who made sure the sentence was met on their behalf. Like any King, including human kings, they have the sovereign choice as to who is in what position and place. The only difference in this case being that it's not based upon any worthiness of those who are saved, but upon God's glory in saving. This is the testimony of the Scriptures -- and those whom God saves are hated and persecuted by those who are not because they are angry. This is why everyone readily jumps on the bandwagon to stone the messengers, even though they are merely testifying to the Truth. Remember, they crucified Jesus who was without sin, shaking their heads and mocking Him. All the more will they crucify His followers who are not without their own sins and faults.

Anyway, I am also finished with this thread as well because it's not helpful to engage in endless debates about this. Anyone can take their chances against the Bible as they wish believing it's just a fairy tale. That is certainly your prerogative, and I'm don't intend to push it. I just felt I should at least give an answer and then move on.

 

Well, thanks. But faith to me...hmm. Faith. I guess I have faith, in the unknown. I have faith in Christ being a real man, just not the man that so many paint him to be. I have faith that there are things I can't explain, not yet, and the unknown originator of the universe might as well be called God, for a lack of better term.

I still think that something started it all, and we are here because of a lucky chain of events, that we still don't have all the links to.

I would rather think, that if my public path can lead others to question things, to think for themselves, then I have done something of merit.

There are too many 'Christians' who don't act Christ like, and frankly, call the Muslims what you will, they at least adhere to what their faith tells them to do, at least the non terrorist leaning ones.

A journey is not over until your last foot falls, and until then, you are moving forward, not backwards, and to me, that means change has to happen; it's inevitable.

 

Backwards can be progress, in a way. It's not a sin to retrace your steps, at least far enough to be sure you're on the right path. If you find yourself on the wrong path, better go back to that last fork and try the road less travelled. And if you ever find yourself at the edge of a cliff - literally or figuratively - 'moving forward' is not usually the best direction. But yeah, it's the journey that counts.

 

The arrogance is in inventing a fairy tale out of whole cloth, based on nothing but pure imagination, and then insisting that you've got it right and everyone else has it wrong. And then when someone calls your fairy tale into doubt, you say, "It's not me, it's [my imaginary friend in the sky]."

However, I compliment you on being one of the small minority of Bible-thumpers who reject the notion of hell. Your belief in non-existence coincides with my own: I believe that when we die it's the end of us. We only disagree in that you believe your imaginary friend is going to "save" you from that non-existence.

But of course, this thread is actually about a movie that has fun making fun of the lunatic fringe of religion.

 

Live I've said, you can't prove God is imaginary just because you can't prove His existence physically. He is Spirit. It's an assumption on your part based on your intellect, experience and opinion. Just look at your statement about a "fairy tale" -- the same phrase I said that unbelievers use. It's a fairy tale to you because God has chosen to hide Himself spiritually from your eyes. But it's just an assumption that He doesn't exist simply because you cannot perceive Him. Then to state it so emphatically is where the superiority of the intellect comes in. That's all I meant about arrogance -- not so much that you or someone else is being an arrogant person per se, but just that people are overconfident in their thinking. And admittedly I'm not immune to that either, it's a part of who we are as humans.

The movie is sheer persecution based on the assumption that man's intellect and insistence upon physical proof is the end-all, be-all, and there can be no such thing as a spirit-Being who created all things for His glory and reveals Himself to whom He will. Yet those same people many times believe in UFOs, ghosties and gobblins (which will even be celebrated shortly), and all sorts of other crazy nonsense that's far kookier than belief in a master Designer who is Spirit! But back to the movie, it simply utilizes sardonic techniques and points to a lot of irrational behavior on the part of many professing Christians in an attempt to justify its position.

I do agree with you that when you die it will be the end, and you may or may not have even the slightest privilege to know that God does exist. If you die before the end of creation, you simply won't ever know and that will be it. You had your life (or inheritance, as the Bible would call it) in this life and that's it. And I know that's all you really want, so you will die having what you wanted without knowing any differently. But that doesn't mean that you still haven't lost something infinitely greater. At least in that case, you won't know what you've missed and that will just be it. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, and you wouldn't even know you were wrong. But if you happen to be alive when the end of creation comes about, that would be a different matter -- insofar as knowing that God IS, but then you would still just die and be gone. God is not a God who will infinitely and ruthlessly torture people indefinitely, forevermore, in a place called hell. Hell is just a representation of the grave or death and mortal man will not rise again.

Sorry, I said I wasn't going to post again. I apologize if this offends anyone.

 

This is incorrect logic. You are assigning a probability of 50% to each event.

1. God exists
2. God does not exist.

There is no evidence for the assumption that god exists, thereforw its probability of being true is 0, so far. There is no need to look for evidence that God does not exist because there is no reason to assume there is one to begin with!

By your logic all imaginary beings or objects would likely exist and would have to be disproven.

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If you're going to say there's an omnipotent being who listens to every thought and controls every action, you'll have to come up with far better logic than "you can't prove he doesn't exist."

 

Actually, your logic is based on the assumption that God is just like any imaginary being that, say, a kid might dream up, and that there can be no spirit Being who reveals Himself to whom He will. But I do understand your logic. If we have no spirit or soul, but are just like the animals that die and rot and that's it, then we cannot perceive anything beyond the boundaries of this physical creation. So we *must* of ourselves have that physical proof before we will even consider that there can be a spiritual reality. But spiritual and physical are not the same. You may be right 99.99999% of the time that beings that can't be proven physically don't exist (those in the minds of kids, or derisive adults, or ghosts, or whatever) and be wrong in just the one case concerning God. And He expressly states that this is the way it is.

This is why I said from the beginning, that I can't "convince" or "prove" God's existence to anyone. Only God can reveal Himself by giving someone the spiritual eyes and ears to perceive. In fact, this is exactly why Jesus said that He spoke in parables -- to very specifically keep people in blindness. They can't grasp the underlying spiritual concepts that are hidden deep within the parables. This is also why I said from the beginning, that people naturally look at the believers as crazy kooks because they are called to testify to what they cannot physically prove, but can spiritually discern.

I realize this example is imperfect, but if you tell a blind man that light exists, what is the basis by which he should believe it? True, you can say that he can feel the heat generated by the light, but can he really know it is light without seeing it? No, he realizes that he doesn't have the faculties to see the light and accepts what others tell him based on the fact that they can see it. It is certainly much more complex when it comes to spiritual matters, but again, that doesn't prove non-existence.

Anyway -- I really need to stop for now because it's not going to serve any good purpose to keep writing about this. I already know what most/all of you believe concerning this, and even stated it from the beginning, and my responses aren't going to cause any great moments of discovery.

I have NO animosity towards anyone who does not agree or who ridicules what I believe -- it's your prerogative to do so. It was really me that interjected this into the thread but I mean no offense. I apologize for any taken.

 

NC_Prius,

It's really a matter of wiring. Our brains just don't work the same way and that's why we can't convince each other. The chances of either side achieving a breakthrough are rather small.

That said, I am striving to be more accepting of all beliefs because at the end of the day, no one can prove anything. That's why I'm an agnostic (to me atheism is just another faith based religion with its crowd of biggoted zealots and reasonable practitioners). I think that we're getting close and, perhaps ironically, science is taking us closer to the truth. I think that there's some chance of a great consciousness existing in the universe, but I think that the religions of man are just that. To me, there's very little difference between the World's religions. JC said nothing profound that the Buddha hadn't spoken of 500 years earlier. The differences are, in the main, cultural ones that really don't expound on the underlying message. They're so much stuff that, in my opinion, we could really do without.

In my view, life is about the journey. It's about the evolution of your own beliefs, you personal experiences, and how you fit into the greater scheme of things. Based on that, I try to keep an open mind about things. I think we live in exciting and interesting times because I think that science and philosophy (including religion) are starting to really mingle with each other. It started with Quantum Mechanics and it's implications, but has gone a bit further since then. There are a number of books I'd like to read to dig deeper into this, but it's exciting stuff. There are quite a number of physicists who have a deist leaning, but I think that most of them can't be called christians, certainly not in a traditional sense. Advances in Neurology are really unlocking some of the brain's secrets and it will be interesting to see what sort of implactions these discoveries have on philosophy and our continuing development as a species.

 

Apologies, it has been corrected. NC had a formatting error in his post, when I quoted him it propagated. Agreed, should proof more carefully, just already spending more time on this topic than I should

rob

 

Therein lies the flaw in your argument, to my observation. You consider only two possibilities. God doesn't exist, or God does exist and looks just like the bible (my bible as interpreted by me and my particular group) says he does. Since the majority of people who believe in god cannot agree on what god is like, or what he wants us to do, doesn't that mean that the majority of people who believe in god are inherently wrong?

In the world there are roughly 1.5 Billion Muslims, 1.1 Billion non-religious people, 1 Billion Roman Catholics, 900 Million Hindus, 800 Million Protestant/other Christians, ~400 Million followers of Traditional Chinese Religions, ~375 Million Buddhists, ~300 Million Eastern Orthodox Catholics, ~300M followers of traditional indigenous religions, ~100M followers of traditional African religions and about 100M people of other religions.

Each of these groups essentially believes that they are right about god, and what god wants us to do in order to be rewarded, and everyone else is wrong. In many cases wrong enough that they believe the other groups are going to hell. So if god only reveals himself to those he choses, how are we supposed to know who was paying attention when he chose? If all of these groups are wrong except one, why is it any more likely to be any one than another? Why is it any less likely that they are all wrong? Why is it any more serious to believe in no god, than to believe in the "wrong" god?

Rob

 

Thanks.

The problem with arguing with fundamentalists is that they only see one possibility: I am right and everyone else is wrong. And their only argument boils down to: "My book says so."

 

I think you highlight an interesting point, which is the uselessness of labels, particularly amongst free thinking people. Our beliefs are very similar, yet you chose to call yourself agnostic, and I chose to call myself atheist. My choice is driven largely out my abhorrence for the acts committed in the name of god by many of his followers. If their god exists and approves of their behavior he is not worthy of my praise or belief. I have no problem with people who chose to call their awe of the unknown, or appreciation for the intricate inner workings of our universe god. I just can't bring myself to do it. I am equally fascinated, and don't deny that their could be some form of intelligence at work in it, but just can't call it god.

Its ironic, I think, that many "religious" people fear atheists as immoral self gratifiers. In my experience, the opposite is often true. When you strip away the security blanket of gods love for you and the promise of eternal bliss, you realize that all we have is each other. If we do not take care of each other, we make our lives a living hell. If we work together for the greater good, peace and paradise on earth. Similarly if you strip away Jesus' divinity, he becomes a roll model rather than a savior. You can no longer just profess belief, and all will be forgiven. You can no longer hide behind your imperfections, if he had to live with the same human imperfections and chose to live as he did.

Rob

 

To all of you atheists and agnostics (really one in the same), have a great time while you can. Life is short, eternity is forever. Personally, I am not intelligent enough to be an atheist, and accordingly believe God is my Ruler, and Jesus is my savior.

I say "not intelligent enough to be an atheist" because the atheists in my own family tell me that I really don't understand enough, think deeply enough, and have the sufficient insight to understand God does not exist. But....

When I see my wife giving love to me that I do not deserve, it is the voice and direction of God, attempting to open my eyes and make me a better person.

I have two Pugs who give me their love unconditionally. It is God's love through their eyes and heart.

The atheists in my family cannot describe to me, prove to me, nor emote to me the vacuity of the universe without God. Yet, when I see around me what God has given all of us, my heart and my soul rejoices with His beauty and His greatness.

When I enjoy the love of family that I do not deserve, it is God's voice speaking through them. He is telling me to love them, and by loving them, I will love Him and worship Him.

Too many in this wonderful forum, and other forums I enjoy, love emptiness and things. A Prius is just a car. Something to get you about here and there. I love the fuel economy in my Prius. But, this car isn't God, and science and engineering in all it's smallness is not God.

I love my family atheists and wish them all the best. May they reside well where ever they decide to rest. I wish all of you who don't Believe the very best in this life and in the next. May God Bless You All.

 

You didn't read my last post. They're quite different to each other.

But according to the bible, God's love is extremely conditional. He's a rather nasty bloke when he doesn't get love back from his subjects. Or... are you a universalist?

They can't prove a universe without God. Like you, they've chose a position that they cannot defend with proof or pure logic. They can come pretty close, in my mind, but we wouldn't be having this discussion if they could.

This is one I hear a lot with christian types. Why precisely don't you deserve love? Everyone deserves love. Even the most wretched pox bottles on the planet (Sadam Hussein, Joe Stalin, Hitler, most of our bank executives, Ken Lay) deserve it.

Frankly, I think this is a pretty well rounded lot. Materialism (the consumer type, not the world view) is not rampant here. There are a lot of thoughtful people who genuinely care about a great many issues. They certainly don't always see eye to eye and quite often lose sight of the fact that their similarities are stronger than their differences, but they're not a pack to vacuous twits who worship "stuff".

Right back atcha, mate (except the God bit, ).

 

Labels are for tossers. They divide more than anything else.

Atheists have blood on their hands too (Stalin and Mao come to mind). Basically, people have an immense capacity to be douche bags, regardless (or, perhaps because) of their philosophical underpinnings.

Yeah, I hear you, mate. That's basically where I am too.

You sound like a humanist. That's basically what I am as well. But do you earnestly believe that there's no god? That's the difference. It sounds like you're agnostic rather than atheist. Quite often they are, essentially, the same thing. I chose not to have faith that there's no god just like I chose not to have faith that there is a god. If there is a god, it has not been described by the words of men, though I give Buddha an honorable mention. He was a switched on bloke. JC was a top man, too. Unfortunately for him, Constantine made a mess of it. His basic message is excellent, but I think subsequent writers put a lot of words in his mouth and deified him, like you say. It's a shame, really.

 

Sometimes I get to these so late in the day...but I have a break from the suicide prevention line I am manning right now...so let's have some fun!

God does not do that, however. He never once said, that he would hide himself from anyone, really. At least Christ never hid himself, and since, you believe Christ is God, then God never hid himself.
It's logic, that's all.

Have you seen the movie? Yes/No.

And again, God does not choose to reveal or not. He just is.

Look, I for one think that there is spirits of a sort, evil and otherwise, and they do exist, and that one can either call them devils or demons or angels, or whatever, but I have seen some freaky sheet in my time, and not all of it can be explained by science.
Or can it all be explained by God. And since there is tons of stuff we can't explain, we should just let it be for now, and when the time comes, if it comes, for us to know, we all will know.

Again: Have you seen this movie?

Now that is an interesting POV from a traditional sounding Christian. Most Christians believe once in hell, always in hell.

 

WHO is to say that cats, dogs, animals of all kinds, don't have 'souls'? I mean, since souls can't be proven one way or the other, then why can't animals have them? Are you saying, then, that if there is heaven, and we get to go there, that our favorite pet won't be there with us? How sad that would be.

No, that is not why Christ spoke in parables. He just did that to prove points, and in the translations, they often got jumbled. But what do you expect of reporting on a person many years after they died? Often the words will get messed up. It's human nature to do that.

No, not everyone thinks they are crazy, or kooks. But what does often happen with believers, is they forget that others might not believe, or want to, and then the believer thinks those people are nuts for not believing, and then treat them like they are fools.

It's part of the problem with your typical Bible person. They buy the whole bit about the Bible being perfect, when clearly it's not, and since they think the Bible is perfect, everything in it's perfect, and not open to debate.

The funny thing is, that I think if we really are created in God's image, we must all have the same thought process as God so, curiosity should be expected, and doubt as well. We should be thinking all the time, as to weather or not this stuff is true; it should hold up to scrutiny. If God is almighty, and perfect, then so are we. We are made in his image.
I'll admit, the circlet logic is a bit hard to grasp.

Never say never. One does not know where the seed will be planted.

As a reformed preacher, I still encourage people to seek out God, and answers, because they might find the truth they are seeking.