homer
Forum elite
Posts: 686
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Post by homer on May 10, 2012 7:09:08 GMT 2
Please Homer, even the actor portraying the zombie jew took two lightning strikes like a man, you can handle a few snide remarks from an infidel. So, do you follow the new testament in its entirety to the best of your abilities, and if not then why not? You are right. Yeah I do, but for a long time I wasn't, and my faith sucked, I took what I wanted from the Bible and ignored the parts that were inconvenient out of self interest, like fornication and lust. Which made me a total hypocrite. But it's a process the more I learn about God the more I learn about how he wants me to live, that being said there are still times where I know something to be wrong and still do it, which is why I need Jesus all the more, even sins I know consciously to be totally wrong I fall to, I used to think if I really wanted to just not sin I could, but now having actually tried and failed, it's clearer to me the need for Grace and forgiveness. "Richard Dawkins, the great atheist, when asked if his view of reality made him depressed replied, “I don’t feel depressed about it, but if somebody does, that’s their problem. Maybe the logic is deeply pessimistic” – and here’s what he says. “The universe is bleak, cold, and empty. So what?” Doesn’t that make you want to rise up and live? No, it makes you want to lay down and die. The problem with atheistic evolution is if you come from no one and nowhere, and if you’re going to no one and nowhere, and you exist for no reason, and all your feelings are merely the crashing together of atoms, you do not really love, you do not really have compassion, you really do not have joy, your thoughts aren’t really thoughts, they’re the random explosion of atoms and conflict of matter, you have no soul, you have no spirit, you are simply exclusively material – NT Wright gets it right saying that then people just kill themselves because life is altogether without purpose. Dawkins’ words: pessimistic, bleak, cold, and empty." - Mark Driscoll sermon on Creation |
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Post by switch on May 10, 2012 7:38:34 GMT 2
Dawkins is just reflecting his view in a mechanistic universe which is essentially a Hobbesian reality: life without the leviathan is "solitary, nasty, brutish and short"
Which is of course why the state exists.
This doesn't follow. Atoms grouped together become more than their whole. When enough neurons fire in a particular order and the brain is flooded with enough dopamine, the result is indeed "love" or "joy" or X in the mechanistic sense.
In the platonic sense of the forms, the idea of love or joy or X emotion may not be achievable, but the "cold, random, reality" is no less real.
It seems like a pretty silly argument to suggest that if evolution is true therefore love is not real. That's just a mean way of telling people who believe in God they shouldn't believe in mechanistic evolution otherwise their emotions are not legitimate. Very mean indeed.
Bottom line, there's no way to know if this reality is "real" in the sense of not being a dream or simulation or virtual reality, but that doesn't really matter because in the immediate human scale of things, pain, love, death, life, etc are all legitimate visceral experiences.
Btw, Homer, how do you reconcile pascal's wager with your belief in the specifically Abrahamic deity?
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Post by guest on May 10, 2012 8:17:07 GMT 2
(whether the Earth is billions of years old or 6-10,000 I don't know yet, cause I don't fully understand carbon dating and stuff like it, most people don't understand it they just take that science as truth because it's taught in school You have taken the opinion of numerous experts throughout your life without fully understanding the science behind their conclusions, why is this any different? Also, there are plenty of opportunities for you, especially out west, to get a first hand look at how the earth is far older than 10,000 years. I highly doubt you follow the new testament in its entirety, because you'd either be in jail or dead. At the very least your sister would stop speaking to you. The universe being bleak, cold and empty does make people rise up and live because of the acceptance that their life and existence as a whole is fragile and could end at any moment. You tend to cherish something more if you're sure it's going to be taken away at some point. You will find varying opinions about the philosophy of existentialism, fatalism, etc amongst the atheists/agnostics that you ask, that is if you manage to talk to them before they off themselves. Nietzsche if I recall correctly despised existentialism and found it rather redundant. I'd be willing to bet you either didn't take philosophy in college, had difficulty grasping it or it really did not interest you, otherwise you wouldn't quote this really terrible and generalist take on the apparent misery that life without zeus is. "When the Episcopal Church elected a woman as its bishop, Driscoll wrote on his blog, 'If Christian males do not man up soon, the Episcopalians may vote a fluffy baby bunny rabbit as their next bishop to lead God's men.'" Yeah, he's a pretty disgusting human being. |
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Post by vihaan on May 10, 2012 8:22:47 GMT 2
tl;dr
My point of view here is that the seven deadly sins are a load of crap
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Post by switch on May 10, 2012 8:25:19 GMT 2
From reading the bible, I am fairly convinced that the new testament is crucially about faith- not necessarily faith in god, but faith in general. One of my favourite new testament parables is the one about Jesus and the storm, Mark 4:35-40.
The point is clearly that fear must be conquered and to conquer fear one must have faith. I like to interpret that as faith in oneself.
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Post by vantobia on May 10, 2012 9:38:50 GMT 2
I wasnt going to touch this thread with a 10ft pole, but somone that switch just said resonated with me, and goes hand in hand with my own personal beliefs, or lack there of. The point is clearly that fear must be conquered and to conquer fear one must have faith. I like to interpret that as faith in oneself. I was brought up in the catholic school system, and went to church lots for school and an average amount with my family. Most of the stuff taught to us about god and jesus never really sat with me right. I always liked the stories in the new testiment about acts of jesus and others. Without going into specifics, most of them I took as good stories of how to be good and care for/ respect others in the world. For me it is the stuff with god that loses me. The idea of an all seeing/ knowing/ powerfull and all creating God just does not sit well with me. Anyhoo, so I like to think of god, as something inside of me. My belief in "god" is belief in myself. My faith is me, and everything that makes me unique, my family and friends. Its really hard to explain .. . hehe. |
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Post by switch on May 10, 2012 9:58:53 GMT 2
I find that to be my reaction to the biblical god as well. Whenever I read a passage in the bible regarding a dialogue between God and someone, I always imagine it to be an internal dialogue. God in this sense takes on the role of Socrates' Daimon, and is suggestive of the internal conflict in man between higher duty or righteousness and worldly affairs.
This is the particular power of the abrahamic religious conviction: superficially, it enables the laymen to imagine some kind of mystical deity that watches over them and provides them with power over fear, etc-- more profoundly, the teaching conveys the importance of belief in oneself. Once this is realized, the need to imagine a literal god or christ figure is completely removed, in my opinion.
Admittedly, this is a fairly protestant-humanistic response to the issue of biblical truth. One does wonder what thoughts are running through the mind of, say, the pope, for example.
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Post by drunken on May 10, 2012 10:16:52 GMT 2
wtf is with all these Novel-length posts and hour long videos? the *cruiser* you guys think this shit is? gtfoh.  +1 |
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Post by enculator on May 10, 2012 13:45:45 GMT 2
lol god
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Post by common on May 10, 2012 16:59:28 GMT 2
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marge
Triple thrall
Posts: 37
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Post by marge on May 10, 2012 19:56:49 GMT 2
The problem with atheistic evolution is if you come from no one and nowhere, and if you’re going to no one and nowhere, and you exist for no reason, and all your feelings are merely the crashing together of atoms, you do not really love, you do not really have compassion, you really do not have joy, your thoughts aren’t really thoughts, they’re the random explosion of atoms and conflict of matter, you have no soul, you have no spirit, you are simply exclusively material – NT Wright gets it right saying that then people just kill themselves because life is altogether without purpose. Dawkins’ words: pessimistic, bleak, cold, and empty." - Mark Driscoll sermon on Creation Homie, this is not a rational argument against the merits of "atheistic evolution". This is an argument for choosing to believe in something, regardless of the evidence, because it makes you feel good. This argument would also support belief in Santa Claus, leprechauns, and a benevolent alien named Zilx the Cosmage who keeps a watchful eye out for humanity and is willing to bend time and space to protect us. You point out that the universe is eternal, spontaneously generated, or created by an eternal god, but you don't show why the third option makes the most sense. It is the same logic that gives us Zeus standing on a cloud throwing lighting bolts at people. "How can we explain lightning bolts? I don't know, so magic." "How can we explain the existence of the universe? I don't know, so magic." Presumably, if you are a true believer in Christianity, you also believe that all the non-Christians (or at least, all the non-Christians, non-Jews, and non-Muslims) belong to cults. How did you decide that Christianity is the one true religion and the others made it all up? Did you study each religion in depth, carefully weighing the strengths and weaknesses and determining which one best explains the universe we live in? Did you pick the one that had the purest moral code, a set of laws that could only have been created by a perfect god? Was the absolute truth of Christianity revealed to you by an angel? Or were you simply raised as a Christian, and having accepted it as the absolute truth, you now find yourself looking for evidence to support your decision? If you were born in India and raised as a Hindu, would you now be searching the internet for videos that explain why Brahma is definitely the true creator of the universe? Given the importance of what is at stake here (everybody's immortal soul, and an eternity in a lake of hellfire for everybody who chooses wrong), why isn't the one true religion clearer? Why didn't God create us all with a copy of the 10 commandments burned into our mind, or appearing in the stars every 25th of December? Why don't bibles grow on trees? Why doesn't God send down another angel every so often to remind us that Christianity is still the only true religion, or at least have his own youtube channel? Why is it that every single last thing we know about God, religion, and the true path to heaven has to come through human agents? People lie and make mistakes all the time. Your bible was printed by humans, translated by humans and written by humans. You cannot ask God or an angel or Jesus if it's all true or if bits were left out or whether or not it truly represents what we should believe. There are no tests you can perform to determine its validity. You cannot conduct a study to see whether belief in the Bible increases your chance of entry into heaven. When you put absolute faith in Christianity, you are not putting absolute faith in God. You are putting absolute faith in the people that tell you these things. |
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Post by valentine on May 10, 2012 21:13:27 GMT 2
lol marge, made an account to put in your two cents?
Anyway, Christians will never have scientific evidence of their religion. That's why it's called faith.
When Adam chose to eat the forbidden fruit, it was clear that mankind wanted to do whatever they wanted to. God didnt burn the 10 commandments into our minds because we are free to choose a life with God or without. Even when he sent his Son to this earth, many people did not want to change their sinful lifestyle, that's why they killed him. Do you really think sending his Son again or a youtube channel would change peoples' hearts?
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Post by valentine on May 10, 2012 21:25:58 GMT 2
From reading the bible, I am fairly convinced that the new testament is crucially about faith- not necessarily faith in god, but faith in general. One of my favourite new testament parables is the one about Jesus and the storm, Mark 4:35-40. The point is clearly that fear must be conquered and to conquer fear one must have faith. I like to interpret that as faith in oneself. I like the idea, but I think you're taking this passage out of the context. Nowhere in the bible is there anything about a person achieving something by himself/herself. After all, we will all die someday and lose all our talents, possessions, riches, etc. etc. Jesus would not teach someone to conquer his fear by having faith in himself. Living for Jesus/God and having faith in him is the only way to salvation. |
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marge
Triple thrall
Posts: 37
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Post by marge on May 10, 2012 21:44:36 GMT 2
Anyway, Christians will never have scientific evidence of their religion. That's why it's called faith. Yes. So why do you choose to have faith in Christianity? Why not pick another religion, or make up your own? If the Commandments were burned into your mind, you wouldn't have to decide whether or not other people were telling you The Truth about the 10 Commandments, because The Truth would be burned into your mind. It would be absolutely clear what God wanted you to do. You would still have freedom of choice to ignore those commandments, but you wouldn't have to rely on other people to tell you what God wanted you to do. Of course it would. If Jesus was flying around in a jetpack healing Rick Santorum's kids and turning New York tap water into Château Latour, you'd have a massive wave of conversions and a lot more saved souls. |
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Post by guest on May 10, 2012 21:50:43 GMT 2
jesus wouldn't need a jetpack, stupid.
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