MrGoodBytes
Seeker for life, probably
A reasonable definition. Except for the whole god thing, the lack of ritual, scripture, moral imperatives and claims about the afterlife. Other than that, atheism is definitely a religion.
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The Centrality of Scripture in Traditional Christianity
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Inan3
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Firstly, I did not say I WAS wrong. I just said "I could be wrong" meaning that if one does not go about it in the correct manner one could be wrong. Interpretation is not to be left up to one's emotional or personal ideas on a subject. To interpret is an art or a skill. It is something that must be learned, just as a person who interprets another language must learn the languages interpreted. When one has learned this art they are then qualified to present the subject in terms that others may understand. I have spent 37 years studying the Bible. Just as one who may study science and become proficient in it there are those who have studied the scriptures and become knowledgeble in it and competent to teach it. I am one of those and I am not ashamed to say so. I have put in my time and I know what I am talking about. That is not to say that I know it all. The scriptures are timeless, endless, and immeasurable. One could study their whole lifetime and continue to find deeper truth. Just as God is infinite so is His truth. In our finite state we can only grasp a small measure of Who He is and what He has for us. We will continue to understand Him even after we leave this world.
And I know that it is!
You are quite right in a sense...You don't have to believe...BUT if you want eternal life...if you want all that God has for you...if you want to understand eternal things...if you want to know if God is real...if you want to come to God...YOU MUST BELIEVE THAT HE IS AND THAT HE IS A REWARDER OF THOSE THAT DILIGENTLY SEEK HIM.
Once again it is back to your choice. This is your time to believe. God is bringing you the truth today. He understands your questions and hesitations. You need only to seek Him for the answers and He WILL make Himself real to you. The person behind the name "flatworm". He loves you inspite of your fight against Him. He's there for you and will be if you will come to Him but you MUST believe.
Firstly, EVERYONE knows that Thor is in mythology. Even the authors concur on that. As to the Book of Mormon and other books they clearly go against scriptural truths. The Bible is the only book of it's kind. Just as God is. There are many books and many so called gods but there is One truth, One God and Creator of all, One Spirit, One Church etc. Everyone and thing must measure up to that.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet could give it all away but if they do not bow their knee to God it is all for naught. It means nothing for eternal life or for the things of God. Oh men may be impressed over their gifts but God is looking at their hearts. They are mere men and they must come the way of all. Man looks on the outward while God looks on the heart. There is a way that "seemeth right" unto man but the end thereof are the ways of death.
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On the contrary it is your understanding as explained above that contradicts the obvious reality of the "inspired Word of God."
I do, too. Although I certainly do not agree with Celsus, nor his bitterness toward Christians, I will quote him to show his error and to demonstrate the point I was making above of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, and of any man for that matter who sees himself righteous by his own good works.
It appears his bitterness is stemmed in what he interprets as insult and rejection by Christians. He does not see himself as a sinner in light of all his good works, etc. He is insulted that they would see him as a sinner and not the wonderful man that he sees himself as. It is obvious that he
enjoyed the praises of the masters when he was invited to the Mysteries but he is angered by the Christians who invite sinners and feels rejected by them because he does not see himself as a lowly sinner. His anger is based upon the fact that Christians did not recognize his "obvious" goodness. I speak facetiously, they should have been praising him and welcoming him into their ranks as a leader, never mind as a lowly sinner. It is apparent that it was his pride that blinded his eyes to Christianity and made him so vehemently oppose it.
Sadly, Celsus, did not know that Jesus came to save ALL men. The blatant sinner and the "good" man. Celsus did not understand the condition of all men without Christ. He didn't understand it's not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to His mercy He saves us. All men are in need of a Saviour but not all men want to recognize that. That is how the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil affected mankind. Both Good and Evil can keep man away from God. It doesn't matter your manner of life it only matters your acceptance of what Christ has done for you. We ALL stand on that merit only. Accepting this gives us eternal life. It is a free gift and comes only one way ... the way of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Celsus was a hurt man. Hurt by his own ignorance of what he perceived was an attack of Christianity against him. I don't know how he left this world but I do hope that he found out the truth and applied it.
I think I have answered this in my explantions above.
To say there is NO God is the atheists way of justifying himself in his own morality. There is no God so therefore, I can do as "I" please. I have no one to account to because there is No One. I stand in my own morality and no one can judge me. The problem with that is that these morals are fickle and change from age to age and they only get more corrupt as time goes on and if it were not for the intervention of God man would have destroyed himself many many years ago.
The statement above says nothing about logic and while Ethan Allen may have meant exactly that, I would argue that reason and logic are NOT necessarily always the same. Often logic gets in the way of reason.
No, but I know that unless they contain the scriptures or their intent they are void of the Life of God. Though, for the purpose of arguement I rescind the word "all" in my statement.
I have experience it.
How do you KNOW it is? You don't, that is the summation.
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So how do you know your way is correct?
Do all such proficient persons agree on how the Bible ought to be interpreted?
How do you verify that even one small measure of what you glean from scriptures is true?
Great! Now demonstrate it.
If scripture and your interpretation thereof is true, which you have never shown.
Then why does it look like ignorant nonsense supported by naught but outright dogmatism?
I did believe. When I reached the age of reason, however, I realized I believed in a phantasm. I tried. Really I did. It just isn't real. Sorry.
Which authors? I hate to disappoint you but there are still small pockets of the cult of Thor, especially among white supremacist groups.
What if the other books are true and it's your Bible that is false because it clearly goes against their truths?
So says your Bible- which again has never been demonstrated to be true.
I'm going to ask you again, nicely, not to bother bringing up arguments that don't apply equally to other supernatural belief systems that contradict your own. A double standard is not an argument, no matter how dogmatically held. The majority of the world's population right now rejects your scriptures as unreliable or outright false. There were times in the past when "everyone knew" the God of Israel was a myth, just as you think that now "everyone knows" the same about the religions of ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Scandinavia.
Please don't change the subject. Your infallible scriptures said that there is not one unbeliever who does good. Is it not good to care for the sick or feed the hungry?
If it is obvious reality, then why cannot you demonstrate it? How is the Bible's claim that no unbeliever does good not contradicted by the philanthropy of these men?
You have not yet explained how his good works are nonetheless not good. You are also misreading Celsus, for he is complaining that the new Christian cult was propagating itself among the vulnerable and uneducated so as to avoid the scrutiny of the learned. Nowhere does he castigate them for not recognizing his good deeds. Indeed, your attempt to tie the groups identified by Celsus together under the label sinners makes it kind of hard to include the likes of fools or children, or you who are miserable.
He is no more being prideful in recognizing what he knows and denouncing those who spread ignorance than you are being prideful in touting your own knowledge of the Bible. Indeed he is much less so, for he does not pretend to infallibility.
Celsus accepted none of this because he was not a Christian, and all of this is purely Christian doctrine. Before you have established its veracity, it is useless to state it as if it were fact.
Indeed, this is one of the core problems with Christian ethics. In certain forms it must deny the value of moral action and moral judgement so that everyone can be in need of conversion. Let me be clear: this is not morality, but a reprehensible denial thereof.
Again, purely Christian doctrine that you might as well dispense with unless you intend to actually demonstrate its veracity.
Rather an attack of Christianity against the society he lived in, knowledge, and morality itself.
No, you have not. You have only retreated into dogma that attempts to redefine such things as meaning, emptiness, morality, etc. in order to make the Bible's statements about unbelievers into tautologies. Is it clearly false that no unbeliever does good? Then simply redefine good (without justification, of course) such that it no longer bears any connection to the real world and now rests solely on belief in God. Is it clearly false that the lives of unbelievers are empty and meaningless? Then redefine "meaning" and "emptiness" such that they have no relation the experiences of real people and instead are dictated on purely Christian religious terms.
I'm sorry, but it won't wash. You can redefine "good" to mean "conforming to you religious beliefs", but then when you say something is "good", you are saying that something conforms to your religion and nothing more. You can redefine "wisdom" to mean "in agreement with your religious beliefs", but then when you call someone "wise", we understand it means that they agree with your religious beliefs and nothing more. Your little word games do nothing but rob your statements of any meaning.
Utter nonsense and truly unbecoming of a grown person. The non-existence of God justifies nothing any more than the non-existence of unicorns does. What it does do is remove all the silly non-justifications used by believers to do what would otherwise be called evil. Without God, actions must be judged on their own merit, by their effects in the real world on real people.
I have a society that I live in that judges me and as I judge others.
Nonsense. There are several societies today that enjoy a better quality of life than the United States despite being less religious. There are large regions of the world where Christianity has never held sway, and yet they endure. There is no evidence that there is any universal tendency to moral decay.
Morals are an emergent property of animal societies, human and non-human alike. No deity is needed. Indeed, animals that lack the cognitive ability to even conceive of such a thing nevertheless exhibit social norms recognizable as moral behaviour. It's a very primal part of our emotional makeup, socialized into us from an early age. Psychological studies have proven that people make moral choices from emotional or instinctive reasons, and only use religion or complex theories of ethics to justify themselves after the fact. Yes, all moral systems are human systems. Yes, all moral systems are imperfect. No, that doesn't mean they are without value.
And no, your moral system isn't any different.
Reason and logic are synonymous. Get over it. You don't get to redefine words to your liking.
How do you know they are not scriptures, as in not divinely inspired?
You have experience what? Eternal life and joy? If so then the age in your profile is a little off. Was it the "wisdom of the Ages" that you experienced? Then why are you so demonstrably wrong on so many topics?
Let's see:
- Virgin birth from a human mother and divine father, borrowed from any number of older myths;
- Internal inconsistencies;
- Tales of wondrous miracles and other events that would have been recorded by unaffiliated historians had they happened, but weren't;
- Oldest manuscripts are decades younger than the events they describe;
- Prophesies that never came true (Jesus' return in the disciples' lifetime);
- Birth-Death-Resurrection formula borrowed from any number of earlier myths;
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Nathan Poe
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Belief in them -- to say nothing on dependence on them -- certainly would be.
I recall beginning a thread on this sort of thing over in GA some time ago -- as well as yourself running away from that same thread.
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Inan3
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Well, flatworm, I have given explanations that you obviously won't accept. I don't think it is my explanation or lack thereof, I think it is that your mind is made up that it is all a myth, and that's you choice. I'll answer this simply without getting into too much of the whys and wherefors, because I just don't think you really care and I don't want to argue about it.
I believe the Bible because I've experienced it. It works for me. That's it.
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Nathan Poe
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I've experienced William Shakespeare -- truly a sublime experience, but that doesn't make it "true."
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Rest assured, it is both. I have read large portions of the Bible and found it to be myth. I am, however, perfectly willing to have its divinity demonstrated to me. Your explanation, however, is nothing more than a dogmatic assertion. You could just as easily believe Moby Dick is divinely inspired by exactly the same arguments.
I've experienced the Bible, too, and found it to be a collection of myths. Sometimes quaint, sometimes insightful, sometimes ignorant, sometimes scandalous, but myths.
Now here's the kicker: what makes your experience more reliable than mine?
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Pwnzerfaust
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I don't think Inan3 realizes that the only way most atheists will believe in her god is if she provides tangible, testable evidence.
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Inan3
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Nothing. It's not the experience we stand on it is the scriptures. We believe therefore we have spoken and with faith and patience we inherit the promises. We perceive, we believe, we receive. The problem is that you can't perceive until you first believe then you perceive, you believe, you receive, you perceive, you believe, you receive, etc., etc. That is how we experience and walk by faith. It's the same thing over and over.
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