Why is it insane? Curiousity and an obsession with the truth are built into me, it's not like I can change them. The main point is that I can't buy into a lie simply for the sake of expedience.
That's nuts.
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Which atheist argument?
If you mean the claim that there are no gods? Not an argument, a belief.
The judgement that there are almost certainly no gods is not affected by the utility of this judgement. The point I am making is that truth does not matter except in so far as what humans believe to be true has consequences for their utility.
I suppose what I am getting at is that single-minded pursuit of "the truth" without considering the utility of it is asinine.
This is not a simple concept to grasp. Especially if one has been brought up and educated to believe that empirically verifiable truth is all that matters. It isn't. And it isn't even for those who claim it is. We are all emotionally motivated animals and what matters is that which matters emotionally, whether it is empirically supported or not.
We don't exactly know. There are dozens, if not hundreds of schools of Buddhism based on what people think he said. Many of them look like regular religions; many do not. Christians at least have the advantage of having purged any conflicting stories about Christ early on - they have less material to work with.Fair enough.
The reason I ask is that I would like some sort of definitive position on this issue. If there isn't one, this reduces my clarity on what the Buddha had said himself.
This is not a necessary tenet. The four noble truths and the eightfold path - or as I like to express it (Buddhism for Dummies):One of the key differences between my worldview and Buddhism's is that he seemed to believe that the karma (intentional action) created by one individual could reside as "seeds" in the Alaya (sp?) layer of consciousness to create vipaka (fruit) in another individual, or such is my understanding based on my conversations with another Buddhist. Just how this can happen is mysterious and implausible to me. If he had never said this, this would suggest that Buddhism is closer to my worldview than I had thought.
1. I appreciate the sentiment.1. Sending out a line of mercy to an atheist...
2. Wouldn't you like to be pleasantly surprised? Dream with me for a moment...
3. Wouldn't it be great if you suddenly had a sense that there was something more? Something more than the natural course of life and death? When you bury your friends or family, that there was a certainty that there was more than the end of theirs or your current identity? That the sum total of all of your moments, hopes, dreams, and accomplishments did not vanish (to borrow a movie line) "like tears in the rain"?
4. Forget (for a moment) everything you know about how you perceive church or even many Christians you've met.
Imagine if your life was like mine...
5. My life today was one where I got up to go to church, and I knew I was going to truly locate the mercy of God. The manifest, tangible, anointing. The refreshing presence of the Lord that you cannot make up. Even though I had come up well short of His desire for me, I entreated His mercy and was reconciled and entered into His divine peace. His love for me for fulfilling and full of hope. Even though my life in "the natural" (the place of naturally occurring circumstance, at the seeming whim of nature) is currently totally lacking, and somewhat dismal, I had an inner sense of God's plan and hand on my life. It sustained me. As surely as I know He has worked in my life to restore and make new, that He would complete the work that He started.
6. God has already established many times within me, that His Word (as contained in the Bible) is His absolute truth. Within the context that each passage was written, I know that His truth is more sure than any contradictory circumstance.
7. If I am obedient, I'll walk in joy, peace, love, and fulfillment, all the days of my life. I'll know His voice on the inside of me more clearly. The more I give of myself to Him and others in service, the more His love will flow through me like a vine to the branches. The more I align myself with His will, the more manifest power works in me to bring His change through me to others.
8. I realize that you think I am deceived to say this about His Word, but I have already had the experience of Him coming to me personally in response to my heart's cry and I was reborn. One cannot possibly fake this. His love is what you want to experience forever. It's what you want to continue in when you pass from this world.
The part about His Word being true, when He took up residence on the inside of me, He made this clear, as He has many times. He has magnified His Word above all His name. His name is above every name. The Word was given to provide a sure foundation for all persons. That we might overcome when we are judged...
9. Consider this as something of a litmus test. When you're ready my words to you, were you really thoughtfully considering them, or did you kind of skim over them, as something you've heard before? Was there something in you that felt like attaching a phrase like "ad nauseum"?
10. The condition of our heart is what enables us to be able to "see" or "hear". The same thing applies to believers. If they approach hearing their church service's message with: "I've heard it all before!" They won't hear with the ear of the spirit. Even Christians. The ability to "hear' or "see" with the spiritual body has everything to do with being humble before God, seeking mercy, and wanting truth.
11. We know from the Bible, that your being has three parts. It has a spirit, a soul, and a body. Your spirit and soul work together and will remain existent forever. Your soul is to your spirit very much like your brain is to your body. Your spirit has every part that your physical body has. Jesus mentioned Lazurus who was in torment after he died (stay with me, I'm really NOT going to talk about Hell), wanted Lazurus to dip his fingers into water to cool his mouth. He had a body that was spiritual. Your spiritual body now is housed in your physical body. When your physical body dies, your spirit body will take leave of your physical body and go to where the state of being you had here on earth. Life or death. (With God or without God.)
12. My point is that your spirit has eyes and ears. For God's grace to manifest in your life, you want to avoid "heart/spirit conditions" of anything that resembles terms like "willfully or boastfully ignorant", "prideful", claims to sight in moments where you can't see, in spiritual matters, etc. If you are, you'll be resisting the Spirit of grace that wants to reach out to people as yourself, who are unaware of the presence of the reality of God.
13. The one thing the agnostic has going for himself over the aetheist. The agnostic hasn't made up his mind and closed himself over the issue. He's hoping to be pleasantly surprised. One thing I have learned about walking with God: Our words "permit" or "loose" blessings or curses. If we render a final judgment on something (with our words), we (to our destriment) "loose" a spiritual "force" upon our own lives that can keep God's grace from bringing us truth and liberty in that area.
14. So if you entertain in the back of your mind even the most remote possibility that if God were really alive and that He really cared about you enough to let you know, and that if He were to hold you accountable for what He "supposedly" said, then He would certainly make a point to get through to you, in some way, in order for Him to be fair and just...
15. I would challenge you to make a "move of faith" however minute by moving away from your stance of what is seen to be before God: "Hey everyone (God and all His creation)! I've happily rendered final judgment on myself, and am convinced that God isn't real, and that I'm not accountable to anyone."
You might eventually find that rather than opposing yourself and closing your eyes and ears (which you truly possess), that God might make what would otherwise be a wasted effort and begin to provide something to see with your spiritual senses that will turn you in the direction of true fulfillment (which means actually knowing God, and finding true peace (not just natural peace) and not just finding "church").
"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My Laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."
Heb 8:10-12
NDE's have been debunked for years. You can experience the same thing if you get a concussion.It wouldn't hurt you to consider that there is purpose and divine order for everything would it? Take a listen to some of the NDEs (Near Death Experiences) people have had on youtube. They were clinically dead for a time. There was more...
Sending out a line of mercy to an atheist...
Wouldn't you like to be pleasantly surprised? Dream with me for a moment...
Wouldn't it be great if you suddenly had a sense that there was something more? Something more than the natural course of life and death? When you bury your friends or family, that there was a certainty that there was more than the end of theirs or your current identity? That the sum total of all of your moments, hopes, dreams, and accomplishments did not vanish (to borrow a movie line) "like tears in the rain"?
Forget (for a moment) everything you know about how you perceive church or even many Christians you've met.
I never said anything was insane.Why is it insane? Curiousity and an obsession with the truth are built into me, it's not like I can change them. The main point is that I can't buy into a lie simply for the sake of expedience.
That's nuts.
Not unless my rational faculties were impaired, I hope.I never said anything was insane.
Your obsession for "the truth" is an emotional function.
If you had a different emotional imperative you might be obsessed about Jesus.
Are atheists ignorant? If knowledge is 'true justified belief' (TJB), and atheists lack belief, then they lack knowledge. (I don't necessarily think so, but don't want to do the working out, and it seems plausible.
(I mean "weak" or "negative" atheists, btw, who lack belief in God, rather than believe "there is no God")
I suggest you do some research about how your brain, and mine, actually works. It is not at all obvious and it could be quite disconcerting. You will then understand how it is quite possible to believe something in spite of it being illogical and also consider yourself to be thinking perfectly logically. And there is nothing bad about this - nature specially selected it about us.Not unless my rational faculties were impaired, I hope.
Nonetheless, I cannot accept a lie for the sake of expediency. It's not how I'm wired. And philosophically, it's repulsive.
I suggest you do some research about how your brain, and mine, actually works. It is not at all obvious and it could be quite disconcerting. You will then understand how it is quite possible to believe something in spite of it being illogical and also consider yourself to be thinking perfectly logically. And there is nothing bad about this - nature specially selected it about us.
Sorry about this, but perfectionism is an emotional function. Repulsion is an emotional function. You are no more able to avoid your own subconscious bias on your conscious thinking than anyone else. The human brain that is not consistently logical is never the less pretty perfect for its environment.
It is very much how you are wired.
Actually, I'd argue that theists don't have TBJ either. They just believe they do.Are atheists ignorant? If knowledge is 'true justified belief' (TJB), and atheists lack belief, then they lack knowledge. (I don't necessarily think so, but don't want to do the working out, and it seems plausible.
(I mean "weak" or "negative" atheists, btw, who lack belief in God, rather than believe "there is no God")
For a smart person you aren't a very good reader.Which is what I just said. I'm a post-doc neuroendocrinologist; I know something about how the brain is wired. I'm not claiming that people can't believe things that are not true, but you're advocating choosing untruth over truth on the grounds of happiness or expediency. You sound like Marx.
He's playing Buddha games with you. Embrace the lesson.
It is another one of your beliefs, as an atheist, that the biblical authors were under the same conditions as the Harry Potter author, upon which you base comparisons and deem "effectiveness".
There is not the attempt to bypass this belief when you are given the quote. You are told that it stands. That your effort to replace what was given with what you give as an atheist is inconsequential. That the years you spend exalting yourself as a materialist while simultaneously debasing text so that your doctrine may be revered, has not bore fruit.
Romans 1:20 stands, and you are shown the man.
Excuse me?
It is very possible that the people who wrote the Bible (whoever they were. The only names attached to the texts are attributed by tradition only) were writing down things that they believed to be true, having heard them from other sources. There's no evidence that any of the Bible texts were written at the time the events actually occured.
I was not the one who grouped the conditions experienced and intention of the Harry Potter author, with the bible authors. You were. I do not hold the belief that they were under the same conditions, nor do I have to present evidence for your tenets.Now, if you can show me a single shred of evidence to suggest that J K Rowling was under the same impression, I'd like to hear it. Do you think she actually thinks that what she wrote in Harry Potter actually took place?
You see, she knew that what she was writting was fiction, and she presented it that way. There's nothiong in the Harry potter series that tries to pretend it is fact. Can't say the same for the Bible.
Greg1234 said:It is another one of your beliefs, as an atheist, that the biblical authors were under the same conditions as the Harry Potter author, upon which you base comparisons and deem "effectiveness".
The first is just a phrase: you're entitled to your opinions. The second is latin: "I have a catapult. Give me all your money or I'll fling a large stone at your head."<Bully for you, chiclet. Why should I believe you?
<Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
This is vague. I know I will die. I don't believe there will be an afterlife or judge, so I'm not worried.I do know that like all men, you'll face death, and you don't want to obscure your source of mercy by rendering final judgments.
Why should I give it a chance?Be fully persuaded, but how can you give me your "final answer" without giving it a chance?
I'm not. I know the Bible better than most Christians I know.If you're a thinking person, you won't want to fall under the category of willfully ignorant.
OK. So give me your evidence.There's no need at all to get riled since I am appealing to your sense of reasonableness by being open to something you're just not aware of.
Evidence?I asked you to "dream with me" because it IS possible to have supernatural fellowship with the creator, and thankfully, He is love.
Why should I accept that as true?Jesus said that there are 2 fathers. His Words always prove to be true. One ministers lies and is the father of all lies.
The NDE folks were never dead. Period. And I've considered the idea of purpose and divine order.It wouldn't hurt you to consider that there is purpose and divine order for everything would it? Take a listen to some of the NDEs (Near Death Experiences) people have had on youtube. They were clinically dead for a time. There was more...
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