Jesus said I am the way.

Probably as many people on Earth believe in ghosts or visitations of extraterrestrial beings or other supernatural phenomenon as believe in the Christian God. Do you spend as much time, energy, and passion in disavowing those people or their testimony? Do you care as much what they believe? Is it possible that you are so bothered by the convictions of Christians because God is asking for your attention and this is something you feel you must resist?
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Sure I do Foxfyre irrational beliefs are after all irrational beliefs.

However when had you hear of someone who believe in ghosts or UFOs flying planes into buildings or killing their own children or doing any mass killings for that matter over the issues?

The nearest I can come to is the cult that kill themselves in order to meet the mother ship hidden in a comas. They even took the name Heaven gate so by the name there is some form of a religion tie in even there.

But you hearing of something, no matter how dramatic it seems to you, is not an intellectual justification for coming to a conclusion regarding phenomena which transcend your lifetime, your microcosmic world and your era. You could find that sort of evidence to condemn anything.

It's as if you having heard of something is important enough to wipe out all the religions and superstitions of the world on the basis that you understand the true cause of the something you have heard of.

What aspect of the message which carries the name of Jesus are you objecting to on this extremely egotistical principle? Does your conclusion still stand if the events you mention had never happened. It needs to do.

You need some other reason for your attacks. What you are providing simply will not do. It is infantile.

Infantile? Believing in a god/man walking around 2000 years ago bringing back to life a long dead man who was at the stage of smelling of decay is an adult or sane thing to believe in?

A Virgin birth is a sane thing to believe in with messengers of god thrown in telling the soon to be husband that it was the holy ghost that did the deed is sane in some manner?

Could go on and on but only a young child or someone brain wash as a young child would give any of the above one second of serious consideration.

Sorry but you can not white wash this nonsense that had been the engine of mass killings over arguments concerning minor details of the story for the last two thousand years.

I notice that you continue to judge those who believe differently as you as 'delusional' or 'infantile' or 'brain washed' etc. and what they believe is 'crap'. I notice also that you specifically sidestepped speculation of how you would respond should somebody presume to psychoanalyze you and inform you of what you know, why you know it, and what you have experienced.

Christianity is an experience, not a religion that is 'brain washed' or even 'suggested' into one's psyche. Certainly there are probably those who convince themselves that they believe and push aside the doubts that nag them. But once you have experienced the living Christ, you know. Are there still doubts about this or that? Sure. There are many forces in the world that are intangible and unexplainable, and these are also involved. But the undeniable truth of a real presence that we call Christ will prevail.

I wish that for you Bill. Until that time, however, I think you have no more credibility attempting to explain to me what I do or do not know, why I know what I know, or what I have experienced than I would have telling you what you know, why, and what you have experienced.

Nice words the living Christ sound wonderful and mean zero.

Thomas Jefferson once went through the bible and took out all the supernatural nonsense and it was a very thin book afterward.

You can get a copy of this cut down bible on the net and it can be interesting reading especially for those who claims that the founding fathers was all good Christians and the US was founded as a Christian nation.

In any case, no matter how nice sounding your quotes are they are of the same worth as stating the living Zeus or knowing the living Zeus.

You could not be more decoupled from the real and wonderful universe then if you was seeing little men living under you bed.

In any case hopefully the living Christ will not end up telling you not to get medical treatment for a child under your care or to kill an abortion doctor or go on a shooting spree in a holocaust museum. All happening in the news over the last month or two and all done in the name of the living Christ.

There is no living Christ as if there was such a cult leader his bones had long been turn into the elements and recycle back into the biosphere as the remains of all other persons had been or will be.

Goodness, Bill, what I'm prooving is that to understand anything at all you have to know its past, including yourself, through counseling or whatever. Is there a subject we study where we don't learn first about its past?

I'm not talking about "evil." I feel deep, deep sympathy for the people you describe. There are negative forces that come through our minds, but, we have free will, make our own choices. And, like Jesus said, God is within us, never ever without. Take classes, read books, learn to contact this source - thru meditation.

You want to learn about this subject, without God and Jesus? The last book I read, The Horse Boy, is about a father who travels, literally, to the ends of the earth in a quest to heal his son, who is autistic. Imagine laughing through most of this book, about this subject. Pure genius is seeing the past, in connection with today, and the future, as rather comical. My past appears to me, today, as funnier'n hell, but I didn't think so at the time.

You see, when we are done studying the past - our past, our country's past, our world's past, then we can let it all go, live in the present. There was evil in all that past - yes, there is evil tempting all people. But, how does that stand up against what we truly are, children of God. Most of us have not been taught these concepts, that it is our thoughts with which we have to deal. If we change our thoughts, God will change our feelings. Now, that is not easy but I think that is our soul purpose here, to live from this indwelling God, and to sense it in others.

God will change our feelings
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Just for my information your god is the personal/interfering god of the Chirstian faith?

How can you, in your arrogance, presume to know that you find the universe a more wonderful place than Foxfyre?
How can you, in your limited human capacity, presume to know that the universe has no need for God or gods?

Why, because you choose not to believe, do you, in your limited human perception, perceive yourself to be right and others to be wrong just because they have faith in something that you do not understand?

Do you believe that the Americans landed a man on the moon? If so, what actual proof do you have that this happened? Do you simply have faith in the reports of this event? Have you been brainwashed into believing that this happened? Was it a modern miracle?

And the world is a wonderful place isn't it Intrepid? Even all the ugliness and hatefulness and arrogance and indefensible suffering that has ever been, is, and will be cannot diminish the wonder that exists nevertheless.

We love Bill regardless of his contempt for what he does not understand and/or is willing to consider. He was probably brainwashed into believing that his is the more noble way of dealing with complexities of the universe. I feel so blessed because my eyes were opened long ago and I know how much more there is out there than what we can see, touch, taste, hear, or even comprehend. I want that kind of joy for everybody. I think you do too.

How can you, in your arrogance, presume to know that you find the universe a more wonderful place than Foxfyre?
How can you, in your limited human capacity, presume to know that the universe has no need for God or gods?
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A person who think that the universe is so small that it creator would spend his/it time monitoring and interfering with the human race does not had a clue at how wonderful the universe is and how large in both space and time.

One of the very amusing things about Christians is their need to limit both the size and the age of the universe as deep down they also know that our universe is must to big in every way for the Christian God to made any sense at all.

I am Christian and I do not limit the size or age of the universe. I leave that up mostly to Atheists to do and they all do. I don't even limit the universe to the universe as we think of the universe. Nor do I limit the possibilities within the universe or close my mind that there might be more to reality than what I have thus far been taught or experienced.

Why do you suppose Atheists are so often close minded, so eager to denigrate other belief systems and so fanatical in their proselyting for their own religion, and so determined to close the door on possibilities that there is more than they already know?

No disrespect Foxy, and I truly mean that, BUT...
I can replace the word Atheists with Evangelicals and the sentence IMO would be just as true.

I enjoy threads like this because I can see a lot of differing points of view...that's what keeps me coming back to your posts and A2K

Sure but you would be as wrong as Bill is in assigning such notions to all Christians as I would be assigning such notions to all Atheists. Both of us would be drawing conclusions from what we have no possible way of knowing.

I know PhD earth scientists who would define themselves as "Evangelical" which is not to be confused with 'Fundamentalist' any more than agnostics should be confused with Atheists who go out of their way to discredit anything deemed religious or supernatural.

And I think you would agree that it would be as foolish to insist that all Christians believe and think exactly alike as it would be to insist that all Atheists believe and think exactly alike.

Bill- if you want to go through the rest of your life believing, yes--believing, that religion is the cause of war then you are perfectly free to do so. It's no skin off my nose and I shouln't think it is any off anybody else's either.

It's just going to be a permanent mental blockage all your life and the only people who you can influence with it are those who already share it, in which case it is pointless. The others will laugh.

It is not true you see. Wars are caused by land, women, crops, trade routes, water supply, monopolies, fishing rights, mineral rights, boredom, sheer bloody-mindedness and such like. We are right because our God says we are. It might be any god.

Religion is a bit like cheer-leading. You ought to laugh at that. What difference can a bunch of pretty teenage girls with tazzles on their wrists and ankles, and a bob-tail round the back, kicking up their legs in their short, pleated skirts offering a brief flash of serried-ranked gusset in tasteful pink, before the producer cuts to "crowd scene" (the spoilsport), -- what difference does it make to the result of the match? Or to the occasion? We don't have cheer leaders yet over here in England in football and cricket matches.and I have often wondered why. We follow you in lots of things. Like into Iraq and Afghanistan and a few other things. Why do we choose not to have cheer leaders? In England they are in the bath waiting for the players of the winning team. (Only kidding--it was an idea I thought I might try if ever I got into management of a football team. Cricketers take ice-baths after a day in the field so it wouldn't work. ) (That's an "aren't girls soft joke.)

Religion plays that sort of role in getting energy up. The cause is elsewhere. I know it is a difficult subject then as there are a lot of overlaps between the things I mentioned, which diplomacy is there to smooth out, and a lot of extraneous stuff interwoven. So much extraneous stuff that I can understand people going for your simple explanation of war. It's easy you see. Saves you thinking and studying. Atheism poofs war out of existence, just like that as Tommy Cooper used to say, and everybody hates war, they say, so atheism is good. Can't get much easier than that now can it? And it is a cliche that anything easy, like skidding in some dogshit, isn't worth doing,

If we are right, then our God is right, and He would stop us doing anything which was wrong, so when we do it it must be right and his commandments, interpreted by the best and most experienced minds, prepare us to do it good. Like an army a long way from home which had a religious prejudice against male homosexuality might be better prepared for battle than another army a long way from home which didn't share the prejudice because the interpreters of their god's commandments were all giving each other one behind the altar and ignoring Darwinian principles.

You'll stunt your intellectual growth Bill if you persist with such a foolish belief which has been exploded time and again. War is caused by shagging or,to be more scientific, copulation.

You can hardly claim that Christian thinking is not responsible for the gentle way the captured insurgents in Gitmo have been treated. Okay- some innocents might have been rounded up but that's part of the give and take of war--but do you know what was done to such people in pre-Christian times and in un-Christian areas. And we are having a big debate about the ethics of what we have done to a few. We didn't even hand Saddam Hussein over to unChristian justice.

So, while the way of Jesus has not yet arrived in the world, His followers are slowly getting there and realising it is not only peaceful but it is heap big medicine as Sitting Bull used to say in the cowboy movies I saw in my formatives.

Why would an atheist not be a warmonger?

Well that was pretty remarkable Spendi. And even though we might discuss a fine point here or there, the message is profound.

Kudos.

Foxy- you might have added ---and measure, and read off the dial, and note down in a book, and add up and divide by a number that jumps into your head and write it up in strange words which it thrills a section of the public to associate themselves with and have it published in an upmarket magazine which specialises in certainty porn and get yourself known and your career moving in the right direction.

Not that I'm crabbing that. It is quite useful. But, as Foxy says, there is much more out there and appreciating it might well cause a better job to be made of the measuring etc.

Bill- if you want to go through the rest of your life believing, yes--believing, that religion is the cause of war then you are perfectly free to do so. It's no skin off my nose and I shouln't think it is any off anybody else's either.
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Where did I state that religion is the primary cause of war?

It is a powerful tool however used by the rulers to talk people into attacking and killing other groups and tribes and as a mean of control inside the tribe.

Godless Japanese or godless Russians or godless communists as in it is fine killing such people if needed.

Why do you think that President Eisenhower added under god in the pledge at the start of the cold war?

When you had true believers who had shut down their intellect as a mean to prove their faith you have a population that is far simpler to control.

Side note most or at least a large fraction of the Popes in history was not religion leaders but men playing the power game and using the beliefs of their followers as a tool/weapon to do so.

Atheists must think alike Foxy. It's the severe logic of their religion. They only go on scientific facts and those don't change once set in peer-reviewed stone. To the extent they don't think alike they are not strictly atheists or in dispute about the facts. In which case they are not yet proper facts. But they promise us they will be facts if we supply them with funds and they can find out which faction's facts are facts.

Was it? I'll give it a read through on your recommendation.