Hi Aristoddler,
Aristoddler wrote:Dustin, biblical quotations are regarded as myth by atheists.
Even religious people have a hard time being on the same page about biblical quotes half of the time...that is what I believe Aedes was getting at.
So what is your view on the subject, outside of what is quoted in the bible? What does
your mind have to say about it? Forget the fact that there is a book that people who have a common cause such as Christianity can relate to...forget for a moment that the bible can be quoted.
I'm not trying to be abrasive about this by the way, just trying to even the playing field a little. It's hard to do so, however, when the majority of any Christians' debate is based on bible quotations. I understand that a deep understanding of the bible will be incredibly tempting to pull quotes to cement one side of a debate, but quoting a book that is regarded as fiction by many people is hardly a way to hold your ground...do you know what I mean?
Keep it up, it is a very interesting topic.
But yet you quoted:
Quote: Unless you see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe. Joh 4:48
Why does this generation seek a sign? Most certainly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation. Mar 8:12
...even if a sign
was given to us, we would be condemned for looking for it, according to the bible.
Such a confusing book.
The bible is often misunderstood because it is a spiritual book; it cannot be understood through the natural eyes (which we all have) of the one reading it. I could go on quoting more scripture, but that is obviously not helping any. However, in an attempt to explain things better . . . there is a
natural man, or Adam - the
old creation; then a
spiritual man - the
new creation; God's Christ, which is the only possible way to understand the bible. One who would approach the book any other way, will inevitably lead themselves into frustration and confusion.
Needless to say, if I went about providing something without biblical quotes, Aedes would ask where I got my information, I'd then have to tell him, and we'd be back at square one because, Aedes sees the bible as a history book. So to put it rather bluntly, I
know the bible is true and that is why I quote from it; I wouldn't just quote my personal opinion and something rather that
we Christians have in common, because, as you said, religious Christians can hardly agree anyhow. However, I am still interested in chatting with him because he has some good questions.
Quote: Detestable Practices
9 When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. 10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in [
a] the fire, who practices divination or sorcery,
interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. 13 You must be blameless before the LORD your God.
I'm not sure what you mean by quoting this, but below would be a better translation.[INDENT] Deu 18:9 When you have come into the land which Yahweh your God gives you, you shall not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.
Deu 18:10 There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices sorcery,
or an enchanter, or a sorcerer,
Deu 18:11 or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
Deu 18:12 For whoever does these things is an abomination to Yahweh: and because of these abominations Yahweh your God does drive them out from before you.
Deu 18:13 You shall be perfect with Yahweh your God.
[/INDENT]
Aedes wrote:Ok, if everything exists within God, then God is synonymous with everything -- which means he fails to have any distinctive quality, and he fails to have meaning as a unique moral entity. You've just permitted God to be evil, to be death, and to be suffering -- because they exist within God as well. Is that what you want? The Kabbalists neatly solved this problem by allowing God to NOT be everywhere and everything, and creating an idea of reciprocity by which God recedes a bit from the world with every creative act -- and evil is allowed to enter in his absence. But your contention here is very much like the Buddhist idea that everything is just a manifestation of the one thing.
Well, I'm not sure if it's what I want, but it's obviously the way God made things and who am I to change that. The very best I can do at this for now, is to provide you with the below scriptures. And you can take it how you will of course.
God creates evil:
I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create calamity. I am Yahweh, who does all these things. Isa 45:7
Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals, and brings forth a weapon for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy. Isa 54:16
Now the Spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh troubled him. 1Sa 16:14
Does the trumpet alarm sound in a city, without the people being afraid? Does evil happen to a city, and Yahweh hasn't done it? Amo 3:6
God calls light out of darkness; in Him is no darkness:
Seeing it is God who said, "Light will shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2Co 4:6
This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 1Jn 1:5
Aedes wrote: Furthermore, if as you say there is no such thing as an eternal creator, then do you now deny that God created the world and humans and everything else? Is the universe not a real thing, but just a flickering thought in God's mind?
You are perhaps correct again! Here is chapter two from Walter Russell's book
The Secret of Light.
Quote:
[CENTER]Creator and Creation
God, the Creator, is all there IS; all that EXISTS. God's creating universe of matter in motion appears to exist. To our senses it sequentially disappears, to reappear. It has no reality. It but stimulates reality through the illusion of two-way projected lights in motion.
God, the Creator, is the One Being, the One Person, the One Mind, the One Thinker, the One Self, the One Life, the One Soul, the One Power, the One Reality.
God's creation is the imaged patterned form of God's imaging, built in His image. It is the body of God, the record of His thinking, created by Him for expressing the One-ness of Life, Love, Mind, Soul and Power which is in Him alone.
[CENTER]The One Light
[/CENTER]
God is Light. God is Universal Mind. Mind is Light. Mind knows. Mind thinks what it knows. Mind thinks in two opposed lights simultaneously projected from their centering white Light Source and sequentially repeated in cycles.
God's thinking and imaging are qualities of God's knowing. God's knowing Mind is timeless and still. So also are God's thinking and imaging timeless and still. So, likewise, man's thinking and imaging are as timeless and still as is his knowing.
Stillness can never be motion, or become motion, but it can appear to be. Motion merely seems, but stillness always is. The universal equilibrium can never be other than its own balance but it can seem to be. The illusion which is motion springs from stillness and returns to stillness. This is a universe of rest. There is naught but rest in the universe.
Mind knows its One Idea of Creation as One Whole. Mind thinks its One Whole idea into seeming parts. Hence the illusion of motion which we call Creation, and the illusion of substance which we call matter.
Matter, motion, time, change, dimension and substance have no existence. The Light of knowing Mind alone exists. There is but One Mind and One Thinker.
The One Light of knowing Mind is Self of God. It is the Universal Self which centers all omnipresent self creating bodies of God-Selves. This self creating universe is the Mind imagined body of God, and record of God's thinking.
We can KNOW God. We cannot KNOW His body but we can SEE it. Likewise we can KNOW man. We cannot KNOW the body of man but we can SEE it. What God is man is. God and man are ONE.
[CENTER]Our Seeming Duality
We seemingly live in two universes; the still cosmic Mind universe of KNOWING and the moving thought-of-Mind rhythmic wave universe of SENSING.
We cannot sense the cosmic universe of God's knowing nor can we know the thought-wave universe of God's thinking. The cosmic Mind universe of the One Light of all-knowing is all that is. The vibrating thought-wave universe of sensing merely seems.
[CENTER]The Cosmic God Light
The one still Light of God is the cosmic Light which watches over all creating things at countless points locatable by man, but invisible to man.
Man's senses have misled him into believing in a force called magnetism which attracts compass needles and lifts tons of steel. These phenomena of motion are due to electricity and not to magnetism. The cosmic Light is absolutely still. It neither attracts nor repels.
We now need to comprehend the nature and purpose of the "magnetic poles" of suns, planets and all other moving extensions of the One Light. Likewise, we need to know the nature and purpose of the two electric workers which interweave this light mirage of seeming motion and dissolve it sequentially for rebuilding. This will give a foundation of knowledge to man which will enable him to see behind the illusions which deceive his senses.
The time has come in the history of man's journey from his material jungle to his spiritual mountain top when it is imperative that he must live more and more in the cosmic Light universe of knowing, and less in the electric wave universe of sensing.
Man must know that his power lies in the stillness of his centering Self and not in the motion by means of which he manifests that stillness. He must know that his Self is God in him. Also he must know gradually the dawning awareness of the cosmic Light of God in him, for with it comes an awareness of his purposefulness in manifesting the Light and the power to manifest it. Man must know the universe of God for what it is instead of what his senses have made him believe it to be.
Also, he must know that this forever creating universe which seems so real to him is but a cosmic cinema, conceived by the Master Playwright. It is but an electrically projected, spectrum-colored light and sound-wave motion picture play of CAUSE AND EFFECT thrown on the black screen of imaged space and time.
The CAUSE is real. The EFFECT is but a simulation of the reality. The Self of man is cause. His self-creating body is effect. God's universe of magnetic light is static.
God's perpetually creating electric wave universe of two moving lights is dynamic. It forever moves. The two moving lights are projected through each other from the static One to create the illusion of the idea they but manifest. The illusion which manifests the idea of Creation through seeming motion is not the idea which it seemingly manifests.
Creation is the product of Mind-knowing expressed in form by Mind-Thinking. The product of Mind is not the idea which it simulates. No idea of Mind is ever created. It is but simulated by form and motion. Idea is eternal and belongs to God's still universe of knowing. Form of idea in matter is transient but is eternally repeated as transient form of idea.
[CENTER]The Positive Principle
The foundation of the spiritual universe is stillness; the balanced stillness of the One magnetic Light of God. Balanced stillness is the Positive Principle of stability and unity. In it there are no negations.
The foundation of the physical universe is motion; the ever-changing motion arising out of pairs of unbalanced conditions which must forever move to seek the balanced stillness of unity from which they sprang as multiple pairs of units.
Unbalanced motion is the Negative Principle of instability, multiplicity and separateness which is this physical universe of electric octave waves of opposed lights.
In the Negative Principle there is no positive. It is composed entirely of pairs of negations which are forever voiding each other, canceling each other's action and reaction, thus negating each other by never allowing either one to exceed its fixed zero of universal stillness.
[CENTER]Quality Begets Quantities
The still magnetic Light universe of God's knowing is an invisible, unchanging, unconditioned and unmeasurable quality from which visible, changing, conditioned and measurable qualities spring to stimulate those qualities through two-way wave motion.
There is no one word in any language to express that quality so we must use many words, all having the same meaning but different connotations. These words are mind, consciousness, love, life, truth, desire, knowledge, power, balance and law.
The God-quality of the One Light is seemingly transformed into quantities by being divided into pairs of oppositely-conditioned light pressures of this electric universe. These divided pairs are then multiplied into countless octave wave units of light pressures and set in opposite directioned motion to create to create the illusion of sequence, change, dimension, condition and time in a universe where none of these effects of motion exist.
The calm sea, for example, is an unchanging, unmeasurable quality of oneness, of sameness and stillness. Upon its calm surface there is no change, nothing to count or to measure.
The moment that quantities of waves spring from that quality of calm, those quantities can be measured. Likewise, they are forever changing. Nor are there two points in them which are similarly conditioned. This creating electric universe is composed of moving light waves which sprang from a calm sea of the One still Light. It is a universe of moving pairs of quantities which stimulate the quality of stillness from which those quantities sprang. The quantities of divided and conditioned pairs of opposite lights which thus simulate the One are not the One they simulate.
The Creator is One Mind indivisible. Creation is One Whole Idea of Mind divided into countless simulated ideas of mind, through motion. The simulation of Idea thus expressed is not the idea that it expresses.
Parts of the One Whole Idea are only seeming. There are no two separate or separable things in the universe. There is but One Whole Simulation of the One Whole Idea.[INDENT]"Everything that is is of everything else that is.
All things are indissolubly united"
-From The Divine Iliad
[/INDENT]Every happening anywhere happens everywhere. The milkweed fluff floating lazily in the summer sky affects the balance of the whole universe of suns and galaxies. Every part of the universe moves in interdependent unison as the wheels of a watch move in unison. The watch wheels are geared together electrically.
The entire universe is one and must be kept in balance as one. Changes of condition in any one part are simultaneously reflected in every other part, and are sequentially repeated in it.
[/CENTER]
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Aedes wrote:If we're all just part of God, does that mean we lack our own independent agency and therefore lack free will? And if that is true how can we be held accountable for any moral choice?
The sovereignty of God explained in the bible:
to do whatever your hand and your council foreordained to happen. Act 4:28
But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory, 1Co 2:7
...been foreordained according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his will; Eph 1:11
For he said to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. You will say then to me, "Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?"But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, "Why did you make me like this?" Or hasn't the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?
Rom 9:15-24
Yet, God does not tempt us...
Let no man say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God," for God can't be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
Jas 1:13-14
Probably the best way I could describe free will, would be as to a mouse in a maze - the mouse can go where ever it wants but is eventually lead to the one and only way out.
"All men will come to Me in due time, but theirs is the agony of waiting."
-Walter Russell From the Divine Iliad
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