Does God Exist?

@timur,

I'm sorry tim. Those posts are not discussable. Ugly does require the counter concept, beauty, to have any meaning. That's why Roget is laid out in opposites. One need dark to have the concept of light.

And nothing that doesn't exist can be called either. And "no Christianity" does not exist where we are.

There is only the face of Christianity. Whether it is ugly is merely a personal taste no doubt derived from a wish for it to be. Like wishing it stagnant.

I can justify the Church being voluptuously rich despite its founder, or figurehead, enjoining the casting away of personal possessions.

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@spendius,

Because of the ugly face of the Bible we have evolved from that barbarity to understand what beauty and truth really are... Could we not have done so without the barbarity? Does human nature require such a stern deterrent? So religion has the explicit purpose of becoming obsolete, so does that in the end make religion any closer to the truth?

Should one live a lie simply because it is the antithesis of the truth?

Does barbarity justify civilization?

Blessed are those who see beauty without seeing ugliness who retain their innocence so that their love is not the capitulation for sins past...

Human nature is exactly that, the nature to live just without needing God to guide us to some higher existence.

The illusion, it is not God in the Bible guiding us but the words of men who have made erroneous judgments as to what life and love are defined as...

We do not learn from errors if that were the case people would not continue making the errors over and over.

We learn only when we avoid errors. How can an error contain the truth?

The error is the vacuum from the truth and the cost or consequences are often only temporary.

Early in the Bible we see the Hebrew word Lilith which is translated as "screeching owl"...

The nocturnal owl that is a predator of the night. The owl lives off the life of lesser creatures.

We have Cain and Abel sacrificing their first fruits to a vampire God who prefers Able's blood offering to Cain's vegetarian counterpart.

We have Jesus symbolically drinking and eating flesh and blood and offering it to his disciples...

Is this supposed to make us all stop eating meat and vegetables?

Is there some sort of hidden message here?

What are God's real standards? A blood thirsty deity who wants us to become good? Don't do as I did? Is that the message?

Blessed are those whose love is not derived out of the guilt of fear and whose peace is not the child of war...

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@spendius,

I know your stances on the topic, Spendius.

They haven't changed for years.

They can even be justified, depending of the point of view.

But as the Marquis de Sade wrote in "L'histoire de Juliette", religion merely acts as an opiate.

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https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/543877_10151611326741275_1563812804_n.jpg

It could happen to you.

Thanks to Christians For Michele Bachmann for this humor.

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@Herald,

Quote:

the guys with the SUVs that are spending the energy equivalent to the power supply of a workshop of industrial enterprise (250 kW) to indulge to move from point A to point B are the most irresponsible deficient-minded elemenets that have ever existed on this planet.

And they strut. As women used to in fur coats until they got spat upon.

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@timur,

Quote:

But as the Marquis de Sade wrote in "L'histoire de Juliette", religion merely acts as an opiate.

And like others who have said the same he did not offer any description of the withdrawal symptoms. His utopian fantasy land was ridiculous as some suspect it was meant to be. Me for one.

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@RexRed,

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So does that mean we stop loving?

Not if we avoid only loving that which we approve of.

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@RexRed,

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Because of the ugly face of the Bible we have evolved from that barbarity to understand what beauty and truth really are...

Well--that's a big plus.

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. Could we not have done so without the barbarity?

Not a chance.

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Does human nature require such a stern deterrent?

No. But civilised human nature does. The sternness of the deterrent is a function of the insecurity. Hence the war on terrorism. The Coup in Egypt. The response of Assad.

As the deterrents of homosexuality are no longer in operation it can be assumed that homosexuality is not considered a threat these days as it must have been thought to be, rightly or wrongly, in the past.

Human nature does not need deterrents against sloth but civilised human nature does. Same with promiscuity.

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So religion has the explicit purpose of becoming obsolete, so does that in the end make religion any closer to the truth?

I don't understand how you get that conclusion from what you said before it.

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Should one live a lie simply because it is the antithesis of the truth?

If it is beneficial yes.

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Blessed are those who see beauty without seeing ugliness

Then nothing can possibly be ugly or beautiful. As I have explained, both categories vanish without the presence of the other.

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The illusion, it is not God in the Bible guiding us but the words of men who have made erroneous judgments as to what life and love are defined as...

There you go again. "Erroneous". You are winning your own arguments by your choice of pejorative words.

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@spendius,

RexRed responses are in red...

spendius wrote:

Quote:
Because of the ugly face of the Bible we have evolved from that barbarity to understand what beauty and truth really are...

Well--that's a big plus. No it is a big negative...

Quote:
. Could we not have done so without the barbarity?

Not a chance. Yes we could have...

Quote:
Does human nature require such a stern deterrent?

No. But civilised human nature does. The sternness of the deterrent is a function of the insecurity. Hence the war on terrorism. The Coup in Egypt. The response of Assad.

As the deterrents of homosexuality are no longer in operation it can be assumed that homosexuality is not considered a threat these days as it must have been thought to be, rightly or wrongly, in the past.

Human nature does not need deterrents against sloth but civilised human nature does. Same with promiscuity. What of free will?

Quote:
So religion has the explicit purpose of becoming obsolete, so does that in the end make religion any closer to the truth?

I don't understand how you get that conclusion from what you said before it.

Religion is barbaric as a deterrent for humans to become civilized. Once humans are civilized religion becomes obsolete... You don't think the Bible is actually civilized do you?

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Should one live a lie simply because it is the antithesis of the truth?

If it is beneficial yes. The Bible's answer is "speak the truth in love" one of the very few rare lucid passages in the Bible... It seems you know more than err, (cough), "God"...

Quote:
Blessed are those who see beauty without seeing ugliness

Then nothing can possibly be ugly or beautiful. As I have explained, both categories vanish without the presence of the other.

We are born with innate knowledge as, I believe it was Aristotle who proved this by drawing in the sand. So we don't need to practice lying to know truth and honesty... We don't need to be criminals to live uprightly. We don need millions of laws to lived justified. Even the new testament in Galatians frees us from the law based upon this idea...

King James Bible also reiterated in Romans 8:2
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

The law of the spirit also being DNA and human nature... depending on your perspective.

Quote:
The illusion, it is not God in the Bible guiding us but the words of men who have made erroneous judgments as to what life and love are defined as...

There you go again. "Erroneous". You are winning your own arguments by your choice of pejorative words.

So says you... Mr. alphabet soup... So we are to unlearn the way we are born? Is that God's way? Error can be learned through racism, homophobia and chauvinism where truth/love needs no defense. These things are not opposite sides of a coin or a dichotomy. Lies are a parasite on the truth not an equal opposite.

King James Bible from Hebrews 10:16
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;

This knocks the need for an evil deterrent out of the water... Know darkness to know light (not necessary) ...

1 John 1:5 God is light and in him is no darkness at all...

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@RexRed,

Quote:

Because of the ugly face of the Bible we have evolved from that barbarity to understand what beauty and truth really are...
- Well--that's a big plus.
- No it is a big negative...

- It is difficult to say what has been right or wrong if it hasn't happened.
The parallel reality does not exist in the physical world. The only way to check IF options of future in the past is through computer modelling of the world and supercomputer calculations. Nobody can tell for sure what would have happened if the Bible didn't appear on the event horizon.
Nobody can tell even at first approximation what would have happened if the SUVs have appeared in the I c A.D. - whether we would have been extinct by 2012 ... or much earlier.

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The Bible Tells Us When A Fetus Becomes A Living Being
http://www.thechristianleftblog.org/1/post/2012/10/the-bible-tells-us-when-a-fetus-becomes-a-living-being.html

I don't believe there is a single scripture in the Bible that indicates a fetus is a person yet or "living soul" till after it is born...

Considering how ambiguous the Bible is on nearly every topic where you can find an equally opposite passage or contradiction on nearly every subject, other than this, the Bible is pretty rock solid on when person-hood begins.

I have known when the Bible states person-hood begins most all of my life and I still think that an abortion should not be performed any later than roughly four or five months after pregnancy begins that is unless the health of the mother is in jeopardy...

It is odd that the republicans don't get their pro life stance from the Bible other than if the are anxiously waiting for the anti-christ to be born...

If so it seem rather anti-christ of them to do so... Might this explain their diversion from Jesus' clear and simple message of universal compassion, freely feeding the masses and healing the sick?

Could the heart of the Republican party really be secretly worshiping the anti-christ?

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@RexRed,

Weren't you agnostic? What are you so much excited what the Bible is saying about abortions? In the capacity of being agnostic your position on abortions should be: the ascertainment of the beginning of life with the embryo is unknown and unknowable.
As an atheist you may trust the statement of the medical science on the issue.
In medical science the clinical death is defined as cessation of blood circulation and breathing. Following this logic the occurence of life should start with the occurence for the first time of independent blood circulation of the embryo (3rd month) and/or the launching of breathing (upon birth).
Whether one of the two is enough to pronounce the embryo as alive - you should ask someby who is more competent.
It is not excluded for the Bible to prove right in terms of the breathing.

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@Herald,

Quote:

Nobody can tell for sure what would have happened if the Bible didn't appear on the event horizon.

I can. None of us would be here.

It really is quite astonishing how the irreligious, after 20 years of expensive education, perhaps more, simply blithely assume that everything would be much as it is now had the Christian religion been defeated in its early years. Or had never happened at all.

American history ended in 1787 when all its ideas were exhausted. All that remains is a zoological battle for supremacy superimposing itself on the Christian pseudomorphosis and eventually overcoming it when nothing but naked power is left to set the tone.

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@spendius,

Once again Spendius, and his fear mongering bull crap...

The Bible tells a story of a God who once talked one on one with Adam and Eve. There was a falling out and this relationship was severed.

From then on it was the patriarch only who could commune with God.

And then it was the priests and kings who were the only ones who communed with God. The lowly common people were at the mercy of the whims and fancies of these priests and kings.

The the prophets had their go at this relationship with God. The prophets forecast dire consequences for the world.

Then Jesus came as a priest, king prophet and patriarch of this deity...

He also forecast wars and the end of days...

In the aftermath of his coming Paul the apostle was given a "revelation" that the common people were not able to commune with God provided they accept Jesus in their life.

Jesus saying I am the way... "The only way"...

Well it turns out there were other ways also to God.

Ways that did not forecast doom and death for the world and lakes of fire for the damned.

Ways that lead to technology and star ships that may one day explore and populated the furthermost parts of the galaxies...

Yes the way I speak of is science. Men like Archimedes, the great Greek philosophers that ushered in an age of reason... It was this that helped the world throw off the shackles of monarch and religion. This age of reason came out of pagan societies...

This age of reason was nearly extinguished by the abhorrent flame of religion under the guise of mad popes who attempted to bring the world backwards into the state where God only spoke to patriarchs, kings and priests.

Entire libraries were burned in the name of Jesus. Learning and a basic education was reserved for only the elite and murder and crimes followed the church and preyed upon the common people and left in its wake a Christian carnage unseen in history up until that time. The Greeks and Romans seemed docile compared to this iniquity... The largest orgies ever recorded in history occurred at the Vatican...

And Spendi thinks this brand of Christianity civilized the world...

It poisoned the world and set learning, mathematics and literature back perhaps a thousand years... And these were productive years where civilization had produced some of the greatest thinkers ever known.

And Islam has also burned books and left a wake of uneducated masses to surrender fully to its will all styled after the same Christian system of beliefs.

Christianity did nothing but slow the progress of human kind whether by the sword of by the pulpit.. Even today we have republican obstructionists doing there dirty deeds to try and destroy the middle class all to promote their hateful brand of Christian slavery...

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@Herald,

I am a rationalist, I find truth and lies in the Bible and many other religions... I cherry pick and I also find truth in Life, Look, Time and the Readers Digest...

I do not ascribe any God or Gods to these books. I just look for things that make sense to me as a free thinker and a person of science and learning.

If I were to believe in a God it would be much like what you have said here.

Maybe in the big bang, maybe God resides in the sun, earth and within us in a pantheistic way. Is this possible God of science, part of Islam, the Christian Bible or Judaism? I most certainly do not believe so..

Is there any truth in these holy books? If there wasn't people would not flock to them so. There are also hideous lies wrapped in this hateful dogma and attributed to the most sacred ideas of humanity, our deism. I find this usurping of deism a travesty and a blight upon the world that may take another century before the world fully becomes wise to its pitfalls.

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@RexRed,

That's what you get when you convince people that they are doing mathematics when they are only doing sums.

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@RexRed,

Quote:

I cherry pick and I also find truth in Life ... I just look for things that make sense to me as a free thinker and a person of science and learning.

You cannot cherry pick just so, what you like ... and ignore the things that are in contradiction with your theory or hypothesis or beliefs or whatsoever, for if you do this you are not doing anything ... let alone searching for the truth.
God has not talked to Adam and Eve, but to the prophets, and it is very much different. As a 'person of science' why don't you put some efforts to understand what is this communication God-prophets all about.
Run some verification tests: plausibility, feasibility, validation, possibility, etc.
- In the context of science, is it plausible to have psychotronic communication between some Intelligence or ILF in the universe with some people down on the earth?
- Is the psychotronic communication feasible for an advanced ILF? We are all waiting for the aliens to appear on the TV or the Laptop, but do they share our understanding for communication? If they can, why should not they appear in direct memory access mode, directly in our brain?
- If the communication is possible, is it valid as information ... and as interpretation?
If this is the case (a former ILF is sending to us messages - Instruction Manual for the Immortality of the Human Species, for example)
1. Why should they do this?
2. Wasn't all our understanding about God actually some kind of a cross-cultural misunderstanding?
If this is the case (communication ILF-mankind) don't read the Bible in such great details (for there are a lot of misinterpretations and misunderstandings there, caused by the illiteracy of the people having made them) - just try to see what is the point and what are the general messages.
If you like, read the Bible by key words. Put in the serach box: I am ...
and read all the texts addressing the definition of God.

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@Herald,

Herald wrote:

You cannot cherry pick just so, what you like ...

Yes I can "cherry pick"... that is what is called "free thinking"... You should try it sometimes...

You may choke if you swallow things without chewing them first...

Herald Wrote:
God has not talked to Adam and Eve, but to the prophets, and it is very much different.

Comment:
Did God speak to Adam and Eve?

Answer: YES
God spoke to Adam and Eve. The first recorded instance of speech between God and Adam occurred in Genesis 2:16-17. It was in those two verses that God told Adam to feed off of every tree in the Garden of Eden except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The first recorded instance of speech between God and Eve occurred in Genesis 3:13. It was in that verse that God switched from questioning Adam about the couple's awareness of being naked and disobedience in eating of the forbidden fruit. At that point, God asked Eve what she had done.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_God_speak_to_Adam_and_Eve
Comment: Now who is cherry picking here Herald?

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@RexRed,

Quote:

Yes I can "cherry pick"... that is what is called "free thinking"... You should try it sometimes...

Sure you can. We all do it to a certain extent. But it has problems.

Dylan wrote I'm In Love With The Ugliest Girl In The World to state the problem. It's yourself you are making love to when you cherry pick.

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@RexRed,

Do you really believe this is "free thinking" Rex?

You're on tram lines.

1 Reply

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