MoAn,
Good morning to you.
I think the hope in Joe's piece lies here:
In the end, as it was in the beginning, there is only what there is. What there is is wonderful and fine and full of life and, when lived in as a thinking feeling human being, Nature, as full of dangers as it is, is not a place to hide behind a fiction, but a place to explore and understand and be alive.
When you put aside the fiction, you begin to live.
Phoenix32890 wrote:Implicator wrote:How is your opinion about what God does any less presumptuous than the Christian's opinion about what God thinks?
Personally, I think that it is completely presumptious to believe, without anything to back the belief up but "faith" that there even is a God at all. To me, it is all a crapshoot. One person's guess is as good as another's.......................which to me means that probably most guesses have no validity at all.
What is a better starting point (for you) than faith? And why are conclusions drawn from *your* starting point any less presumptuous than those of other people?
Quote:It really amazes me that so many people buy into this idea of a God with such certainty. People have fought wars, killed neighbors, attempted to deprive half the population of the world (the female sex) of their basic rights, all in the name of this so-called God.[/b]
And so the world goes, no? Pain and suffering has originated from a lack of belief in a god, just as it has originated from a belief in a god.
Quote:An old expression comes to mind, "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".[/b]
Ah, an excellent quote which is applicable in many different situations.
I
LionTamerX wrote:MoAn,
Good morning to you.
I think the hope in Joe's piece lies here:
In the end, as it was in the beginning, there is only what there is. What there is is wonderful and fine and full of life and, when lived in as a thinking feeling human being, Nature, as full of dangers as it is, is not a place to hide behind a fiction, but a place to explore and understand and be alive.
When you put aside the fiction, you begin to live.
Yet Joe's declaration of "hope" is as subjective as the Christian's. That is, Joe makes the assumption that there is no god when he says "there is only what there is" (unless I misread what he is saying). But unless Joe
knows there is no god, then his hope is potentially misplaced.
I
Momma Angel wrote:Good morning Everyone! How is everyone today! It's a beautiful day here and I hope it is for you also!
Foxfyre is so right! When you experience God in your life then you just know there is God. How can you explain something so awesome?
I know many do not understand. I wish there were a way that you could understand. I, as a Christian, want to share God because of the joy I have found with Him in my life and I want that for others.
It's in the behaving like a Christian and loving and being kind and forgiving that she show God to others.
I hope you all have a magnificent day!
Good mornin' MA.
Thanks for the well wishes, and I am sorry I (still) can't respond to your PMs. Not really sure just what the "management" around here is looking for to separate the casual poster from the spammer-to-be. Guess I'll just keep posting and hope some day I meet their "standard", whatever that may be!
I
LionTaxerX Wrote:
Quote:MoAn,
Good morning to you.
I think the hope in Joe's piece lies here:
In the end, as it was in the beginning, there is only what there is. What there is is wonderful and fine and full of life and, when lived in as a thinking feeling human being, Nature, as full of dangers as it is, is not a place to hide behind a fiction, but a place to explore and understand and be alive.
When you put aside the fiction, you begin to live.
It may hold hope for you, LionTamerX. For me, it is sad. I live a wonderful and fine life and full of life life as a thinking and feeling human being. I hide behind no fiction. So, in that respect I can agree with you. God is not fiction.
I have problems in my life but I wouldn't trade my life for anything! But, I have the promise of an afterlife. I rest on God's promises to me. Those promises are for everyone. Therein lies hope, love, and everything!
LionTamerX wrote:Joe Nation wrote:If ya'll could stop sniping, please, and chew on this for a minute or two.
Seeking the hope.
It is an old fiction, far older than any of the merely two thousand year old texts cited here, older than the Upanishads, older than the scripts of Ur, or even the bison/bear altars of the caves of present day France. The fiction has remained the same, only the names of the gods and spirits have been changed. For 30,000 years, give or take a millennium or two, humans have embraced the hope that there is something more than Nature and they have looked for signs of it everywhere.
Shamans stared at beans and smoke streams, priests of the Aztec examined the entrails of birds and monkeys, witchers gazed through ambers at the world. From these and many others rituals and incantations they tried to find the thing beyond Nature, the thing that could perhaps make the bear come or make the bear go, could bring saving rain to parched fields or make a particular tribe invisible to their enemies. By some strokes, such things did occasionally happen and they ate well on bear and barley while their enemy passed by them and their tale has come down to us intact. We have not heard from the others who were eaten by their dried out fields, by either their enemies or the bear or both, so we stick to the fortuitous tale of hope delivered to us by the lucky ones.
Whole civilizations have been built upon this fiction, this hope of something existing beyond Nature and when, as happens often, bad things happen there is a struggle of rationality versus belief and we are preached to about notions of God's Will and Free Will, of the Almighty's powerlessness -a contradictory notion of immense proportions- and how, although we are just in praising the Lord for everything from a medical recovery to winning the lottery, we have only ourselves to blame when things do go bad. Some modern versions of the myth make it that we must suffer these setbacks in order to receive eternal life after our deaths, a distant and faint hope if I've ever heard one.
In the end, as it was in the beginning, there is only what there is. What there is is wonderful and fine and full of life and, when lived in as a thinking feeling human being, Nature, as full of dangers as it is, is not a place to hide behind a fiction, but a place to explore and understand and be alive.
When you put aside the fiction, you begin to live.
Joe(take a deep breath)Nation
Beautifully said, Joe.
I totally agree with Joe and LTX.
I enjoy each day with all it's beauty and all it's misery. Each day still brings joy and the hope that tomorrow will bring more joy. There will come a day when there is no life left in this body, but I will live on in the memories of others, in the genes of my children, in the mark that I have made on this world while I was here. There is always hope, until you are gone, and then there are the blessings you have left behind. Live each day in the joy that you have this day to live and it becomes irrelevant as to whether or not there is an afterlife.
Phoenix32890 wrote:Momma wrote:I have problems in my life but I wouldn't trade my life for anything! But, I have the promise of an afterlife. I rest on God's promises to me. Those promises are for everyone. Therein lies hope, love, and everything!
Momma- I know that your belief in an afterlife gives you comfort, and that comfort is important to you, in dealing with the life that you have lived, and the life that are now living. I cannot go along with the entire concept of an afterlife. My concern in many ways are the same as yours, to live a good life, to make the world a bit better because of my having lived in it.
I have no illusions about any life beyond the grave. I see no reason to even consider it. It is a lovely thought, but lovely thoughts are not reality. Therefore, I am doing my best to see that THIS life of mine is the best, and the most productive of which I am capable.
Hi Phoenix!
How are you today lady? Fine I hope!
Oh, I totally understand what you are saying and in a lot of ways I cannot disagree with you. But, I wonder if some think that I (and other believers) think everyday of the afterlife or what happens when we die? Maybe you can answer that.
But, it's not something that I think about all the time. I believe that I will be with the Lord when I die and so I don't give it too much thought unless, of course, we are discussing it!
I hope everyone's day is going as well as mine is!
Phoenix!
I love your sense of humor girl!
Terminal illness? I take it you are either in remission or cured? I sincerely hope so!
Phoenix, My sister is a devout christian. When her husband was sick with Parkinsons and the after effects of a heart attack, my sister prayed many times a day to her god to cure her husband. She really thought her prayers would help her husband come back to a "normal" life, but instead died a few years ago. She was devastated by the failure of god to cure her husband, and lost her faith. Several years later, she started returning to church, and again believes in her religion.
What can I say?
Phoenix32890 wrote:Quote:Terminal illness? I take it you are either in remission or cured? I sincerely hope so!
Momma- Well, according to the best medical minds, what I had developed is incurable. I have been in remission since March 28, 1990 ( that number sound familiar? Do I see a lightbulb over your head? :wink: ), so I consider myself ahead of the game. Que sera, sera.
Ok, there's a lightbulb but it's flickering. I know I should know that date, but for the life of me right now can't place it.
I'm just glad you are ok! With an attitude like yours, you have many fine years ahead!
C.I.,
If God cured every single person that was ever sick, no one would ever die. Our world would be overrun by a population explosion.
God does not intervene in everything. He does not always answer yes to prayers. He sometimes answers no. But, the fact that He did not save someone's life because someone asked Him to does not mean that we should blame Him for the ills of the world.
Man has to take responsibility for man. We are born, we live, we die. It's the natural progression. I would think that as a 'scientist' you would understand that.
MA, Research have shown that prayer does not work. It's not a matter of "every single one."
c.i.- I think that what happened to your sister is one of the reasons that I have difficulty with people relying on on prayer to solve their problems.
As I have said on other threads, to a believer, I think that prayer is very helpful, even though I don't believe in a God who intervenes. Prayer just may calm the person, and enable the immune system to work more efficiently. It also may help a person to think through a difficult problem, by quieting a person's emotional reaction, and allowing him to think in a more dispassionate way.
Many people use prayer as a way of asking "gimmee" of their God. It sounds like this was the case with your sister. When her God did not do what she asked, she got pissed off.
I once heard a story a story of a person who had prayed to God, and his God did not do what he wanted. He was very angry, and spoke to his pastor about it. The pastor replied, "Of course God answered your prayers. He said, 'No'"! :wink:
Cicerone Imposter:
Quote:MA, Research have shown that prayer does not work. It's not a matter of "every single one."
Again, I ask, what research? Do you have documentation? I would like to read on this. Please share.
Momma Angel wrote:Phoenix32890 wrote:Quote:Terminal illness? I take it you are either in remission or cured? I sincerely hope so!
Momma- Well, according to the best medical minds, what I had developed is incurable. I have been in remission since March 28, 1990 ( that number sound familiar? Do I see a lightbulb over your head? :wink: ), so I consider myself ahead of the game. Que sera, sera.
Ok, there's a lightbulb but it's flickering. I know I should know that date, but for the life of me right now can't place it.!
Those blinders are really getting to ya, kid. :wink:
Not the blinders. Only have so much memory at my age!
Mayo clinic did a study some time ago. I can only find the following reference:
According to Targ, the prayed-for patients had fewer and less severe new illnesses, fewer doctor visits, fewer hospitalizations and were generally in better moods than those in the control group. The technique, she believes, can even work on nonhuman species. In a speech, she described an experiment performed by another group in which remote healing was used to shrink tumors in mice. And, she reported, the greater the distance between healer and mouse in that experiment, the greater the effect! The connection, Targ suggests, "could be actuated through the agency of God, consciousness, love, electrons or a combination."
Mayo Clinic researchers have found no such connection. They reported last month that in their trials of distant prayer on 750 coronary patients, they found no significant effect. Why the difference?
BTW, one must be careful on who the research was accomplished by; in most cases there is an alterior motive for their research that does find prayer as helping cancer and AID patients.
What helps cancer and AID patients are early detection and drug treatments, not prayer.
