Christianity

[Halla74]

God is a product of wishful thinking.

Wrong; the statement above is oversimplified.
God is not a product of wishful thinking if the wishful thoughts are aligned with hateful, harmful deeds.
And that is because "God is Love."

 

[Riva]

Wrong; the statement above is oversimplified.
God is not a product of wishful thinking if the wishful thoughts are aligned with hateful, harmful deeds.
And that is because "God is Love."

Well what is pleasing to imagine isn't always love.

God is hatred, destruction, stupidity and shockingly insecure.

And although stupidity and insecurity are and never were admired - as [MENTION=13147]senza tema[/MENTION] reminded me on ventrilo - love tolerence and peace weren't always what was admired or expected from god.

Also in this same god hatred vengence power and descruction was admired by its followers. So you see hatred is god, wishful thinking isn't always about love and wishful thinking does have vengence fear and hatred in it.

 

[Halla74]

Well what is pleasing to imagine isn't always love.

God is hatred, destruction, stupidity and shockingly insecure.

And although stupidity and insecurity are and never were admired - as [MENTION=13147]senza tema[/MENTION] reminded me on ventrilo - love tolerence and peace weren't always what was admired or expected from god.

Also in this same god hatred vengence power and descruction was admired by its followers. So you see hatred is god, wishful thinking isn't always about love and wishful thinking does have vengence fear and hatred in it.

I'm afraid your misunderstanding of God's covenant with mankind under the Old Testament vs. the New Testament is preventing you from seeing the truth.
Also, do not forget that God's ways and means within, among and through people have always been, and will forever be confused for what they really are by people - because people are imperfect, and only capable of seeing to the extent of their own mortality, and often their own motivations and biases.
God's work was documented in the Torah, The Old Testament, and The Koran - None of them speak to His power, grace and divinity as a being of love; that aspect of God is primarily known through the documented teachings through the life of Christ in The New Testament.
Does this mean that only Christians have a monopoly on understanding what it means to believe in the one true God, a being of great love?
No way.
In my opinion. God is also perfectly integrated within all science - contrary to the beliefs of so many. He doesn't need to differentiate between faith and laws of the universe as we know it.
That's my take.



-Halla74

 

[Mole]

By their fruits shall ye know them. And we discovered the fruits the other day.

The bodies of 800, yes 800, children were dumped into a septic tank by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam, Ireland.

The Judicial Enquiry into child abuse in Ireland revealed the complicity of the Irish State and the Roman Catholic Church in organised child abuse, but no one expected a whole septic tank full of the bodies of 800 children.

To see the video click on - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-e8d9JWGUM

 

[Halla74]

<A horrid example of the depravity mankind is capable of, but not at all defacto confirmation that these acts reflect the will of God.>

Mole, I'll be the last person to argue with you that organized religion (of any form) has likely done more harm than good at many times during human history.

However, the misdirected, nefarious deeds of any congregation do not speak for God, or villify Him. As human beings, we have an obligation to each other to love one another as our maker loves us all. And that is exactly why when treacherous, murderous fiends begin to do their dirty work against any of our brothers and sisters, we must rise to protect the weak from the tyranny of evil men - whether they wear the robes of priests, the suits of executives, or the trappings of common thugs.

Ordinary Chinese citizens are not to blame for Tienimen Square.
Everyday Germans are not the root cause of The Third Reich.
And on the flip side, God is not responsible for The Spanish Inqisition, Worldwide Jihad, or the Slaughter of 800 Children in Ireland.

 

[small.wonder]

All I have to say to the OP of this thread is this: expecting to understand or have proof of God is, at least in part, hilariously ridiculous.

For those who do not necessarily subscribe to a belief in God, let's do some theorizing. If God really is the omnipotent, all-knowing, supremely intelligent and creative being that he is thought by some to be, then how in the heck would we as his handiwork have the capacity to understand him or his ways? It's expecting the shoe, or the dress or the cake to understand the complexities of it's human maker.

I think the humbling truth of this is actually the largest reason for disbelief in God, because it's simply offensive to the egos of intellectual narcissists and uncomfortable to control freaks.

 

[Mole]

Ordinary Chinese citizens are not to blame for Tienimen Square.
Everyday Germans are not the root cause of The Third Reich.
And on the flip side, God is not responsible for The Spanish Inqisition, Worldwide Jihad, or the Slaughter of 800 Children in Ireland.

C'mon, we have reliable eyewitness evidence that they laughed and enjoyed killing their fellow citizens in Tienamen Square.

And we know everyday Germans enthusiastically supported the killing and the Third Reich.

The Spanish Inquisition would not have been possible if God had not shown the way by creating Hell.

And Jihad is mandated in the Koran by Allah as a religious duty of muslims.

And God himself led the way with Christian child abuse by ordering Abraham to tie up his son and stand over him with a butchers knife ready to cut him up alive.

And everyday Americans support the gun culture leading to continuing gun massacres of American citizens.

And everyday members of Typology Central revere the Fuhrer loving Carl Jung, and support the reifying mbti.

 

[Azure Flame]

[MENTION=20474]OptoGypsy[/MENTION]

God is when your drill instructor tells you you're lying to yourself, and you're being a coward, and after the pain has passed, you feel enormous respect for him bringing that to your attention, and you feel stronger as a result.

God is when a funeral reception is the most beautiful social experience you've had.

God is what you experience when you go to a dance hall expecting to meet hot women your age, but instead only meet a bunch of old people... yet letting go of your judgement and dancing with the joyful and non-judgemental old folks, is the most enjoyable experience you've had in a long time.

God is when your wife meditates each morning on how she can better please you, and you do the same for her.

God is when, after being fired from every job, you're given no other option but to become an entrepreneur... and you realize you were built for this.

God is when you feel you have no purpose in your life, and you ask the stars, "why am I here?" and your life flashes before your eyes and you are given the answer.

God is when you cry at night because everyone but you is giving up hope.

God is the feeling that no matter how crummy things get, for some reason you feel things are only beginning.

God is when an adult is like a child.

God is when children become your role model.

God is the justice that cannot avoid annihilating the injustice.

God is the fire that forges the steel, and you are to be his perfect sword.

God is the Kharma.

God is the being that is so powerful and just that he requires the sacrifice of an innocent lamb so that he may speak to his imperfect children without destroying them.

God speaks through those who know him, to those who wish they could see him.

God can only be experienced, not defined, and he only communicates with those whose hearts are open.

 

[Mole]

[MENTION=20474]God is when your drill instructor tells you you're lying to yourself, and you're being a coward, and after the pain has passed, you feel enormous respect for him bringing that to your attention, and you feel stronger as a result.

This is a description of brain washing by someone who has been successfully brainwashed.

Brainwashing is an insult and injury to human dignity. Brainwashing is anti-Western. Brainwashing is against the Enlightenment values of freedom and equality.

 

[Azure Flame]

This is a description of brain washing by someone who has been successfully brainwashed.

Brainwashing is an insult and injury to human dignity. Brainwashing is anti-Western. Brainwashing is against the Enlightenment values of freedom and equality.

fine. lets replace drill instructor with personal trainer.

 

[Polaris]

One of my main difficulties with accepting Christianity as true comes from the fact that Christ presented himself as the son of Yahweh. Yahweh is not portrayed by the Bible as a pleasant person. He is portrayed as wrathful, mean-spirited, and genocidal. I don't know that I could sincerely love and worship such a being. Worse than that is the fact that several things are said of Yahweh that are difficult to reconcile with what we know about reality. We know that humans evolved from earlier lifeforms, not dust. We know that the universe is billions of years old, not 6,500. We know that women evolved alongside men and were not derived from men's rib bones. We also know that a global flood never occurred in the past 7,000 years. The Old Testament has numerous opportunities to demonstrate a supernatural insight into the world around us, and it repeatedly fails to do so. Instead it gives us an account of reality that looks like another collection of primitive myths.

If Christ believed in this god, I find it hard to believe in Christ.

 

[Azure Flame]

One of my main difficulties with accepting Christianity as true comes from the fact that Christ presented himself as the son of Yahweh. Yahweh is not portrayed by the Bible as a pleasant person. He is portrayed as wrathful, mean-spirited, and genocidal. I don't know that I could sincerely love and worship such a being. Worse than that is the fact that several things are said of Yahweh that are difficult to reconcile with what we know about reality. We know that humans evolved from earlier lifeforms, not dust. We know that the universe is billions of years old, not 6,500. We know that women evolved alongside men and were not derived from men's rib bones. We also know that a global flood never occurred in the past 7,000 years. The Old Testament has numerous opportunities to demonstrate a supernatural insight into the world around us, and it repeatedly fails to do so. Instead it gives us an account of reality that looks like another collection of primitive myths.

If Christ believed in this god, I find it hard to believe in Christ.

Read the bible.

God is love just as much as god is justice, and everything else that exists all at once.

Ever hear of kharma? Yeah. that's god doing what he can't help but do. And since humans are inherently unholy pieces of garbage, direct contact would essentially mean humanity would be destroyed. So in more science fiction lingo, in order to harness the power of the universe without being destroyed, mankind must first redirect the target of its imperfection, aka Jesus being crucified.

This is a gross generalization of what happened and terribly imperfect, but it should make things a little more clear for you.

 

[Avocado]

Hi I'm seriously trying to consider the existence of God but it just doesn't seem plausible. What evidence do we have outside of the Bible or any Religious text that a God exists? How did you rationalize the existence of God? Is the only argument you have that a God exists is the leap of faith, is faith your only trump card?

For all the non-believers out their what is your opinion on this Guy
Yuriy and Inna | Welcome. Grow in Grace with us.
He is a controversial christian figure in the Christian Russian social groups in the west of the U.S.A [MENTION=20385]Alea_iacta_est[/MENTION] [MENTION=20044]chubber[/MENTION] [MENTION=74]digesthisickness[/MENTION] [MENTION=15318]Evee[/MENTION] [MENTION=6109]Halla74[/MENTION] [MENTION=11809]Hive[/MENTION] [MENTION=16139]Honor[/MENTION] [MENTION=71]JAVO[/MENTION]

The abrahamic religions condemn themselves via the sea of contradictions and blantant affronts against reality. As far as gods in general are concerned, especially a diest god, they are unlikely, but not impossible like the christian, islamic, or jewish gods.

 

[Avocado]

I completely agree with you but as with my friend Yuriy a person can be a christian with out taking creationism, Jonah story etc as literal truth but the story of Jesus Christ is crazy, virgin birth (without God having sex with her unlike the Greek Myths) and resurrection unless you look at it as symbolism but then symbols are for the symbol minded. With that being said Christianity can be a great tool to reach people you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise especially in the U.S.A where the country claims to be 8?% Christian.

Ypu sound like you would be interested in Unitarian Universalusm. It gives the church expirience without having to believe anything specific to join. You really just need a good heart, and it is a favorite church for Atheist Humanists.


You'll find atheists, christians, muslims, buddhists, hindus, pagans, and wiccans all sitting together.

Best thing is, most people I've asked about what they thought about the UU's think they are a ''cool'' religion.

 

[Azure Flame]

Ypu sound like you would be interested in Unitarian Universalusm. It gives the church expirience without having to believe anything specific to join. You really just need a good heart, and it is a favorite church for Atheist Humanists.


You'll find atheists, christians, muslims, buddhists, hindus, pagans, and wiccans all sitting together.

Best thing is, most people I've asked about what they thought about the UU's think they are a ''cool'' religion.

I think i see ENFPs doing that in general.

 

[Coriolis]

One of my main difficulties with accepting Christianity as true comes from the fact that Christ presented himself as the son of Yahweh. Yahweh is not portrayed by the Bible as a pleasant person. He is portrayed as wrathful, mean-spirited, and genocidal. I don't know that I could sincerely love and worship such a being. Worse than that is the fact that several things are said of Yahweh that are difficult to reconcile with what we know about reality. We know that humans evolved from earlier lifeforms, not dust. We know that the universe is billions of years old, not 6,500. We know that women evolved alongside men and were not derived from men's rib bones. We also know that a global flood never occurred in the past 7,000 years. The Old Testament has numerous opportunities to demonstrate a supernatural insight into the world around us, and it repeatedly fails to do so. Instead it gives us an account of reality that looks like another collection of primitive myths.

If Christ believed in this god, I find it hard to believe in Christ.

To first approximation, none of this has anything to do with God. It is the creation of man. That interpretation might be a bit simplistic, though. These statements obviously have no factual or literal validity, fundamentalists notwithstanding, but they do offer insight into how a particular people viewed God and spirituality. There is far more metaphorical truth in the Bible than literal, though many Christians eschew such distinctions as belittling or debunking. It is this metaphorical, or perhaps allegorical aspect that comes closer to the "supernatural insight" you mention.

Bottom line: Christianity makes alot more sense if one recognizes it as a myth, not a factual, historical account. This makes it easier to see the commonalities with other myths and human symbols (back to Jung), and even to separate what is clearly human in these accounts from what just might be pointing at something truly divine.

 

[Polaris]

Read the bible.

No way am I going to read the whole thing. I started reading it from the beginning, years ago, (this is on top of being exposed to parts of the Bible in church when I was a child) and gave up by the time I reached Exodus. For a perfect book, it's awfully dull reading (although to be fair, the Garden of Eden has rich symbolism and is my favorite myth).

I've given Christianity more than one chance in my life. I was raised in a Christian household, and prescribed to the belief system until I was about 14, at which point the religion stopped ringing true to me. I tried Christianity again later on in life, and gave it up again, for the reasons I mentioned in this thread. There are aspects of the religion that I find very ugly, in particular the idea of eternal damnation. I'm far from being perfectly loving, but I would never dream of sending someone to hell. And the Old Testament god looks to me like a fairly run-of-the-mill mythological being, one deeply rooted in a specific culture at a specific time in history (to the Jews of that age, the idea of other cultures worshiping their god probably would have seemed as strange as the idea of a Mexican decorating his home with American flags). Today we understand that frogs do not rain from the sky, snakes do not talk, our earth goes around the sun, and human beings originated from earlier primates, not clay. If our understanding is wrong and the Old Testament god really exists, he is being extremely misleading. He has created a world that speaks against his existence. Why would he do that? It would lead countless souls to eternal damnation, with great effectiveness and to no good purpose. It's more appealing and more realistic to think that the Old Testament god was just invented by a primitive tribe. I don't know for sure whether he was or not, but the case in his favor is very weak.

These statements obviously have no factual or literal validity, fundamentalists notwithstanding, but they do offer insight into how a particular people viewed God and spirituality. There is far more metaphorical truth in the Bible than literal, though many Christians eschew such distinctions as belittling or debunking. It is this metaphorical, or perhaps allegorical aspect that comes closer to the "supernatural insight" you mention.

Bottom line: Christianity makes alot more sense if one recognizes it as a myth, not a factual, historical account. This makes it easier to see the commonalities with other myths and human symbols (back to Jung), and even to separate what is clearly human in these accounts from what just might be pointing at something truly divine.

Right, this is generally the way I prefer to view Christianity. I do think, though, that Genesis and stories like that were originally meant to be taken literally, and for the most part, always have been taken literally. Advancements in our knowledge of the world have to some extent forced people to either reject Scripture or search for symbolic truth in it. The view has been made to change from "these stories are true" to "these stories are illustrations," which I think is a fortunate evolution.

 

[Azure Flame]

No way am I going to read the whole thing.

Then by all means, please continue pulling bullshit out of your ass.

 

[Coriolis]

Right, this is generally the way I prefer to view Christianity. I do think, though, that Genesis and stories like that were originally meant to be taken literally, and for the most part, always have been taken literally. Advancements in our knowledge of the world have to some extent forced people to either reject Scripture or search for symbolic truth in it. The view has been made to change from "these stories are true" to "these stories are illustrations," which I think is a fortunate evolution.

It comes down to what you consider truth. The old stories made sense at the time because, in the absence of scientific knowledge about natural phenomena, people attempted to explain them using spiritual knowledge. That knowledge may still be true in its own way, but can answer only spiritual questions. Another case of using the right tool for the job.

 

[chubber]

Everyone needs something to believe in so as not to self-destruct.

Everyone needs something to believe in so as to be able to keep on moving.

Right, but some beliefs are more harmful than others.

It can be the same for every ideology including religion. It's due to people's lack of self-awareness, untamed fears and stuff.

I'm afraid your misunderstanding of God's covenant with mankind under the Old Testament vs. the New Testament is preventing you from seeing the truth.
Also, do not forget that God's ways and means within, among and through people have always been, and will forever be confused for what they really are by people - because people are imperfect, and only capable of seeing to the extent of their own mortality, and often their own motivations and biases.
God's work was documented in the Torah, The Old Testament, and The Koran - None of them speak to His power, grace and divinity as a being of love; that aspect of God is primarily known through the documented teachings through the life of Christ in The New Testament.
Does this mean that only Christians have a monopoly on understanding what it means to believe in the one true God, a being of great love?
No way.
In my opinion. God is also perfectly integrated within all science - contrary to the beliefs of so many. He doesn't need to differentiate between faith and laws of the universe as we know it.
That's my take.



-Halla74

Yup