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saintinsanity 07-Dec-06, 05:13 |
 Then perhaps there is another reasonJaymar, I really don't think I am missing the point at all. I agree we should all define our own truth. Most of us do anyway. But sometimes our own truth happens to agree with a particular religion or other. If you find that your own truth agrees with the truth of an established religion, then you should believe it 100%. Go ahead. Try and save everyone's soul. I commend the deed. The mistake you are making, is in thinking that anyone who has a true belief will somehow turn evil and start killing people. Of course, you are correct that it does happen in some cases, but that is just a coincidence and in no way causal. So it doesn't matter if two people believe two different things certainly. It is bound to happen, that is part of learning to deal with the world outside of your body. When the difference of conflict comes to a head, you will see a test of the man, not a test of the religion. |
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saintinsanity 07-Dec-06, 05:15 |
Soul |
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saintinsanity 07-Dec-06, 05:28 |
Jeff |
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saintinsanity 07-Dec-06, 06:19 |
To tell you the truth |
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jaymar become religion as truth, just define your own truth. Defining that truth, being dogmatic about it and closing your mind to other peoples truths or possibilities is, I believe, wrong.*** Are you *certain* matter is made up of elementary particles called atoms? I am 100% sure. Why? Surely we can agree this certainty is not unscientific? The problem or better described as the confusion you are making about my position is that I have not personally made my own truth and then out of the blue decided this is 100% true. As I mentioned before we are all the culmination of our lives and experiences and ever changing ideas and paradigms. There was a time when I was not 100% about God, but I am now because I have been given evidence that has been personally compelling. You see, for me, this evidence leaves me no rational choice but to find myself in the position I do - much the same way I find myself having no rational choice but to believe that all matter is made up of elementary articles called atoms. I appreciate your input here. You have a super sharp mind with some pretty deep insights. I'm just glad we're not having to insult each other |
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jeff I agree. Once again though, you assume, without knowing, these are the motivations in the life of the believer - a common misconception from those who lack belief. The "hook-up" has no motivation in my life. See my response to Jaymar. I am where I am because I have no choice but to recognize what has become so apparently true. |
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pawn outside the fray. although, one thing I would say, is that while I am doing my best to defend the tenable nature of my faith, I am not angry for a second at those who believe different or not at all. For instance if soul says, I am 100% right. So what? If I can appreciate my position, I can appreciate another's. Problem is neither one of us can ultimately be right. Someone will be wrong, and if I think I am 100% right that means soul is wrong. It is nothing personal, just a reality of the position I take. |
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jaymar 07-Dec-06, 06:37 |
pawn I do not think, nor did I indicate, that anyone who has a true (what does that mean?) belief will turn evil and start killing people. What I did say is that believing yourself to be 100% correct or to have definitely found the answer is unhealthy. Among other things thats how megalomaniacs and dictators think. It shows a lack of humility which is a dangerous path to be on and not very spiritual. Having an open mind seems like a pretty sensible way to live to me. There are christians, like jdh, who believe themselves to be 100% correct and muslims who believe the same. Our experience shows us that this can lead to conflict and bloodshed. My point is that they are both wrong. 100% certainty does not exist except in a subjective way i.e. in someones head. Once it enters the real world then we have a problem. I fail to see how anyone can claim with 100% certainty the existence of God. In fact in making that claim it undermines their credibility as it is obviously fanciful. It cannot be tested and therefore carries no weight. In fact jeffs original analogy was a good one. I believe 100% in the existence of Santa Claus. Makes no sense does it? |
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jaymar 07-Dec-06, 06:49 |
jdh.. I do not like to take up a set position on anything. For instance atoms are not elemental particles. We know that they are made up of much smaller particles and that these in turn can also be broken down. In fact one of the reasons I like to refer to quantum physics is because the more its investigated the more complicated it gets. Its possible that at some point the definitive particle might be found (superstring theory is all about this) and maybe that will lead us to God. Thats not meant as an insult or facetiously. We just dont know enough and the more questions we answer the more spring up. I can understand how you have to believe in God 100%. Half measures aren't good enough. You have answered the question whilst I believe it is still to be answered. |
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bobbynox 07-Dec-06, 06:51 |
Deleted by bobbynox on 23-Jan-07, 09:57.
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pawn i am curious. do you really think our life here is meaningless if there is no afterlife? that seems to miss the whole point. our existence here IS the rerason we are here. to call it meaningless is a slap in the face of god, if you believe in such. why are people so afraid of accepting this life as a magnificient gift (of god, chance, happenstance, whatever) and value it for what it is? the greatest gift imaginable...as i said...life, breath, butterflies and hot babes...perhaps 'tis nobler to accept what is here before us with gratitude and joy, and not make up something beyond, for which there is no proof. wouldn't the ultimate faith be to accept what we are given at face value? asking for more than that seems the height of arrogance (why are we worthy of life everlasting?), greed (why is not this life enough?), and hubris (we are god's gift to the universe...more so than elephants, tigers, redwoods, and jellyfish?). by the way, if i did pray..it would certainly NOT be for material things! |
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jd |
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leo_london 07-Dec-06, 10:10 |
Perhaps, reading that again, there is a good deal of self-pity there..I would still not say arrogance.. I think most of us are only too aware of our likely place in the whole scheme of things. I do envy you Jeff, if you can really ignore all such thoughts and appreciate life for what it is and nothing more. I can manage it 99% of the time..but those thoughts still creep up on me occasionally. |
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leo but yes, a human with no doubt about purpose and meaning is hardly worth being called a human. |
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oldguard 07-Dec-06, 12:14 |
Back to the start of this thread Well here is a direct quote from the Catholic encyclopedia. "In the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed:"the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God" Eh - WHAT! Just let me sit down as I am dizzy with this circular nonesense. As if three is not enough Mary, Queen of Heaven can be added and 5,120 registered saints. No one said it better than Thomas Jefferson when he said "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." I one sense I don't mind if private citizens believe in the equivelent of the tooth fairy, it is there right but when the supposed leader of the free world backed up by the most powerful military force in history has discussions with his imaginary friend and then invades another country citizens of the world are right to be concerned. Bush often uses the word evil as a noun instead of an adjective, as if evil is an independent force in itself. It is not, evil should only be used as an adjective to describe the actions or thoughts of a person or persons. e.g. "The nazi behavior was evil." This clown trashed 50 years of American forign policy seemingly on the basic of religious belief. This debate seems to have drifted into the modern equivelent of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Don't be sucked in to these abstract debates, challange the believers with the practical results of religious belief. I have not been polite here but I didn't intend to be! |
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ha! just want to see that again!!! thanks. |
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and misrepresented, but I've also, perhaps, not always made myself clear. finding myself lumped into the same company as other "true believers" who committed horrible acts has been shocking - I'm amazed people actually see religion the way they do. I seem hopelessly unable to describe things to anyone in a way that they can see what I am saying . . . am I feeling sorry for myself? yeah, a little. I think after my solitary defense here, taking all comers, I deserve, perhaps "allow myself" is a better description, a bit of time to lick my wounds, reflect, and evaluate my interactions . . . I just have no choice - I shouldn't say that; we all have a choice - what I mean is I am left with the reality that leaves me with no "practical" choice but to stake out a claim of 100%. I understand the objections - in purely theoretical vaccum I agree that I must admit the chance of being wrong - but for all practical purposes I cannot. I am left with the implications of that concept, meaning that if I am 100% right, then if you disagree you have to be wrong and being wrong carries consequences. Perhaps I was not gentle enough or tactful enough while presenting this - perhaps there is no way to hold such a position and be considered gentle ad or tactful. I wish I knew a way to explain things more clearly. I had a wonderful discussion with a Jaine (is that two "N"s?) today while interviewing. Beautiful religion. Anyway, I love all you guys. There are three things which should ever be discussed in polite company 1) Politics, 2) Religion, and 3) Her . . . Breakin the law . . . |
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saintinsanity 07-Dec-06, 17:39 |
oldguard In the sentence "The nazi behavior was evil," you have used the word 'evil' as the direct object of the sentence, and therefore it is a noun. If you want to use it as an adjective you have to say "The evil nazi behavior was wrong," or something like that. Again, I apologize for doing that, but it was the very point you were making. Now, as far as your point goes, about evil as a noun being an independent force in itself, that is interesting. We could have a long discussion about whether or not we think there is a force of evil action in the world independently, a devil so to speak. See "Santa is evil." No, i"m just kidding. But if an evil force WAS independent, it would only be fair to call it the devil. Personally, I am of the opinion that the only actions God and the Devil perform in the world anymore are through humans, and therefore not independent. Jeff, of course I don't think that life is meaningless, regardless of an afterlife. I myself don't believe in the idea of Heaven or Hell. I hold a more scientific idea about conservation of energy, transformation, and whatnot. The issue I DO struggle with, is the loss of consciousness and identity after death. I figure the spark of life within us all must return to the source somehow. I don't necessarily believe we retain all of our individual personalities, which is sad in a way. But at the same time neither do I believe all of that experience is lost. I suspect somehow, our deeds are having an influence on the ultimate reality of human experience and also God, and that we are hanging in the balance between meaning and nothingness, good and evil. If you look at where we are in history, we could go either way. We might set up camps and start eradicating people, or we might finally see. But it has always been that way, always been hanging in the balance, and it will continue to hang in the balance until the end, however the end comes. No matter. Or does it matter? Hm. I have to go post something in the Force thread. |
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saintinsanity 07-Dec-06, 17:47 |
Jd As for me, I can never get enough of this crap, and I will be here to argue with anyone about anything all the time. Well...actually, not for the next few days cause I have final exams on monday and tuesday next week. Unfortunately I'm not taking a religion class this semester. Oh, hell, it isn't true. Even though I shall be furiously studying, I will still come in here to see what you people are doing. I love you guys too. |
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leo_london 07-Dec-06, 17:53 |
A bedtime story... Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the first day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn’t what’s on your head but what’s in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped. I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange ... very strange. Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father-God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew. When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a slightly cynical tone: "Do you think I’ll ever find God?" I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically. "Oh," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing." I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out: "Tommy! I don’t think you’ll ever find him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!" He shrugged a little and left my class and my life. I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line: "He will find you!" At least I thought it was clever. Later I heard that Tommy had graduated and I was duly grateful. Then a sad report, I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted, and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe. "Tommy, I’ve thought about you so often. I hear you are sick!" I blurted out. "Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It’s a matter of weeks." "Can you talk about it, Tom?" "Sure, what would you like to know?" "What’s it like to be only twenty-four and dying?" "Well, it could be worse." "Like what?" "Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real ‘biggies’ in life." I began to look through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification God sends back into my life to educate me.) But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, " is something you said to me on the last day of class." (He remembered!) He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, ‘No!’ which surprised me. Then you said, ‘But he will find you.’ I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. (My "clever" line. He thought about that a lot!) But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, then I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven. But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit. Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn’t really care ... about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. "I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: ‘The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.’ "So I began with the hardest one: my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him." "Dad". . . "Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper. "Dad, I would like to talk with you." "Well, talk." "I mean. .. It’s really important." The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?" "Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that." Tom smiled at me and said with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him: "The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me. And we talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me. "It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. I was only sorry about one thing: that I had waited so long. Here I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to. "Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, ‘C’mon, jump through.’ ‘C’mon, I’ll give you three days .. .three weeks.’ Apparently God does things in his own way and at his own hour. "But the important thing is that he was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for him." "Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love. You know, the Apostle John said that. He said God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.’ Tom, could I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn’t be half as effective as if you were to tell them." "Oooh . . . I was ready for you, but I don’t know if I’m ready for your class." "Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call." In a few days Tommy called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me. So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it. He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever imagined. Before he died, we talked one last time. "I’m not going to make it to your class," he said. "I know, Tom." "Will you tell them for me? Will you . . . tell the whole world for me?" "I will, Tom. I’ll tell them. I’ll do my best." So, to all of you who have been kind enough to hear this simple statement about love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven: "I told them, Tommy . ... ...as best I could." This is apparently true according to the " Truth or Fiction " website. However, I did not post it for any other reason than to show that faith can have some value. Its not my faith, I suffer the uncertainties along with most of the rest of you...but should we ridicule those who have found a faith ? Sure, ridicule Bush, he would have been the same man with or without his particular religious beliefs, ridicule those who preach one thing but whose actions are completely different, most of all ridicule the priests and other religious leaders who have twisted the genuine core benefitial message that is contained in all religions..love for one's fellow man. |
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leo_london 07-Dec-06, 17:58 |
Just wanted to get to 200..it will impress Kem...where is she ? |
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oldguard 07-Dec-06, 18:17 |
Just something else leo_london thanks for sharing the Tommy story with us jdh71 I'm sorry you took a beating and that I was part of it. I wish that I could believe like you but I can't. Like pawntificator I will argue about many things. I think the purpose is to goad someone into a response so that I may learn something new. Don't feel too bad. |
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saintinsanity 07-Dec-06, 19:04 |
Nice Now I'm going to dinner and a play with my girlfriend. In the meantime, answer me this: how do you make someone understand that you love them, when you tell them "I love you" 10 times a day and it loses meaning? I'll share my thoughts later. |
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oldguard can't. Like pawntificator I will argue about many things. I think the purpose is to goad someone into a response so that I may learn something new. Don't feel too bad.*** I went toe to toe with all comers and I may feel exhausted by it all, by I by no means took a beating, in fact you and me never really got a chance to mix it up this time. I just need a break for tonight. I'll be back soon because posting here is an obsesion of a sort - I've got an opinion about everything. Till next time . . . peace |
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Jdh71 |
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thumper confrontational and I suppose that does not suit everyone's taste and that is cool. I would love it if more people posted, but I suppose that you are right about the nature of this place. |
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jd i think this place, while indeed confrontational, is, for the most part, very friendly. i enjoy arguing with you! and i like you. |
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jeff that. i love you too jeff. this place is good for my personal growth. |
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pawn i had a vision one time (albeit mushroom induced) where i saw the world as a great big ball of boiling, bubbling mud. a big glob would rise out of the whole, and that was the dinosaurs, another and that was the trilobites, another and that is insects...and so on. one of the lumps is us. we all come from the same stuff....star stuff really...and all end up together eventually....and then break off and form other things and beings. if humans survive, in 1000 years, every human on the planet will have molecules from me...and they will mix with molecules from you and every other living being alive today. and maybe eventually the big bang will reverse and we will all become one incredibly compact neutron star....only to explode again and start all over again. holy crap! who needs more than that? is that religion? spirituality? science? insanity? i don't know what it is...but it works for me. |
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jaymar 08-Dec-06, 01:21 |
Leo.. I expect it happens quite a lot and then again there are plenty of people who go to the great beyond without that cushion. Whatever I think they are all headed for the same place. I think jdh had a pretty fair hearing. Apart from the usual suspect who always goes over the top it didn't turn particularly nasty. It was obvious that there would be no conclusion. jd has his beliefs and they are not going to be shaken in here. Mainly it was within the rules. Which just goes to show that you don't need religion to have a moral code. I agree with him in that I was taught never to discuss religion or politics in polite society. However it would be hellish boring round here if they didn't come up now and then. We would be left with pawn pontificating about the correct use of English, which considering that most people just bang out the first thoughts that come into their head, could be a lifetimes work. By the way pawn you dont need a comma before "and". Sorry about that. If we are to correct each other every time somebody makes a grammatical error then we may well have found a topic even bigger than religion or politics. |
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