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Post by Arilan on Nov 15, 2005 10:56:05 GMT -5
I'll talk to you Ave. Whilest Jest sits over there and betrays his bloodline....  First off, we don't know everything there is to know about Satan and his fall ect and so forth. There isn't massive amounts of details aboutthat in the Bible because, frankly, the Bible was never meant to be the answer to every question. It was made to answer all the important, relavent questions. It also wasn't made for God to explain his every thought process to you. But, and this seems to be your big problem with it all, yes God gave people and angels free will and created the thing that would make them fall. But the point is not that he made it. He didn't want us to sin. But for us to have free will we had to have a choice. If you go to vote, and there's only one person running for an office, you can either vote for them or not vote at all. But neither of those things is a vote against the guy. So it's no choice at all. Same thing here. if your choice was to love God or....nothing, then it's not free will and it's not even real love. You can't be forced to love someone else. That's not what love is. And it's not like God created a bunch of stripers, stuck Adam in the middle of them and said "Don't lust". He made on tree, in the middle of a forest and said, "Please don't touch it. It's a fatal plant." he wasn't setting us up to fail. (PS: Jest you are sooo lucky! whenever I get into one of these talks, which is more frequent than you'd think, cause I'm usually the only Christian on my sites, I always end up with four church/bible sites open, my personal Bible, prayer journal and the Message version open on various parts of the comp me and the floor and a set of really annoyed siblings who keep telling me things like, "I don't know why God did/said that. Wait until you get to heaven and ask him!" *grumbles* Sooo lucky.) |
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Post by Avelon on Nov 15, 2005 18:58:44 GMT -5
Yay!
If God didn't want us to sin, why give us a splendid opportunty to do so, knowing we would? Or the capacity to sin? I don't ask to know God's thought processes; I ask to know why bother?
Let's say you build - from scratch - an electric pencil sharpener, then leave out the blade to sharpen the pencil. You know it won't sharpen your pencil, yet you stick the pencil in anyway. Why bother? Does being all-powerful and all-knowing give you some better reason to stick your pencil in there?
I do my very best to not try and second guess higher powers, but I sometimes find I must: The only remotely logical reason for God to have created us I can find is for entertainment. Knowing we would fall into a hole he placed equates to pushing us into a hole we wouldn't have fallen into. God must have wanted us to sin, because he knew we would and did nothing to stop it.
Another analogy: I know you will reply to this post, but I'm not going to lock the thread. It can be deduced that I want you to reply, even if you make an ass out of yourself and/or me in doing so. It's not about free will to post - I know you will. I could do any number of things to STOP you from posting, because I'm a Gmod...but I won't.
The Bible is not the Big Book of Answers, no. It contains theories (theories simply because much of what's written there cannot be proven). But as I see it, it doesn't answer the important questions - why do we exist? Why does God require we worship him? Why do we have to believe in Iesas/Jesus? It tells us we do exist, that we must pray and believe in Iesas/Jesus - but it never says why. The Bible is not made to prove anything; it's made to be a guide to people who are willing to believe on their own. "Do this and don't do that." What does that prove? Nothing.
As to the strippers bit, Adam didn't have the capacity to lust, as lust is a sin. Humans were animals in the beginning; the only deviance from other animals being opposable thumbs.
The Bible was written by men, not by God. It is inherently flawed, because each man had a different perspective. Take, for instance, the books written by the four Apostles - they often contradict one another, as each man saw events differently. A large portion of many of the New Testament books is comprised of men having visions. Today, I'd call John the Baptist comfortably insane - but back then, he was holy as nuts.
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Post by Arilan on Nov 16, 2005 21:45:12 GMT -5
Okay I'll ignore all the rest of for a bit, not because I can't answer it, or am afriad to try, but because there really is one main issue here.
God is a God of love. He is love in the best way. And because he is so much love, he generously decided to create morepeople that could share that love with him
And thse people had to have the ability, even as he did, on whether to love him or not. Because, as I said, without choice there is no real love. So he created them knowing, completely what would happen.
But not knowing that the ywould fall so he could watch in amusement. No, he knew they would fall and he would have to die so that they could be saved. He created us anyway, because he loved us so much, even before we existed that he was willing to go through that kind of pain for us even though he had the choice not to.
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Post by Avelon on Nov 17, 2005 5:49:12 GMT -5
That sounds dangerously like an assumption to me - how do you know this is a 'God of Love'? Why do you say that's the reason God created everything and everyone? Don't hesitate to point at verses in the Bible; I can look it up. Just bear in mind that one man claiming it was all out of love doesn't make it so. Now, since apparently it's okay to use logic (Hahaha) when talking about religion, I'd like to point out the definition of 'love': dictionary.reference.com/search?q=loveLove is a directed emotion - a reaction to someone or something, or more specifically, the thought of that someone or something. You thus cannot love something that does not exist. God may have loved the idea of making stuff, but at best, before then he was just happy because he's omnipotent. If there must be a God, and he did in fact create all things, my conjecture is that he desired/desires entertainment that comes from outside of himself, and so created reality as we know it and gave it free will, after setting up some preliminaries to get the whole thing rolling. My idea of 'God' is a cynical being, as I can't imagine any all-knowing who's been watching from the beginning of time NOT being cynical. |
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Post by Arilan on Nov 17, 2005 11:19:05 GMT -5
Okay, using your own definition Love: A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. Now, you say yourself God is all knowing. Tha the knew what was goign to happen in the future. well if that's the case then I would say it is possible for him to have loved us from before we existed. Cause the reason you love other people is that you know them. You know what they like and dislike, what they want to do and what they have done, and you've spent time and shared experiences with them. Well God knew/had all of that from even before we were created. As for him being cynical well dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cynicalThat is what cynical is supposed to be. And I can't see God being that. Cause I mean, he knows that no matter what's happening now, that there is hope because in the end good will triumph and evil will perish, because he set it up that way. |
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Post by Avelon on Nov 17, 2005 14:18:16 GMT -5
Cynical: "Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others"
Can you honestly say that we are not motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns? If you can, I want to live on your planet. Time has shown, over and over again, that humans were, are, and most likely will always be selfish. This is another topic for debate entirely, but my theory is that every thought and deed is done out of self gain.
Now then...
Assuming we were indeed created by a God, before we existed we were just ideas. Even if I knew everything there was to know about you, there's no guarantee I'd love you. Knowing and loving are two different things, after all.
...and what's this talk about 'hope'? When you get to the final boss of an RPG, you don't have 'hope'. You know you just saved, and that it is destined that you will win. You're just looking forward to the pretty CGI after you beat up the boss. If you know you will win, then at best, you hope the ending doesn't suck as much ass as FFX's ending did.
Now, I have to ask... You've agreed with everything I said in those original two posts, albeit trying to pretty God up a little...so what exactly is being debated?
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Post by Arilan on Nov 20, 2005 13:20:53 GMT -5
Because I don't agree babe.
I absolutely could not stand to live in the world(or rather with the world view) yo usay yo ubelieve in.
Seriously I would've killed myself long before now if I didn't have the absolute knowledge that I have a God who loves me like his daughter, and the knowledge that, in the end, whether I die or whether I live to see the end of the world, God wins and I will live forever in his presence where there is no pain or evil.
He is there, he knows me, every tiny little speck of who and what I am, he is by my side every second of every day, and he loves me. He knows me to my core and he loves me completely anyway.
Even if you don't believe that(since I highly doubt a couple of random posts would change something as solid as your core beliefs) don't yo uat least want that to be true?
I mean I can understand the stigma of Christianity and how you would decide that you can't believe in it, but what I just said I believed in, isn't that something that you'd like to be able to believe?
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Post by Avelon on Nov 20, 2005 18:37:47 GMT -5
I don't think I've gone into any great detail describing what my beliefs ARE, to anyone here except perhaps MysticalMirror. You know what they aren't, so I suppose I should let you know what they are. Let's just start with Christianity as a base, because, believe it or not, my beliefs coincide with Christianity more than you might think.
- 'God' is a force that is not wholly sentient. The whole is not sentient, but the many parts are, and the parts are wise, so there is little if any conflict in 'Divine Will', if you'll pardon the expression.
- We are all parts of the whole in spirit, but are not connected to the whole. "Let us make them in our image" translates to the spirit or soul; not the body. I don't know if 'God' said that, or anything else it supposedly said, so I take it to be an accurate guess by our friend Moses. I'm fairly open in this respect, BECAUSE I don't know.
- Reincarnation is a series of trials; the soul is a shadow of the mind, and will have the knowledge of every mind it inhabits. To clarify: There's a copy of every brain your soul has ever been a part of in your soul. It began as simple spiritual energy, as empty as the brain of a newborn child.
- The prophet Iesas was nothing more than a prophet. I believe he existed, but not that he was sent as the son of 'God' to tell people about it.
- 'God' could care less if people worship it or not. I respect the parts and the whole, but do not worship either. I don't feel the need to pray, either, as I firmly believe that 'God' will not intervene on request.
That said... No, I don't want the things you said to be true. I'm secure in my beliefs, and in all honestly, looking at the differences from a material point of view, I find mine to be more appealing.
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Post by Arilan on Nov 21, 2005 18:13:05 GMT -5
*hugs*
I'm sorry.
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Post by Avelon on Nov 21, 2005 19:52:07 GMT -5
You're sorry for what?
. o O (Ooh. Soft.)
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Post by Kaleb on Nov 21, 2005 20:16:20 GMT -5
Since you've distracted Ave with irrelevancies, I'm gonna go straight to the heart of this matter of faith.
Why do you believe what you believe?
It certainly isn't from God revealing himself to you. No, you believe because someone, likely your parents, told you about this God. Like their parents told them.
There is no empirical evidence that supports the existence of a God. None. I'm sorry, but there isn't. You might find an anecdote somewhere, but I assume you realize that anecdotes are worthless when what one is after is truth.
The truth is, no one has done anything but accept the existence of God on blind faith for centuries. I doubt I need to mention other things that people have accepted on blind faith? (World is flat, Sun orbits Earth, etc.)
So back to the beginnings of your belief:
Your parents told you about God, I imagine. They also likely told you about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but people generally don't get the correlation.
So, with nothing to suggest there is a God, why do you believe in one? Merely out of fear of a world without a real purpose, or perhaps of the oblivion that comes after death? Obviously, this is a form of personal weakness and insecurity, but it still fails to suggest anything except that humans are perennially dissatisfied with their environment?
So anyway, what makes your belief different than say, someone's belief in omnipotent raven tricksters?
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Post by Avelon on Nov 23, 2005 17:46:08 GMT -5
Since no one else is apparently going to post, I guess I'll follow up with a different point.
Take a minute to think - really think - about what I'm going to say, and you'll agree with me...
Everyone who believes in something greater than humanity has their own perspective of what that thing is. Even two members of the same religion will have different perspectives of their God/s. Since no two people are alike, their idea of perfection is not going to be the same.
This is because perfection is something that is compared to one's self and deemed to be sufficient in certain qualities to be considered 'perfect'. My idea of a perfect man is someone who is strong, but not superman, tall (about my height, I'd say), extremely intelligent, grey eyes, and white hair.
But wait... I didn't fully describe this 'perfect' man - I left out some features, nationality, skills, and a multitude of other things.
And this is how I think religion got started. Someone told a story, and the kid took it to heart. Have you ever played the game 'rumor'? One person comes up with a sentence, then whispers it to the next person. The next person changes one word and passes it on. So on and so forth. The sentences are rarely if ever even similar. It could very well be that the story was about an evil monster with immense power would come down from the sky and eat children who weren't asleep.
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Post by Arilan on Nov 29, 2005 11:54:23 GMT -5
The hugging...I don't know what I was thinking(I wasn't, frankly. I didn't realize I'd even posted in here).
But beyond that:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Kaleb gave me 4 mingraines the last time we discussed this. Ave gave me one, before Kaleb got here.
And it's not so much I don't know my own faith or why I believe what I believe, it's just I haven't spent my life studying the parts of it that are important to the two of you.
But hey, let's see if I can hang on by my finger nails here.
Ave, yes, I freely admit to telling anyoneb who asks that, as a child I was taken to a church by my parents because they wanted me to believe in something.
But, and this is the important part, they gaveme free will to chose my own religion/fait hwhen i got old enoughto undertand what I was doing.
And I went through and read the texts and doctrines etc etc for all the big faiths. But there was nothing in any of them that made sense all the way through. It would seem to make sense, but then contradict itself. Or it would end up sounding like the msot arrogant piece of human inspired crap ever created.
I went and I looked, an I wasn't a Christian for at least six months to a year of my life. But in the end I chose Christianity, because it does make sense. It's so basic, so simple, that at times I find it hard to understand how people can't understand what it really is.
And as for the 'perfect' thing, well you described what you think a perfect man would be like. Physically.
But 1) we're talking about God here, not a man
2) He isn't perfect physically, he's just perfect. He is love and holiness and everything good and nothing bad.(BTW: it says in the bible that Jesus was a...less than attractive example of the male species)
And I do believe that there are absolute definitions of good and bad.
GAH! Sorry for the shortness and not responding to Kaleb, but I have class in like...5 minutes ago.
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Post by Avelon on Nov 29, 2005 16:15:17 GMT -5
Hm! Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and sharing opinions is what debating is all about. So let's dig right in.
Please don't take this as me criticizing your parents, because I'm not: Telling you all your life that alcohol is horrible in every way, will lead to your downfall, will kill you, and then on your 21st birthday pouring you a shot and giving you the choice to drink it...isn't a choice. It's a test to make sure what they've pounded into your head for 20 years successfully took root. Children are extremely impressionable, and above all things, religious beliefs take advantage of that, inadvertantly or not.
I could see myself describing the Bible with those words, though chances are I wouldn't be as harsh.
And I have to add that I'm insulted that you would say something that hypocritical in a debate you started. The Bible contradicts itself. It doesn't make sense MOST of the time. What makes YOUR God better than everyone else's? What makes you think yours is the only, the one TRUE God? Every Holy Book in the world tells the same story, with variations and cultural nuances, set in a different place and with a God who has a different name. Arrogant? How about Christians calling their God - Yaweh - just 'God', as a symbol that they hold their beliefs over others, rather than accepting that others' beliefs are equal to their own, though they don't believe the other religions are necessarily RIGHT? That's arrogance.
What is it? What makes it special? What makes it work for so many people? I was part of a church once. I was 'Saved', and even baptised. I have multiple copies of the Bible, one that's beautifully done and has my name on it in gold script, even. I come from a family of Christians on both sides. But after all that, I think it's Christianity I don't understand; the organisation. The faith. I have my own ideas about 'God', but I'm able to put them aside to talk on a neutral level if necessary. If you can give me answers, I'll gladly shut up and listen - but so far all you've given me are false leads and things that are either opinion (which I can't touch or even really comment on), irrelevancies, or things that are easily run into the ground with a little LOGIC.
Yes. I used a man as an example because the definition of 'human' is something I think we can agree on. My point was that if YOU described your idea of a 'perfect' man, it would not only differ from mine, but would include things I didn't describe and most likely leave out things I would, if I wrote everything I think makes a man 'perfect'. It's relative. That's all I'm saying. True perfection, even, is relative. I could argue all day that no God from any religion is absolute perfection.
Sorry, but those are also relative. If I gave a beggar $20, knowing he'd just go buy alcohol, is that good or bad? Good that I showed compassion, which is a virtue - bad that I helped him kill a few more brain cells and contaminate his body. Also, they're two sides of a coin. Relative, as I said - without 'bad', there's nothing to compare to, and so 'good' cannot exist as a concept. In a world with literally NO evil whatsoever, there would be deeds done that you or I might consider good, but in that world they're nothing exceptional.
In closing, if you don't mind, I'd like to nudge the...'debate', I suppose, more towards the religion. I could care less about your God if I tried, but I don't care enough to put forth that much effort. No offense; it's just that comparing Divine thingy sizes is pointless. Your ideas about your God are your own, and I can accept that if you can accept that others have their own ideas, and they're just as valid as yours unless you can prove you're right.
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Post by Zade on Nov 29, 2005 22:38:33 GMT -5
So many long posts...I'm practically intimidated.
Nontheless!
I too was once a Christian. I was saved, and my dad still thinks of me as a saint. Over the past year or so I've looked into many of the world's religions, and have assimilated things I've liked. None of them being actual doctrine, as I follow more or less the same thing Ave follows(as he himself pointed out, differeneces are an inevitability. I'm sure my version involves a bit more Ice and spears than his, but that's a bit beside the point).
The main reason I distanced myself from Christianity, and probably the main reason so many people hate it, is because Christians are thingys. They really are. Last time I was forced to go to Church(week before last. Woe is my social life), my preacher stated, as many high-status Christians have, that he fully and truely belives that God sent the hurricanes to punish the evil sinners in New Orleans(Despite the fact that the French Quarter wasn't hit). He felt just as other famous Christians have that any major dissasters that have occured in Dover(the town that recenetly allowed the teaching of Evolution in their science books) would be well deserved, for they have turned against their God.
Is...is that love?
One of the extremely few times I've argued publically(the Public that surrounds me are all dyed-in-the-wool Hyper-Christians that can recite a thousand verses and ALL carry different versions of the Bible in their bookbags, many that contain the original Latin text, ect, ect) against Christianity was after a large discussion in class. It was me facing the rest of the class.
The topic was on missionaries. Apparently the belief is held that if you arn't publically saved by an ordained minister you will burn in everlasting hell forever and have no pity or mercy shed on you by the Loving and Graceful God that Loves his children with all his Great Big Heart.
Goody. I brought up the fact that many, indeed, MOST people in the world have no chance of ever reading or learning of the Bible.
Primitive tribes have no connection to the outside world. The only way they can find out about Christianity is on the off chance that a mission group find them, speaks their language, and can convince a group of nomads that they are living in sin and will burn forever in hell if they don't join the crazy white people.
Then there's third world countries! People there are too busy dieing of sickness and not-eating to read holy doctrine, and I just love the church's stance of "Just read the Bible! You'll be rewarded in the afterlife!" Where, instead, you could give them FOOD and they can LIVE longer than a few weeks.
Then there's the small towns and suburbs, the category I fall in. Now I and the rest of the people who make up the 1% of the population that arn't Christians are often scoffed at, and distanced from. I couldn't care less, but what about Average Joe? He's just trying to live in the world, and make a name for himself. Perhaps he wants to be a sports star or a news reporter. When people find out he's not a Christian in this small community, he will be ostricised and discriminated against. So what does Average Joe do? He puts on his Christian hat and does the Christian dance! Woo-hoo! In these cases, people join the religion of that sub-culture. Deviance from that comes with large consequences, so it's a rare case. Average Joe isn't about to start wondering about the ups and downs of Transcendentalism any time soon. So imagine a small town in Iran. Do you think a kid there can one day get up and say "I'm going to become a Christian today!"
All these people? Burning alive forever according to most Christians. I mean, obviously that SHOULD be the case, since God visists every person's dreams and tells them that they should follow him.
Then there's perhaps my favorite of arguments. I myself know plenty of people who are Christians, who attend church, go to prayer groups, and who have their Bibles locked and loaded, who are idiots, racists, sexsists, jerks, and (My personal favorite)Hypocrits. All these people will go to Heaven and be happy and have a gay old time.
Then there's the people who are truely good natured, who always stop to help people when they see a person pulled over with a flat tire, the person who donates to charity, and the person who follows the perfect moral life. These people just happen to be of a different, or of no faith. All these people shall be sent to the fiery pits of hell and will have the flesh burnt from their bones as all reality continues. For all ETERNITY they shall be in constant and unimaginable pain. They shall never have a moment's rest from the terrors and demons that shall rip and tear at their soul. Meanwhile, the racists/sexsists/jerks/drunks/gamblers/sinners/and Hypocrits who just happened to be dunked in water or have some water sprinkled on them will be in Heaven, enjoying everlasting and all-encompassing peace for eternity.
That? That's magical right there. Yeah. That sounds really loving and...and nice...yeah...
Edit: Sorry if this seems unduely harsh. But earlier today a Hindu and close friend of mine was berated in class for not being a Christian and not celebrating Christmas, and I just had to get some stuff off my chest.
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