...
So an atheist has to be enough convinced that he is right to be tolerant to believers, but he also has to stay open to any evidence that he might be wrong, as the scientific method demands.
I am open to evidence that I am wrong. I have been asking for it. All I got was "the Bible says that it is the evidence" type of arguments. Then there are guys like CoinCube who jump to the conclusion that there must be some sort of pantheistic God because some things cannot be proven in Mathematics. And that this God is a Christian, Trinity God. Cell death is an irreversible process. When you die, you are dead, no conscience, no memory, no more you. Whatever religious fairy tale one believes is irrelevant. Religious people are increasingly becoming irrelevant. In a few decades, religious beliefs (aka fear of death) will be diagnosed and lumped together with other phobias. |
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But his offence budget, and the wall budget are to be increased. When will Washington start to give it's colonies like the bankrupt California some support, and stop wasting the American tax payers' money on regime changes and banking and pharma profit increases?
Currently, the US is paying about 0.4 trillion in interest payments a year. The US needs to cut 2-3 trillion a year to control the ever-expanding debt levels. So make those cuts 27 trillion in 10 years to produce any substantial impact on the US debt. 2.7 will do squat. The debt will double in 10 years to 45 trillion. The interest payments alone will be north of 1 trillion per year as the interest rate has nowhere to go but up. Tax revenues are at 3 trillion, you do the math. It is like if you were making 30K/year, bought 210K house and were paying 4K in interests on the mortgage and your wife wanted to remodel the home every year, hire gardeners and build a nice, metal fence around your property. But you spend 25K in living expenses, have no money for the renovations and/or for principal payments. What do you do? You borrow more, like 30K/year. So your debt level is increasing every year while you still make 30K/year. PS. Look at the February deficit, this is a train wreck waiting to happen: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-budget-deficit-widens-to-234-billion-in-february-2019-03-22?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo |
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What part of there's a giant bearded dude in the sky that created earth and man don't you understand?
Notbatman is a simpleton or troll who ignores all scientific evidence, believes that everyone is engaged in a giant conspiracy to hide the nature of the planet and can apparently only visualize an infinite creator as a big man in the sky with a giant beard. Nevertheless he is correct in this one implication. The existence of a creator is a straightforward and logical a priori. There is no observed example of spontaneous and sustained de-novo creation in the observed universe. Yet here we are and we can trace our existence back to a unique moment of infinite creation when the entire universe emerged and then expanded from a single point in space and time. Given the complexity of the universe and ourselves the belief there is a creative entity behind it all is indeed not hard to understand. Bible is clearly and 100% without a shadow of doubt a flat earth book. So what part of creation account exactly you do not understand, globo loving..don't know what. Hey wtf are you and Batty doing in here? This ain't Flat Earth claptrap trolling, ffs. It's the magic invisible bearded sky fairy dude discussion. This is not discussion about gravity. You're out of azimuth today my friend. In fact you're out all the time.  Time to wake up as bonus period is slowly coming to an end.  You are conflating multiple delusions while traversing some remote parts of your schizophrenic realm. |
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Without cash, it will be hard to finance bribes and other criminal activities. Z-cash anyone? |
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Considering the current events I'm beginning to question the ban of weapons in the population... I'm not talking about a country where there are weapons and you ban them, cause that doesn't work (bad guys don't just hand out their weapons) but about a country where weapons are banned and could be unbanned. Here are the pros and cons I see in a country with ban on weapons: -Pros - Lower murder rate because knife are less deadly
- Less or even no mass shootings and no accidents like "4 year old killed brother playing with dad weapon"
- Less police kills because policemen don't have to be paranoid as 99% of criminals don't have guns
-Cons - You're completely at the mercy of your government. You can't do anything against it as angry as you can be
- You have to rely solely on state police, which can be great but only if it's efficient
Problem to me is that the submissive state of the population is really a huge red flag. When I see how powerless European citizens are currently... When you got riots government just increase number of policemen... Would you support freedom of weapons trade in a European country without weapons? Considering freedom of trade doesn't mean without huge regulations of course. I still own guns in 9 mm and .308 calibers. And to be frank, I don't need them. The chances I would have to use them are pretty slim. The only reason you would want to own a handgun or shotgun is for self-defense. But in Canada, self-defense using a handgun would at minimum get you firearms storage violations plus a manslaughter charge. So I don't even think about using them in that situation. Most likely you will get a 1st-degree murder charge if you kill an intruder in your home. Long arms can be used for hunting. Which I did when I was younger. I killed many animals unnecessarily, I ate them all. Skinning an animal is a very gruesome process and for what? Meat that tastes like shit? I think hunting is for idiots who just want to kill something. Some 'hunters' don't even eat the animals they kill. They just want the head trophies to compensate for their small appendages. What guns are useful for is target shooting. You can do that with air or 22lr handguns, no need for .45ACP handguns or 0.50 revolvers. Rifle long range target practice can be fun and challenging as well. I participated in IPSC and PPC competitions, reached top classifications in both, after that it was boring, the only change was the level of lead in my blood. One of the reasons I had to stop the hobby. So I can honestly tell you you don't need guns. If you dream about defending yourself against the government, you might as well kill yourself with your own gun. You stand no chance against SWAT or Navy Seals teams. These people train constantly, are physically, mentally fit and can shoot better than most when shot back. When 25-50 of such guys swarm your house and you point a gun at them, you will have 3 seconds to drop it or you are dead. So forget about using guns for self-defense. It is ok to shoot paper when the paper does not shoot back, just monitor your blood lead levels. |
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You need to remember that the Bible doesn't declare that the earth is flat. How do we know? Up until the time of the printing press, the Bible was written on scrolls as often as it was written in book form. This shows that the earth is cylindrical. ... With such 'incredible' inductive skills, no wonder you convinced yourself that the Bible stories are true. "Bible is true because it says so...". Following your logic, all human heads are round, all soccer balls are round, there are brains in all human heads, therefore all soccer balls have brains inside them. LOL. Try deduction for a change. ROLF. |
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if we are poor we cannot have many things, especially in the economic field we will weaken, before we can get rich we can have whatever we want something will be achieved, especially buying luxury homes, cars until we buy whatever we like. Most rich people understand the value of capital and know how to preserve and increase it. Poor people do not understand what capital is, do not know what to do with it when/if they get it. |
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You have no proof that afterlife or any Gods exist, yet you somehow think you stand on the higher moral ground by having these irrational beliefs.
Goodness can also be brought by people who do not contemplate God and are convinced that belief in the supernatural is a bunch of horseshit. How would you explain that? LOL.
You are an enigma to me. You seem to understand what I am talking about, but yet have this mental block when it comes to your irrational assumption about the 'creator of the universe who influences the world through the actions of people who believe in him'.
How in the world can you prove that your God influences the actions of people who contemplate him? Aren't hardcore Atheists not God's children? Aren't billions of Hindus or Chinese Buddhists not God's children?
It’s very easy to prove God influences the actions of people who contemplate him there are examples of this happening every day. Here is a personal one. I am a physician. Yesterday I had a patient come in to see me who was very poor and on Medicaid. In my field most providers in my specialty do not take Medicaid because it does not pay particularly well. The patient in question was a candidate for an interventional procedure I do to help with her condition. Most private insurances would have paid for it Medicaid will not because well because its Medicaid and sometimes you get what you pay for when it comes to insurance. So I put her on my schedule and will do the procedure for free. Why, because I can, she can benefit, and she honestly has no way to pay for it. She is poor I am not. I would not have done that 5 years ago before I started to contemplate God. In fact I would not have seen her at all because business is business and it is certainly not good business to do things for free or for that matter to see Medicaid patients at all. Now did God do that or did I do that? Well it was certainly me but I only did so because at some point in my life I started to contemplate God. So God gets the lion’s share of the credit probably all the credit because it was ultimately God and my contemplation of him that led to the act of mercy. Goodness can indeed be brought into the world by people who do not contemplate God. Hardcore Atheists and billions of Hindus or Chinese Buddhists are most definitely God's children. Undeniably many of them by our very lenient human standards are good. You seem to place a high value on charity and helping others. Perhaps you would have done the exact same in my shoes. Perhaps you would do far more good and for far greater numbers if you had the exact same resources and skill sets I do. That is not the point. Some people are innately taller, some stronger, and other are more inherently good or evil then others. I am somewhere in the middle not particularly good not particularly evil average overall, I'd say except for academics I was blessed to be above average in that area. These differences are often inherent some people are naturally compassionate other have no inherent empathy at all. The question is how we exceed ourselves. How do we go beyond our build in default condition? What is the best way to become good if we are not naturally very good or become better if we are already good? The answer is two-fold: 1) we can in theory fundamentally change ourselves at the biological or mental level. We lack the ability to do this now but there is no doubt this kind of change is coming soon and will almost certainly go catastrophically awry if we are not much wiser by the time it gets here 2) We can accept a fundamental Truth and worldview that forces attention to goodness front and center and into every aspect of our lives and propagate that Truth into the future. This second option is transformative. If chosen on a large enough scale it may just prevent or more realistically delay our self-destruction once the first option becomes possible. The mental block is yours as is ultimately the irrationality I understand your particular block well enough to know that you will translate all of this as my psychological need for irrational beliefs or God in order to "feel good" or "be good" or “address my insecurities.” In doing so you will entirely miss the point. I understand why you think the way you do because I once shared a worldview not all that different from your and then rejected it so it is not hard for me to slip into old habits and envision the world as you do. The reverse is probably not true hence the enigma. CoinCube, I still do not see that it was God who influenced you to help the lady. It was you, not your God. You might think it was God, but the reality is it was you and only you who made that decision. You could have done the same thing if you contemplated your own life, the life of other people around you, or humanity in general. People think the God helps them because it is a useful psychological self-help. It builds confidence in your actions. It is like people who in survival situations believe that everything will be ok and survive, will actually increase the chances of survival. Same goes for sick people, those who believe that they will get better (believers or Atheists) will actually get better without medical intervention. Some religious people will scream 'miracle', but the reality is that the body's immune system is helped when patients reduce stress. The use of your psychological help (aka God) is fine if you need it, but it does not make him or her real. Like I said before, many people who know that your God does not exist do a lot of good in their communities. It is not God it is people who do good things. I hope you understand that much. BTW, there are also many people who kill or start wars in the name of (your or other) Gods. Do you remember George W. Bush conversations with God? Did you see what ISIS is doing? These people are convinced they are influenced by God, but the reality is they are doing what they are doing. People are responsible for their good and bad actions. Only people, there is no God involved because God does not exist. God is the product of an overactive imagination. That is all. |
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Germans learned squat after WWI and WWII. I would not be surprised if they will be the root cause of WWIII. These people are sick to the core. I hope Turks and Arabs will destroy their country. They deserve it. |
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Nah... I am amazed by all the life that is around us. I do not worship it. I appreciate it.
Life is, just is. Whether I am alive, whether I am amazed by it or NOT. It was here billions of years before me, and it will be here in billions of years after I die.
The difference between our positions is that you focus on the afterlife, I focus on this life when we are alive.
There is no afterlife IMHO. You beg to differ.
You think that the afterlife is more important than this life. That is why you don't value this life the same way I do.
To you this life is worthless, the life in the afterlife is the prize you are after.
The concept of God that you have invented is just mental imagery and feelings you have developed to help you believe that there is an afterlife; the afterlife you so desperately seek.
In this you have judged me incorrectly. I don’t think an afterlife is more important then this life. Any afterlife would be an extension of this life built upon the foundation we create in the here and now. I also believe you are wrong about the afterlife but even if you are right it would change nothing. God brings goodness into this world primarily via the actions of his children who contemplate him. If God had not yet created the conditions necessary for an afterlife then the sacrifice called for by his creations would be much greater but our duty would remain unchanged. Genesis 28:12 and John 4:38 can give you a hint as to what that duty would be. Fortunately, for us the same text tells us that the necessary price has already been paid. Ultimately even the afterlife is secondary. What matters most is what we ourselves are and that in turn is driven by what we choose to worship. Goodness can also be brought by people who do not contemplate God and are convinced that belief in the supernatural is a bunch of horseshit. How would you explain that? LOL. You have no proof that afterlife or any Gods exist, yet you somehow think you stand on the higher moral ground by having these irrational beliefs. You are an enigma to me. You seem to understand what I am talking about, but yet have this mental block when it comes to your irrational assumption about the 'creator of the universe who influences the world through the actions of people who believe in him'. How in the world can you prove that your God influences the actions of people who contemplate him? Aren't hardcore Atheists not God's children? Aren't billions of Hindus or Chinese Buddhists not God's children? |
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Nah... I am amazed by all the life that is around us. I do not worship it. I appreciate it.
Life is, just is. Whether I am alive, whether I am amazed by it or NOT. It was here billions of years before me, and it will be here in billions of years after I die.
The difference between our positions is that you focus on the afterlife, I focus on this life when we are alive.
There is no afterlife IMHO. You beg to differ.
You think that the afterlife is more important than this life. That is why you don't value this life the same way I do.
To you this life is worthless, the life in the afterlife is the prize you are after.
The concept of God that you have invented is just mental imagery and feelings you have developed to help you believe that there is an afterlife; the afterlife you so desperately seek.
That's your religion ^^^. Why? Because for all the evidence you can bring to show it, there is much more evidence against what you believe. Prove that there is life after death. Shoot yourself in the head and post pictures before and after. There is no life after death, I am convinced about this fact. If you have ( 'so much more') evidence to the contrary, please do share it. |
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I said, "if you must worship". I don't need to worship anything.
I cannot believe it. Are all religious folks so shallow to think only about themselves and their salvation?
It is all about you and your personal pleasure.
Why would you even think that someone would want to be good to others to satisfy their own personal whimsy?
You are good to others so that others feel good. That is what selflessness is all about.
Maybe religious people cannot become truly selfless that is why you don't understand or trust what I am talking about.
Maybe that is why you invent the supernatural to satisfy your pathological lack of empathy for human beings.
You need the supernatural because you lack connection with other, physical life.
I am afraid our nervous systems are wired differently that is why you do not truly trust and understand what I am saying.
Instead, you look for invalidation of my position elsewhere by inventing that reason to fit it into your worldview.
I am walking, talking Jesus or Budda compared to you guys.
You are wrong on that point af_newbie. Everyone worships something. Your only choice is what that worship is centered on and whether you are going to be aware of what you are worshipping. ... Nah... I am amazed by all the life that is around us. I do not worship it. I appreciate it. Life is, just is. Whether I am alive, whether I am amazed by it or NOT. It was here billions of years before me, and it will be here in billions of years after I die. The difference between our positions is that you focus on the afterlife, I focus on this life when we are alive. There is no afterlife IMHO. You beg to differ. You think that the afterlife is more important than this life. That is why you don't value this life the same way I do.To you this life is worthless, the life in the afterlife is the prize you are after. The concept of God that you have invented is just mental imagery and feelings you have developed to help you believe that there is an afterlife; the afterlife you so desperately seek. |
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I would suggest a change of focus. The important question is not what unknown information might be out there in the universe that will be novel or force me to modify my worldview. Clearly there are probably quite a number of such discoveries. They are also entirely unknown and unpredictable. We have no control over future discoveries. All we control is ourselves. Among the choices we face perhaps the most critical is the choice of what to worship. Everybody worships something though it’s often subconscious. David Foster Wallace highlighted this well in one of his well known speeches. “You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship. Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and display. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” As for the concern that my chosen worship will not allow me to accept future discoveries because they run contrary to my faith I honestly think that cannot happen. One of the advantages of choosing to worship God is that it moves the object of worship outside of the closed system. See: An Argument for God. In doing so a full understanding of the system becomes the natural goal. If you MUST worship something, I suggest you worship life (plants, animals, including humans), develop deep, meaningful relationships with people, animals around you. As for the closed or open systems, it is your assumption, just like your assumption that God must exist. We are here on this Earth for a very short time; make the best of it. Impact lives of people around you in a positive way, create good memories. That is all you can do. You did not exist for billions of years, you exist only for about 80-120 years if you are lucky, then you go back to non-existing forever (or about 20 billion years as some estimate, then the Big Rip or Big Crunch will destroy all atoms in your body and the rest of the universe). We are indeed only on this earth for a very short period of time and your suggestions on ways to make the most of that time are not bad ones. 1) Impact the lives of people around you in a positive way. 2) Create good memories. 3) Develop deep, meaningful relationships with people. 4) Love and respect life (humans, plants, animals). These are all good suggestions but do they qualify as the objects of worship that Mr. Wallace described above? To answer that we must ask another question. Are we valuing those things as means to an end or an end in itself? Perhaps what we are really after is personal pleasure and satisfaction and feel those rules the best way to achieve it. In that event personal pleasure is our true object of worship not the suggestions. We despite our fine words are much more akin to the hedonist placing our pleasure above all else. One man might value deep meaningful relationships another endless one night stands personal preferences vary. Or perhaps we are really value successful reproduction and ensuring our genetic line extends propagates. Maybe those suggestions are our opinion on how best to achieve that. In that case we are again worshiping reproduction not the fine suggestions. One man may opt for the strategy of being the reliable family man, another might seek to be a scoundrel to seduce and then repeatedly abscond at the first opportunity. Strategies like personal preferences also vary. Or maybe just maybe we actually value those things as an end in an of themselves. That is far less likely. BADecker was correct when he noted that most of the time what we humans do is self-worship. If we value something as an end in and of itself we become more concerned more with the essence of those things and less about their impact on us personally. If we truly treasure deep, meaningful relationships or the love and respect of life as an ends then our primary concern will not be maximization of those things in our personal lives though that will most certainly happen. Instead our primary goal will be ensuring those treasured ends grow stronger in the world and do everything we can to ensure that after our deaths we leave a world with more of those meaningful relationships and a greater love and respect of life then was there when we entered it. If we value something as an ends we must ask ourselves how do I make sure I work towards those ends even if I don't want to or I am tired. What will keep me on track when those ends no longer give me the pleasure they once did or they become costly. How do I grow those many good things in a world that is not necessary fertile soil for the principles and does not prioritize them. A system is obviously necessary. A system that strengthens us and helps keep our focus on necessary goals. I would propose two alternative rules from which your four goals can be naturally derived from. 1) Love God: This unifies all creation under a father. It makes all of us and all of life siblings to one another. 2) Love your neighbor as yourself: This dictates how we are to treat our siblings. I would suggest that your list of good things follows naturally from genuine application of the two premises above. Furthermore I would highlight that the the above two rules are viable as ends in and of themselves and not just as means. Finally I would point out that their exists a well structured system built around those principles that already exists to help support and propagate them. What we worship ultimately defines what we are. I said, " if you must worship". I don't need to worship anything. I cannot believe it. Are all religious folks so shallow to think only about themselves and their salvation? It is all about you and your personal pleasure. Why would you even think that someone would want to be good to others to satisfy their own personal whimsy? You are good to others so that others feel good. That is what selflessness is all about. Maybe religious people cannot become truly selfless that is why you don't understand or trust what I am talking about.
Maybe that is why you invent the supernatural to satisfy your pathological lack of empathy for human beings. You need the supernatural because you lack connection with other, physical life.I am afraid our nervous systems are wired differently that is why you do not truly trust and understand what I am saying. Instead, you look for invalidation of my position elsewhere by inventing that reason to fit it into your worldview. I am walking, talking Jesus or Budda compared to you guys. |
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If you MUST worship something, I suggest you worship life (plants, animals, including humans), develop deep, meaningful relationships with people, animals around you.
All you are saying is that you want your suggestion to be worshiped. But you recognize that you might be off a little in some way, so you hide your mistakes in the idea of worshiping nature. But understand it for what it really is. It's self-worship. You did not understand my comment. It had nothing to do with 'self' and all to do with other life you interact with. |
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You missed his point. His point was that in the future we could discover how the world (and all the parallel universes) were created naturally. Your position is not allowing for any future discoveries to be accepted because it would invalidate your 'God the creator of all things' position entirely.
An honest position is to say: we know what we know, what we don't know we don't know...
Exactly. Just look at history. Was it not more logical to believe in a god 5000 years ago? I believe it was. People had so little information about anything, a big bearded man in the sky seemed quite logical. They also believed the earth was flat, can you blame them? Of course that was shown to be not even close to reality. I would suggest a change of focus. The important question is not what unknown information might be out there in the universe that will be novel or force me to modify my worldview. Clearly there are probably quite a number of such discoveries. They are also entirely unknown and unpredictable. We have no control over future discoveries. All we control is ourselves. Among the choices we face perhaps the most critical is the choice of what to worship. Everybody worships something though it’s often subconscious. David Foster Wallace highlighted this well in one of his well known speeches. “You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship. Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and display. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” As for the concern that my chosen worship will not allow me to accept future discoveries because they run contrary to my faith I honestly think that cannot happen. One of the advantages of choosing to worship God is that it moves the object of worship outside of the closed system. See: An Argument for God. In doing so a full understanding of the system becomes the natural goal. If you MUST worship something, I suggest you worship life (plants, animals, including humans), develop deep, meaningful relationships with people, animals around you. As for the closed or open systems, it is your assumption, just like your assumption that God must exist. We are here on this Earth for a very short time; make the best of it. Impact lives of people around you in a positive way, create good memories. That is all you can do. You did not exist for billions of years, you exist only for about 80-120 years if you are lucky, then you go back to non-existing forever (or about 20 billion years as some estimate, then the Big Rip or Big Crunch will destroy all atoms in your body and the rest of the universe). |
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Nevertheless he is correct in this one implication. The existence of a creator is a straightforward and logical a priori. There is no observed example of spontaneous and sustained de-novo creation in the observed universe. Yet here we are and we can trace our existence back to a unique moment of infinite creation when the entire universe emerged and then expanded from a single point in space and time. Given the complexity of the universe and ourselves the belief there is a creative entity behind it all is indeed not hard to understand.
There are a ton of problems with this kind of argument. For one, something that might seem logical now, might not be logical tomorrow when we find out whatever new information that changes everything. Perhaps our understanding of the universe is not even 0.01% correct. Second problem would be that even if it's logical to think there is a creator, the argument still doesn't show it's the god from the bible and not other god. Regarding #1 Our knowledge may indeed expand in the future and invalidate some of current understanding. However, changing or shaping your current worldview based on hypothetical future knowledge that may or may not ever exist is not a path to a sane or stable worldview. Regarding #2 If there is an entity that created the universe then by definition that is the God of the Bible for such a creator is by definition God. This would be true even if the Bible was somehow shown to be incomplete or inaccurate in its description of said creator.You missed his point. His point was that in the future we could discover how the world (and all the parallel universes) were created naturally. Your position is not allowing for any future discoveries to be accepted because it would invalidate your 'God the creator of all things' position entirely. An honest position is to say: we know what we know, what we don't know we don't know. We know the universe was much smaller in the past, probably was a singularity when the spacetime that we know and experience 'became available' in its current form. Who knows what the future discoveries will bring? Maybe the spacetime that we know was in a different form, and we never actually had the singularity. Just a different form or state (with unknown Physics). What is known to be 100% true is that the stories about Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, and all the other ancient Gods are fairy tales (from the crypt, pun intended). |
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Are you are talking about a functional transformation?
How did your body or mind functionally changed since you 'accepted' God?
Let me give you a hint. Good people remain good people despite believing or disbelieving in imaginary friends. Same goes for the bad apples.
Again, a real example would be helpful to understand where you went wrong.
In regards to “good people” I suspect we would have trouble agreeing on the definition of that term. here is a comment I ran across a few months back that stuck with me. Not my words but I have found them to be true. “I have often noticed. The further the unbeliever is from God...the more "good" they believe themselves to be. Contrastly, the nearer one draws toward God...the less good they see in their own life! God is the light the reveals the sin within us. As we draw nearer that light...so that sin is revealed. As we move further ...so that sin disappears in the darkness.” The proper term would be a spiritual transformation. Perhaps that’s why you are struggling with the concept. Materialist reject the existence of the spirit so naturally it’s difficult to understand the transformation of something that you refuse to acknowledge exists. As I said before the closest analogy in materialist phraseology would be an update or revision of the core operating system. That is the problem. I don't even know what does 'sin' or 'spirit' even mean. They are abstract concepts developed to instill fear and bondage in the gullible masses. So what you're talking about is mumbo jumbo in my 'materialistic' world. Makes absolutely no sense. Crazy talk. |
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What part of there's a giant bearded dude in the sky that created earth and man don't you understand?
Notbatman is a simpleton or troll who ignores all scientific evidence, believes that everyone is engaged in a giant conspiracy to hide the nature of the planet and can apparently only visualize an infinite creator as a big man in the sky with a giant beard. Nevertheless he is correct in this one implication. The existence of a creator is a straightforward and logical a priori. There is no observed example of spontaneous and sustained de-novo creation in the observed universe. Yet here we are and we can trace our existence back to a unique moment of infinite creation when the entire universe emerged and then expanded from a single point in space and time. Given the complexity of the universe and ourselves the belief there is a creative entity behind it all is indeed not hard to understand. I think we already re-hashed the God of the Gaps argument. You need to dig deeper for more original arguments. |
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What transformation are you talking about? Are you 'transforming' right now?
Can you post the before and after pictures from your transformation? What exactly did you transform? Please be specific.
Maybe a computer science analogy will be easier for you to follow? When you download an operating system onto a computer what kind of transformation is that? Physically the change is unobservable the computer and hard drive look exactly the same. Nevertheless the functional changes and the effect on the behavior of the system is profound. Choosing God is the human version of this general type of transformation a revision to the core operating system. Nearly completely unobservable yet at the same time fundamental. Are you are talking about a functional transformation? How did your body or mind functionally changed since you 'accepted' God? Let me give you a hint. Good people remain good people despite believing or disbelieving in imaginary friends. Same goes for the bad apples. Again, a real example would be helpful to understand where you went wrong. |
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