[quote]triple-10sets wrote:
This language were speaking right now, what does it mean ? Why does it exist ? Better yet, if nothing created it, how do you explain its existence ? [/quote]
…i have no answer to that, because i don’t know. That’s the answer to the ultimate question: i don’t know…
[quote]triple-10sets wrote:
Im not going to hell with you atheists !!![/quote]
…you’d be in much better company though!!!
[quote]ephrem wrote:
triple-10sets wrote:
This language were speaking right now, what does it mean ? Why does it exist ? Better yet, if nothing created it, how do you explain its existence ?
…i have no answer to that, because i don’t know. That’s the answer to the ultimate question: i don’t know…[/quote]
Fingers and brain are well explained by evolution through natural selection.
How life itself got started? We don’t know. YET. There are plenty of ideas in abiogenesis, but nothing concrete for now.
Language and computer were invented by man obviously. Evolution made 17 different kind of eyes in nature; man developed thousands of languages (and thousands of religions).
The universe itself? Again, we don’t know yet. We might never know that one, being inside it.
But whatever the case, made up answers, as good as they may feel, are really no answers at all.
I want to know how many angels can fit on the head of a pin…
[quote]rugbyhit wrote:
I want to know how many angels can fit on the head of a pin…[/quote]
Are they dancing?
I think I see your point, more dancing…less angels
[quote]ephrem wrote:
triple-10sets wrote:
Im not going to hell with you atheists !!!
…you’d be in much better company though!!!
[/quote]
Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
I once read a book that was good reading. It was called “MYSTERY OF THE AGES.” The author touted grand adventures with kings and nomads during his life and that he discovered the meaning of our existence.
The summary is that we are gods attempt to make another god. I believe in god, because at times I was so destitute it was all I could grasp on to.
I found a link about the book.
The below is a quote.
MYSTERY OF THE AGES
by Herbert W. Armstrong c. 1985
Author's Statement
WHY DID I WRITE THIS BOOK? I have lived a long, active, interest-packed life covering the last eight and a half years of the 19th century and all of the twentieth to the present.
I have lived through the horse and buggy age, the automobile and industrial age, the air age, the nuclear age and now into the space age. I have seen America live through the agrarian age when farmers walked behind their horse-drawn ploughs singing happily, and into the urban age when Midwest American farmers are groaning and fighting for more government subsidies to prevent the extinction of farm life.
I have seen this twentieth century develop into a state of awesome advancement and achievement industrially and technologically.. Paradoxically, I have seen alarming escalation of appalling evils, crime and violence and the crucible of nuclear war develop to threaten the very extinction of the human race within the present living generation. These conditions and facts are indeed mysteries that have remained unsolved and now need to be explained.
I have traveled over the four quarters of this globe we call earth. I have rubbed shoulders with the rich and the very poor and those in between. I have visited with captains of industry, emperors, kings, presidents and prime ministers. I have rubbed shoulders with and come to know the totally illiterate and poverty-stricken poor. I have seen this world firsthand at close range as have only the very few.
And through this long and pulsating eventful life I have asked myself many questions that were deep mysteries to me, and remain unanswered and unexplained mysteries to the world as a whole.
When I was five, my father said I was going to be a Philadelphia lawyer when I grew up, because I was always asking so many questions about so many things. I wanted to UNDERSTAND. I craved UNDERSTANDING. King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, desired wisdom, and God gave him wisdom above all others. After so many years I realize now that the same God had given me the UNDERSTANDING of life’s deepest mysteries that remain an enigma in most minds.
How did all this happen? I was reared in a Protestant church until the age of 18, but I never heard these plaguing questions explained in church. If the Bible reveals the answers, why so many denominations of Christianity and so much disagreement as to what the Bible says?
But who can understand the Bible? I certainly never had understood it. And even if one does, can one believe the Bible? Does it speak with any authority? That question puzzled me and is the mystery to be cleared up in this volume. How I came to understand began at age 34, in the year of 1926. But it only began there. The final crystal-clear reason that impelled me to write this book did not fully reveal itself to my mind until December of 1984. It was a mind-boggling realization--a pivotal truth--that will be made clear in this book.
The beginning of opening my mind to the truth covered in this book began in the summer of 1926.
I asked myself: "Who am I? WHAT am I? WHY am I?" I tried to reason out the answer, but I couldn't. It was a mystery. Then, that very autumn I was confronted with a mind-disturbing challenge on a biblical question and the theory of evolution. This resulted in opening my mind to amazing vistas and depths of knowledge and understanding.
It all started with the question of the theory of evolution and the religious question of Sunday observance.
I knew that the Bible was the world's number one selling book. Yet to me it had been an enigma. I could never understand it.
I said, "The Bible says, `Thou shalt observe Sunday.'" I was asked how did I know? Had i read that in the Bible?
I answered that I knew because all the churches observe Sunday and I supposed the source of their teaching was the Bible.
But my marriage was at stake on the question. I was forced into an in-depth study and research into the Bible and also into the theory of evolution, which was at that time rapidly gaining acceptance in the field of higher education.
My in-depth study into the works of Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, et al led me to question the authority of the Bible and even the existence of God.
These intellectual thinkers had become aware of the increasing knowledge about the universe. They could not square this expanding knowledge with the religious teaching of their time. My researches into the thinking of the founders of the evolutionary theory recalled to mind what I then read in the eighth chapter of Psalms--how King David, a monarch of an ancient nation, looked at the stars in the sky, noted the expansion of the vast universe and began to think. He wondered in his mind, what was he? What was man--in the vast expansion of the endless universe? I found that this ancient king had never received the full answer to the questions that plagued his mind. But I was later to discover, in my same research, how the final answer was revealed to the apostle Paul and explained in the second chapter of the book of Hebrews. I was determined to find absolute proof of the existence of God and of the authority of the Bible, or to reject both. Most people, I realized, accept or reject a belief on careless assumption due to whatever they have heard, been taught, or assumed without proof. I wanted to understand. And I wanted to be sure on positive proof, not on careless assumption or wishful thinking.
After many months of virtually night-and-day intensive study, the answers were revealed to me with proof that was positive and absolute.
No longer was the existence of God taken carelessly for granted because I had always heard it or been taught it. I found absolute and positive proof of the existence of the Supreme Creator God and also of the absolute authority of the Holy Bible as the Word of God--the revealed message and knowledge of God for mankind.
I found the Bible to be a coded book, with answers to the paramount mysteries confronting all humanity.
The revelation of these mysteries was lost, even to the Church of God, although the revelation of them has been preserved in the writings of the Bible. Why, then, has the world not clearly understood? Because the Bible was a coded book, not intended to be understood until our day in this latter half of the twentieth century. I learned, in this night-and-day study, why it is the most misunderstood book, even though it is the world's best-seller. The full explanation or truth of any one subject is seldom made complete and clear in any one passage. Other portions, factors, or phases of the subject are usually contained in one or several other passages in other parts of the Bible either in the Old or New Testament. A true and full understanding of this subject is profitable only when these perhaps several other passages, scattered throughout the Bible, are put together.
Vistas of knowledge and understanding that have remained the chief mysteries of life to most people were opened to my astonished eyes and mind. But it is recorded in that book that in these very days in which our generation lives, the great mystery would be cleared. And indeed it was to my astonished mind.
I learned that the Bible is like a jigsaw puzzle--thousands of pieces that need putting together--and the pieces will fit together in only one way. Then the picture becomes crystal clear to the one willing to believe what God our Creator says.
This present book merely puts the many pieces of the great puzzle together so they can be clearly understood.
As you read and reread this book, compare constantly with your own Bible. See these truths with your own eyes in your own Bible. And open your mind to God's leading you into his TRUTH as you do. It will make a lot of sense as nothing ever did before.
Time may prove this to be the most important book written in almost 1,900 years. Not because of literary excellence or flowery language of scholarship that it has purposely avoided, but because of its plainness of speech in clarifying the most important knowledge ever revealed from the supreme source of understanding of that which has mystified all humans since man first appeared on earth.
This world's humanity has been blinded to who, what and why man is--how man appeared on earth. Man has been mystified by his inability to solve his problems, or find answers to the perplexing questions of mankind and the world he inhabits.
All these mysteries were long ago revealed by the one supreme authority of all knowledge, but in a coded message not allowed to be revealed and decoded until our time.
The Church was infiltrated during the first century with another gospel. Many false teachings and false churches under the name of "traditional Christianity" arose. As God reveals in Revelation 12:9, the whole world has been deceived. These basic truths have been kept a mystery. Even sincere and well-meaning men among the clergy have received their teaching from other men as handed down traditionally in these churches. They have assumed these false teachings to be the true teachings of the Bible. Instead of putting the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle properly and sensibly together, it has become the practice and custom to read an already-believed false teaching into each particular scripture, taken out of its context. In other words to interpret the scriptures to say what they have already been taught and come to believe. The Bible needs no interpretation because it interprets itself. This becomes clear when one sees the various scriptures of each subject properly put together, and the Bible itself says, "here a little, and there a little" (Isa. 28:10). Even the world of a professed traditional Christianity has been deceived.
I have often said it is much more difficult to unlearn an erroneous supposed truth than it is to learn a new truth. Even in these past 58 years I had not fully and clearly realized the significance of the fact revealed in Genesis 3:22-24--that, in fact, God had closed the Holy Spirit and eternal life to mankind in general until the removal of Satan at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Traditional Christian teaching had always assumed there is a contest between God and Satan--that God has been trying desperately to "get the world saved," but in this great controversy Satan has been winning. In other words, God had sent Jesus Christ at his First Coming to try to win this ongoing war against Satan. Traditional Christianity has taught that "whosoever will may come" and be "saved" through Jesus.
For some years I had come to partially realize the error of this assumption, but the full truth on this point had not come crystal clear to me until very recently. This truth is indeed mind-boggling. It clears what had been clouded in mystery.
It is hoped that this book, written since God's time for it has come, will open many eyes to the truth of these long-hidden mysteries.
And now, in my 93rd year, I have been led to write this book before this event-packed life ends, to share with as many as care to know, the answers that the great supreme mind of God reveals in his Word--if one is only willing to understand that Word.
[quote]Petedacook wrote:
I once read a book that was good reading. It was called “MYSTERY OF THE AGES.” The author touted grand adventures with kings and nomads during his life and that he discovered the meaning of our existence.
The summary is that we are gods attempt to make another god. I believe in god, because at times I was so destitute it was all I could grasp on to. [/quote]
You can also check out Scott Adams’ book “God’s Debris” where the universe is thought as God trying to recreate Himself.
The premise is that an omniscient being would know everything, except whether he can survive his own non-existence. The Big Bang then becomes God’s suicide and long trek to try and remake Himself.
The book can be freely download in PDF from various places around the web, such as here: http://fringe.davesource.com/Fringe/Entertainment/Books/Scott_Adams.Gods_Debris.pdf
[quote]pookie wrote:
Petedacook wrote:
I once read a book that was good reading. It was called “MYSTERY OF THE AGES.” The author touted grand adventures with kings and nomads during his life and that he discovered the meaning of our existence.
The summary is that we are gods attempt to make another god. I believe in god, because at times I was so destitute it was all I could grasp on to.
You can also check out Scott Adams’ book “God’s Debris” where the universe is thought as God trying to recreate Himself.
The premise is that an omniscient being would know everything, except whether he can survive his own non-existence. The Big Bang then becomes God’s suicide and long trek to try and remake Himself.
[/quote]
Wouldn’t that, by definition, mean that this “being” is not omniscient?
And this sounds plausible to you, but belief in God does not? Sound like yall are trading one “superstition” for another…
[quote]Petedacook wrote:
I found a link about the book.
The below is a quote.
MYSTERY OF THE AGES
by Herbert W. Armstrong c. 1985
Author's Statement
WHY DID I WRITE THIS BOOK? I have lived a long, active, interest-packed life covering the last eight and a half years of the 19th century and all of the twentieth to the present.
I have lived through the horse and buggy age, the automobile and industrial age, the air age, the nuclear age and now into the space age. I have seen America live through the agrarian age when farmers walked behind their horse-drawn ploughs singing happily, and into the urban age when Midwest American farmers are groaning and fighting for more government subsidies to prevent the extinction of farm life.
I have seen this twentieth century develop into a state of awesome advancement and achievement industrially and technologically.. Paradoxically, I have seen alarming escalation of appalling evils, crime and violence and the crucible of nuclear war develop to threaten the very extinction of the human race within the present living generation. These conditions and facts are indeed mysteries that have remained unsolved and now need to be explained.
I have traveled over the four quarters of this globe we call earth. I have rubbed shoulders with the rich and the very poor and those in between. I have visited with captains of industry, emperors, kings, presidents and prime ministers. I have rubbed shoulders with and come to know the totally illiterate and poverty-stricken poor. I have seen this world firsthand at close range as have only the very few.
And through this long and pulsating eventful life I have asked myself many questions that were deep mysteries to me, and remain unanswered and unexplained mysteries to the world as a whole.
When I was five, my father said I was going to be a Philadelphia lawyer when I grew up, because I was always asking so many questions about so many things. I wanted to UNDERSTAND. I craved UNDERSTANDING. King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, desired wisdom, and God gave him wisdom above all others. After so many years I realize now that the same God had given me the UNDERSTANDING of life’s deepest mysteries that remain an enigma in most minds.
How did all this happen? I was reared in a Protestant church until the age of 18, but I never heard these plaguing questions explained in church. If the Bible reveals the answers, why so many denominations of Christianity and so much disagreement as to what the Bible says?
But who can understand the Bible? I certainly never had understood it. And even if one does, can one believe the Bible? Does it speak with any authority? That question puzzled me and is the mystery to be cleared up in this volume. How I came to understand began at age 34, in the year of 1926. But it only began there. The final crystal-clear reason that impelled me to write this book did not fully reveal itself to my mind until December of 1984. It was a mind-boggling realization--a pivotal truth--that will be made clear in this book.
The beginning of opening my mind to the truth covered in this book began in the summer of 1926.
I asked myself: "Who am I? WHAT am I? WHY am I?" I tried to reason out the answer, but I couldn't. It was a mystery. Then, that very autumn I was confronted with a mind-disturbing challenge on a biblical question and the theory of evolution. This resulted in opening my mind to amazing vistas and depths of knowledge and understanding.
It all started with the question of the theory of evolution and the religious question of Sunday observance.
I knew that the Bible was the world's number one selling book. Yet to me it had been an enigma. I could never understand it.
I said, "The Bible says, `Thou shalt observe Sunday.'" I was asked how did I know? Had i read that in the Bible?
I answered that I knew because all the churches observe Sunday and I supposed the source of their teaching was the Bible.
But my marriage was at stake on the question. I was forced into an in-depth study and research into the Bible and also into the theory of evolution, which was at that time rapidly gaining acceptance in the field of higher education.
My in-depth study into the works of Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, et al led me to question the authority of the Bible and even the existence of God.
These intellectual thinkers had become aware of the increasing knowledge about the universe. They could not square this expanding knowledge with the religious teaching of their time. My researches into the thinking of the founders of the evolutionary theory recalled to mind what I then read in the eighth chapter of Psalms--how King David, a monarch of an ancient nation, looked at the stars in the sky, noted the expansion of the vast universe and began to think. He wondered in his mind, what was he? What was man--in the vast expansion of the endless universe? I found that this ancient king had never received the full answer to the questions that plagued his mind. But I was later to discover, in my same research, how the final answer was revealed to the apostle Paul and explained in the second chapter of the book of Hebrews. I was determined to find absolute proof of the existence of God and of the authority of the Bible, or to reject both. Most people, I realized, accept or reject a belief on careless assumption due to whatever they have heard, been taught, or assumed without proof. I wanted to understand. And I wanted to be sure on positive proof, not on careless assumption or wishful thinking.
After many months of virtually night-and-day intensive study, the answers were revealed to me with proof that was positive and absolute.
No longer was the existence of God taken carelessly for granted because I had always heard it or been taught it. I found absolute and positive proof of the existence of the Supreme Creator God and also of the absolute authority of the Holy Bible as the Word of God--the revealed message and knowledge of God for mankind.
I found the Bible to be a coded book, with answers to the paramount mysteries confronting all humanity.
The revelation of these mysteries was lost, even to the Church of God, although the revelation of them has been preserved in the writings of the Bible. Why, then, has the world not clearly understood? Because the Bible was a coded book, not intended to be understood until our day in this latter half of the twentieth century. I learned, in this night-and-day study, why it is the most misunderstood book, even though it is the world's best-seller. The full explanation or truth of any one subject is seldom made complete and clear in any one passage. Other portions, factors, or phases of the subject are usually contained in one or several other passages in other parts of the Bible either in the Old or New Testament. A true and full understanding of this subject is profitable only when these perhaps several other passages, scattered throughout the Bible, are put together.
Vistas of knowledge and understanding that have remained the chief mysteries of life to most people were opened to my astonished eyes and mind. But it is recorded in that book that in these very days in which our generation lives, the great mystery would be cleared. And indeed it was to my astonished mind.
I learned that the Bible is like a jigsaw puzzle--thousands of pieces that need putting together--and the pieces will fit together in only one way. Then the picture becomes crystal clear to the one willing to believe what God our Creator says.
This present book merely puts the many pieces of the great puzzle together so they can be clearly understood.
As you read and reread this book, compare constantly with your own Bible. See these truths with your own eyes in your own Bible. And open your mind to God's leading you into his TRUTH as you do. It will make a lot of sense as nothing ever did before.
Time may prove this to be the most important book written in almost 1,900 years. Not because of literary excellence or flowery language of scholarship that it has purposely avoided, but because of its plainness of speech in clarifying the most important knowledge ever revealed from the supreme source of understanding of that which has mystified all humans since man first appeared on earth.
This world's humanity has been blinded to who, what and why man is--how man appeared on earth. Man has been mystified by his inability to solve his problems, or find answers to the perplexing questions of mankind and the world he inhabits.
All these mysteries were long ago revealed by the one supreme authority of all knowledge, but in a coded message not allowed to be revealed and decoded until our time.
The Church was infiltrated during the first century with another gospel. Many false teachings and false churches under the name of "traditional Christianity" arose. As God reveals in Revelation 12:9, the whole world has been deceived. These basic truths have been kept a mystery. Even sincere and well-meaning men among the clergy have received their teaching from other men as handed down traditionally in these churches. They have assumed these false teachings to be the true teachings of the Bible. Instead of putting the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle properly and sensibly together, it has become the practice and custom to read an already-believed false teaching into each particular scripture, taken out of its context. In other words to interpret the scriptures to say what they have already been taught and come to believe. The Bible needs no interpretation because it interprets itself. This becomes clear when one sees the various scriptures of each subject properly put together, and the Bible itself says, "here a little, and there a little" (Isa. 28:10). Even the world of a professed traditional Christianity has been deceived.
I have often said it is much more difficult to unlearn an erroneous supposed truth than it is to learn a new truth. Even in these past 58 years I had not fully and clearly realized the significance of the fact revealed in Genesis 3:22-24--that, in fact, God had closed the Holy Spirit and eternal life to mankind in general until the removal of Satan at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Traditional Christian teaching had always assumed there is a contest between God and Satan--that God has been trying desperately to "get the world saved," but in this great controversy Satan has been winning. In other words, God had sent Jesus Christ at his First Coming to try to win this ongoing war against Satan. Traditional Christianity has taught that "whosoever will may come" and be "saved" through Jesus.
For some years I had come to partially realize the error of this assumption, but the full truth on this point had not come crystal clear to me until very recently. This truth is indeed mind-boggling. It clears what had been clouded in mystery.
It is hoped that this book, written since God's time for it has come, will open many eyes to the truth of these long-hidden mysteries.
And now, in my 93rd year, I have been led to write this book before this event-packed life ends, to share with as many as care to know, the answers that the great supreme mind of God reveals in his Word--if one is only willing to understand that Word.
[/quote]
He sounds awfully confident, but didn’t discover the meaning of life I am afraid. Monty Python did.
[quote]triple-10sets wrote:
Im not going to hell with you atheists !!![/quote]
HAHAHAHAHA.
Don’t worry, you’re probably not going to heaven either.
[quote]pat wrote:
Wouldn’t that, by definition, mean that this “being” is not omniscient? [/quote]
Omniscient with one exception.
Then again, having God walking around in Eden looking for Adam doesn’t sound too omniscient either. Same as being unable to oppose iron chariots makes for a poor kind of omnipotence…
Who said anything about plausible? The book itself is subtitled “A Thought Experiment.” There are some interesting ideas in the book about morals and beliefs.
I can read books of fiction, like “God’s Debris” or “The Bible” or “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and enjoy them without believing them to be true.
I like this part:
[i]
“Look,” I said, “four billion people believe in some sort of God and free will. They can’t all be wrong.”
“Very few people believe in God,” he replied.
I didn’t see how he could deny the obvious. “Of course they do. Billions of people believe in God.”
The old man leaned toward me, resting a blanketed elbow on the arm of his rocker.
“Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions.”
“A belief in God would demand one hundred percent obsessive devotion, influencing every waking moment of this brief life on earth. But your four billion so-called believers do not live their lives in that fashion, except for a few.”
“The majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs – an earthly and practical utility – but they do not believe in the underlying reality.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “If you asked them, they’d say they believe.”
“They say that they believe because pretending to believe is necessary to get the benefits of religion. They tell other people that they believe and they do believer-like things, like praying and reading holy books. But they don’t do the things that a true believer would do, the things a true believer would have to do.”
“If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing.”
“Are you saying God doesn’t exist?” I asked, trying to get to the point.
“I’m saying that people claim to believe in God, but most don’t literally believe. They only act as though they believe because there are earthly benefits in doing so. They create a delusion for themselves because it makes them happy.”
[/i]
See? Now you understand 99% of believers. Read the rest, it’s rather interesting.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Then again, having God walking around in Eden looking for Adam doesn’t sound too omniscient either. Same as being unable to oppose iron chariots makes for a poor kind of omnipotence…
[/quote]
God didn’t HAVE to look for Adam in Eden. He’s shaming Adam, who he knows is hiding. He calls upon him and asks further rhetorical questions making Adam and Even choose to confess what they’ve done. And, God does choose to work within limits when dealing with humans and the physical world.
[quote]pookie wrote:
pat wrote:
Wouldn’t that, by definition, mean that this “being” is not omniscient?
Omniscient with one exception.
[/quote]
There are no omissions in omniscience. To lack knowledge of one single thing is no longer omniscience. The definition is rigid.
That is if you take the story literally as fact. It is a story to express truth about creation. It isn’t a historical book or an archaeological book, it is a philosophical book. In the ye olde days, people taught about God using stories and parables. That’s how people gained understanding. Some poeple take the bible as literal, which causes them huge problems when they run into literal paradoxes contained with in.
I am late in the game, I didn’t realize it as a work of fiction. I thought it was something to believe it.
[quote]
I like this part:
[i]
“Look,” I said, “four billion people believe in some sort of God and free will. They can’t all be wrong.”
“Very few people believe in God,” he replied.
I didn’t see how he could deny the obvious. “Of course they do. Billions of people believe in God.”
The old man leaned toward me, resting a blanketed elbow on the arm of his rocker.
“Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions.”
[quote]
What a joke. That is excessively superficial. Essentially you communication with God is personal thing. Religion is just a means to an end. For some, certain religions help them achieve that goal better than others. They have to choose what gets them that communication the best. I would argue that multiple religions are necessary to be accommodating for the masses, even if those religions aren’t perfect. It does the trick for them.
That was a heresy in the early Christian church. The flesh matters, what you day to day matters. Abandoning life to crawl on your knees in devotion 24/7 is not why people are here. If that were the case nothing would get done and man would have disappeared. Day to day activities fun and not fun matters. You have to do it all. Perpetual devotion is useless if you check out of life to do it. Sounds to me this guy is an idiot.
How the hell would he know…Did he ask them all?
Oh brother. I am curious what he believes a true believer should do, where hair-shirts, pray and beat themselves. Living day to day, doing your day to day activities IS what you are supposed to do. Sure you need to pray and educate yourself in matters of faith, but most peoples job is to do their day to day stuff. Very few people are called to pure devotion. Most of the time that is a waste. People who are purely devotional aren’t much use to the rest of us. I am pretty sure God doesn’t want or need a perpetual ass kissing. Hell, I’d find that annoying if I were God.
Man…“…usefulness of believing”. This guy doesn’t have a clue what the fuck he is talking about. I surprised he is published. He is trying to speak for the mind set of all believers, be he doesn’t know that. He can’t know it. I don’t know where he is getting his conclusions. His ass I guess.
He like most Atheist’s have a problem in that God doesn’t in your face obvious. So he chooses to be mysterious, does that fact automatically detract from the fact that he exists? Can you say, “God is not obvious, therefore he does not exist”?
[quote]pat wrote:
Man…“…usefulness of believing”. This guy doesn’t have a clue what the fuck he is talking about. I surprised he is published. He is trying to speak for the mind set of all believers, be he doesn’t know that. He can’t know it. I don’t know where he is getting his conclusions. His ass I guess.[/quote]
Simple observation.
He bases his conclusion on what believers claim to believe, vs. how they act in life.
It’s not hard. Christians claim to want to pattern their lives on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
How many really act and speak like Jesus would?
How many seem to even make an effort?
The author doesn’t call himself an atheist, if memory serves.
Never mind “in your face,” God’s not even “hiding behind a shoe box in the closet with the lights out” obvious.
No, but at one point, when something is so mysterious as to be indistinguishable from non-existent, you gotta ask some questions.
[quote]pookie wrote:
He bases his conclusion on what believers claim to believe, vs. how they act in life.
It’s not hard. Christians claim to want to pattern their lives on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
[/quote]
Well, we try.
How many are completely free of sin? None. We’re not Jesus Christ himself. We don’t claim christianity makes us into God. But, we do try. And hopefully improve ourselves along the journey.
Very few. But that’s not suprising to Christians. We try to remember that good trees bear good fruit, and the bad trees bear…well, bad.
[quote]pookie wrote:
pat wrote:
Man…“…usefulness of believing”. This guy doesn’t have a clue what the fuck he is talking about. I surprised he is published. He is trying to speak for the mind set of all believers, be he doesn’t know that. He can’t know it. I don’t know where he is getting his conclusions. His ass I guess.
Simple observation.
He bases his conclusion on what believers claim to believe, vs. how they act in life.
It’s not hard. Christians claim to want to pattern their lives on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
How many really act and speak like Jesus would?
How many seem to even make an effort?
[/quote]
Nobody can act like Jesus. However, anytime somebody does something good, it is a “Jesus like” act, no matter how small. I see people doing good all the time, but a lot more people should do good.
True, I made an assumption, just like he did about believers at large.
Yes, ask questions. You have to. Doubt is a good thing, it strengthens faith. But non-existent I disagree with, he does make more obvious interactions. They are called “miracles”, something tells me you don’t believe in those.
That’s okay, because even though your an Atheist, I think deep down your a good hearted fellow. Anybody who has guinea pigs can’t be all that bad 
[quote]pat wrote:
Yes, ask questions. You have to. Doubt is a good thing, it strengthens faith. But non-existent I disagree with, he does make more obvious interactions. They are called “miracles”, something tells me you don’t believe in those. [/quote]
Miracles? Haven’t seen one yet.
Soon they’ll be plump enough to eat.