I've seen an instance where if someone dies at the wheel and drives in to your house it's considered an AOG. I'm sure there are more ridiculous ones.Originally Posted by Gary Wassner
Have any of you folks read The God Delusion? There are some great insights in that book. Helps clear up the insanity rather well.
Ouch!
My God, Zoro. Mine!!!
hee hee hee
I don't know if you have kids and maybe we should just make a comparison with your parents. Would you say your parents could predict what you would do in a given situation? Would you probably say they could assume you would act in a certain way because they know you so well?
It's that God knows us so well that allows him know what we need. We think we know what we need, hence why some prayers go unanswered, but God really knows what we need. We're like little kids going, I want to eat candy all day every day. Parents know, this is very unhealthy and hence do not reward their children as such.
What if we haven't created the structure that needs God? What if he actually exists (you have to look at it from this pov to get my argument)? Then, following God is the most important thing. In the Bible God said, "Thou shalt not kill", but he also said "Thou shalt utterly destroy." Given the situation, what is important is that we follow God no matter what he commands us to do, given the proper authority. Just anyone who claims they saw a vision, does not mean that everyone should follow them.
Do you have any evidence to support this belief? I mean, it's nice, but what makes you think it bears any relation to reality?
And if God knows us so well, why does he think that those who died in, say, the huge earthquake in Pakistan needed to be crushed by falling rocks and masonry? Did they really need that? Do I need my eyesight to be degrading, and my back muscles to be intermittently flaring in agony?
A terrifying statement....following God is the most important thing. In the Bible God said, "Thou shalt not kill", but he also said Thou shalt utterly destroy." Given the situation, what is important is that we follow God no matter what he commands us to do, given the proper authority.
As I have discussed in another thread, evidence is up for debate. I see evidence in everything; in the vast universe, in my heart, in absolutely everything. That, however, is different for everyone as not everyone sees evidence.
What is death? I believe death is an escape, a release from this terrible world. You mention flaring back muscles and other terrible occurrences, then why is death so bad? It really just depends on how you look at it.
God doesn't try to hurt you, but at the same time, I think affluence is a curse. People may think someone is blessed by being beautiful, famous, or rich, but I think those are curses if anything. People have a tendency of becoming prideful and selfish.
Some people look at difficulties as challenges; ways of finding out what they are capable of.
I'm not trying to tell everyone they have to believe in God, I'm just saying that you can't just say people are stupid if they believe in God. I'm not the one starting threads about it all the time I'm just defending the view point.
Last edited by Seak; November 25th, 2008 at 11:17 AM.
Seak
That is the most disgusting sentiment I have ever heard. It excemplifies the sheer self-centeredness, love of death, and romanticised totalitarianism of the religious worldview.
If the world is so horrible and life is such an burden, then give away all your possessions, refuse medical attention when you're sick, and foreswear your citizenship. Stop trying to influence elections. Stop running for office. Stop voting.
For all its faults, the West is the guiding light and the safe haven in this savage world. It's the closest thing to paradise humanity has ever and will ever find, and it's the fruit of humanity's own labors, not the alms of some idealized king.
I honestly wish I could take you back to a time when faith really did rule the world, society's power structures were seen as divinely-inspired, and folks lived short, miserable lives enlivened only by religious ecstasy.
That still doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. That means that people misused their understanding of God and that's it.
I just don't get why everyone's so concerned with death. We all have to do it. It is not good when a bad person causes death, but that doesn't mean that it's God's fault.
If anything, death shows that there is a God. What else is our purpose here, but to die if there is no God?
What is death? Simply the total collapse of the neulogical nexus that produces consciousness.
We're concerned with death and with the quality of individual life and freedom. In the West, people are free to seek their own purpose. To try and live as they want. To make experiments and let those experiments be a path or a warning to others.
In a non-Western society, the purpose of your life is defined for you: to advance a collective meme. Death becomes the ultimate cop-out, the sop for all injustice. But it depends on the pious driving it into humanity's skull that this world and this life is excrement and can never be anything more, and that the best use of your life is to submit and die.
Death then becomes the blank slate to write all your unfulfilled wishes and terrifying fears. It becomes the goal and the ideal of the pious, who in their perversion yoke life to the service of death.
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.
From "The Preacher and the Slave" by Joe Hill.
I wouldn't say death is the ideal of the pious. It's about living this life to its fullest and becoming the kind of person you want to be to face what comes after this life.
What I don't get is that it seems like those who do not believe in God feel it is their collective duty to warn everyone that does believe in God that to do so is juvenile and ridiculous.
Believing in God, at the least, gives people hope and happiness. Why would you want to put that down?
With all due respect, evangelicalism is hardly limited to atheists...
Because faith and religious has once more reared its head to become a political force in free societies and among our enemies, and we must do battle.
En Garde!
C'mon now...
Are you opposed to women's lib as a political force? Civil rights? The Military? Government? Bars? International trade?
Just because you find the beliefs of one particular politically active group in a "free society" to be distasteful or wrong is hardly sufficient reason to denounce it on those grounds. You're not opposed to religion and faith as a political force -- you're opposed to exercising political force based on something you hold to be a falsehood. But in a "free society" you impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom you disagree is disallowed. These individuals/groups, too, are "free" in a "free society" -- including holding the desire to impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom they disagree is allowed.
That's the fundamental paradox of multiculturalism in democracy. It's much easier to create hegemony when you disallow multiculturalism, not so easy when you allow it.
So if you really believe in a free society, isn't it a bit ridiculous to argue against a certain group freely expressing their beliefs to shape democratic governance? Hmm?
Ender-of-threads strikes again.En Garde!
C'mon now...
Are you opposed to women's lib as a political force? Civil rights? The Military? Government? Bars? International trade?
Just because you find the beliefs of one particular politically active group in a "free society" to be distasteful or wrong is hardly sufficient reason to denounce it on those grounds. You're not opposed to religion and faith as a political force -- you're opposed to exercising political force based on something you hold to be a falsehood. But in a "free society" you impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom you disagree is disallowed. These individuals/groups, too, are "free" in a "free society" -- including holding the desire to impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom they disagree is allowed.
That's the fundamental paradox of multiculturalism in democracy. It's much easier to create hegemony when you disallow multiculturalism, not so easy when you allow it.
So if you really believe in a free society, isn't it a bit ridiculous to argue against a certain group freely expressing their beliefs to shape democratic governance? Hmm?
But for serious, not one of you guys read the god delusion?
Dangnabbit, I always do that!
Nope, didn't read it. Read a summary, saw an interview. Got the gist. But I may pick it up.
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