RE: Evidence God Exists
January 5, 2011 at 5:25 pm
(This post was last modified: January 5, 2011 at 5:42 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
Watson Wrote:Prayer always works when done in complete kind and understanding. A certain state of mind is required.Right now, I have no reason to believe that the 'certain state of mind' is 'unquestioning faith.'
Watson Wrote:Not at all. But praying isn't about praying for a specific thing; it is about seeking an answer, searching for something which will reveal to you what comes next or what you are to do in light of certain circumstances. You don't ask God to shit out a gold bar and expect results; you ask God to show you where the bar is, and, if you're paying attention well enough you will find your answer.And this is different from self-determination, how?
Watson Wrote:Because it isn't like God goes and gets the bar for you and does all the work. You are the one seeking an answer, searching for that 'gold bar.' You have to be in that state of mind and actually open to whatever answer you find. Say you ask God why a family member died, and how you are meant to cope with such an event...the answer is within you and God will guide you to it, you just have to be willing to listen. You still don't ask God to actually make things happen just because you want them to happen, unless of course it's meant to happen that way, and if things don't go your way then you ask God how to deal with that. Which shouldn't really be too hard on your own, anyway; you can't always get what you want.So how exactly is "the answer is within you and god will guide you to it" different from "the answer is within you and you can guide yourself to it"?
The idea of god appears to be entirely superfluous.
Watson Wrote:Because it has proven itself to be beneficial to me throughout life, in fact, it has worked. Not only that, but lacking faith has proved to me in the past to be detrimental to me as a person.I'm sure that means you've a great deal of self-determination, even if you think it means that you think it's because your invisible friend is helping you.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan