hopey Wrote:

Cyberman Wrote:I see lots of "I believe" up there, but not even an attempt at "I can demonstrate" or "I have evidence". Work on that first, then we can talk about what your genie can do for me.

I actually have plenty of personal evidence, evidences that God has shown me. I know, not just believe. I believe if you are open God can show you Himself too.

The thing about personal evidence is that it's personal. If you experienced getting abducted by aliens, you have personal evidence of that occurrence. But that doesn't mean I should believe it really happened if all you've got is a story.

(May 11, 2017 at 9:28 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

hopey Wrote:I actually have plenty of personal evidence, evidences that God has shown me. I know, not just believe. I believe if you are open God can show you Himself too.

The thing about personal evidence is that it's personal. If you experienced getting abducted by aliens, you have personal evidence of that occurrence. But that doesn't mean I should believe it really happened if all you've got is a story.

even if the aliens are from Kolob ?

hopey Wrote:Hi all,

Hi, hopey. I haven't seen you since page 1. I 'hopey' you're okay.

hopey Wrote:To me the devil is out to destroy lives, to constantly cause harm, whether it be through trying to pick our faults, and press them. Or to just ravage lives.

I don't believe the devil is real. If the devil IS real, he's clearly a slave to God and not doing anything God doesn't allow. You'd think we can be sufficiently evil on our own that we wouldn't need a divinely-appointed cheerleader encouraging us to be worse. It's really absurd when you think about it, if you take it literally.  

hopey Wrote:I believe that God wants to heal lives, to bring rest peace and joy to people.

If God is real, and omnipotent, there's literally not only nothing stopping him, nothing could stop him.

hopey Wrote:I am also a person who believes that God will reach into any situation, to find the good in us. As a human I often look at the negatives, but God at the positives. The reason why each of us has breath is due to the fact that God still sees some good in us all.

If you're consistent enough to not believe a God like that would create a place of eternal torment for dead humans, that would be refreshing.

hopey Wrote:So why the soppy story? Well I want to offer some thing. I believe God wants to be involved in each of your lives, no matter how strongly you feel he is not there, wrong, ignorant of you etc.

If God is real he is welcome to involve himself in my life and I invite him to compel my belief. My free will isn't worth eternal excruciating torment. If it's good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me.

hopey Wrote:I have made some claims in some other posts that God has answered prayers that have been prayed. I want to reach out to you in some form of blessing. To pray that God would show his great love for you.

Thanks, maybe he'll listen to you. I'll let you know if he contacts me. In the meantime, I have to note that praying to God seems to have the same success rate as praying to anyone/anything else.

hopey Wrote:If you have any need in your life I ask you would you be willing to lift it up to God, to just see what he is willing to do for you. 

I was a Pentecostal for years before I noticed that my answered prayers seemed to be a matter of remembering the hits and forgetting the misses. Since it's a very important question, I suppose the need in my life is for any version of God that actually exists and cares whether I believe in it or not, to contact me without me having to believe first. Because I can experience making telepathic contact with any entity I want or can imagine if I believe I can first and put in some effort. But that seems to be a recipe for self-delusion, doesn't it?

hopey Wrote:So just to get the discussion going is there anything that you think God would be please of in your life?

I would hope that if there is a God, he would be pleased that I am kind and generous to children and animals and most people; and that I'd rather believe an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie.

(May 7, 2017 at 4:36 am)hopey Wrote: Hi all,

When I went to high school I had buck teeth, and every one called me rabbit. Fortunately I had dental work done that fixed my teeth. But it was rather hurtful to have people pick out our faults. To me the devil is out to destroy lives, to constantly cause harm, whether it be through trying to pick our faults, and press them. Or to just ravage lives. 

I believe that God wants to heal lives, to bring rest peace and joy to people. I am also a person who believes that God will reach into any situation, to find the good in us. As a human I often look at the negatives, but God at the positives. The reason why each of us has breath is due to the fact that God still sees some good in us all.

So why the soppy story? Well I want to offer some thing. I believe God wants to be involved in each of your lives, no matter how strongly you feel he is not there, wrong, ignorant of you etc.

I have made some claims in some other posts that God has answered prayers that have been prayed. I want to reach out to you in some form of blessing. To pray that God would show his great love for you.

If you have any need in your life I ask you would you be willing to lift it up to God, to just see what he is willing to do for you. 

So just to get the discussion going is there anything that you think God would be please of in your life?

UGGGGGGGG...........

Finding comfort in fiction does not make the claim true, it merely means you like the idea of a hero protecting you.

"Allah wants to heal  you"...... Still make sense?
"Yahweh wants heal you".......Still make sense?
"Buddha wants you to reach Nirvana"...... Still make sense?
"Vishnu wants to  heal you" Still make sense?

The Ancient Egyptians were successful for 3,000 years believing in their gods, they believed in Ra and Isis and Horus and Osiris, and even the healing god Thot, as fervently as you do now with what you believe. 

How about YOU consider that this is just you falling for your own emotions and desires. How about you consider someone introduced you to the god you now believe in before you had any shot of critically thinking about the credibility of what they sold you?

Humans were around long before your religion existed. Humans were around even long before any nations or even written religion. Our species in it's current form has only been writing for 10,000 years and we started to emerge with no writing 150,000 years ago. 

Our planet is 4 billion years old, and in it's history of evolution has had 5 mass extinctions, and again, in that 4 billion year history humans have only been around a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that time. 

Our sun is one of hundreds of billions of suns, just in our Milky Way galaxy. Our universe has an estimated 200 billion galaxies in our observable universe. Our universe is 13.8 billion years old. 

How about considering it is your want, and not a real thing. A mere desire based upon your mental projection of human qualities in fictional form.

I cannot bring myself to believe the fantasy of a fictional hero knowing how old our planet, solar system, galaxy and universe are. No, I don't believe all this was put here for humans. I believe humans project their own qualities and desires into claims of the super natural.

You'd have me believe an all powerful being would wait most of 13.8 billion years to make us and put us in a mostly hostile universe and put us on a violent planet full of volcanos, earthquakes, natural disaster, disease, and have most of that 150,000 year history of or species in scientific ignorance, and wait only until 10,000 years ago to allow us to write and form cities, only to fight over which god is real even today? 

Sounds like tons of waste of energy and time to me. It makes much more sense to me that humans merely make them up, sell them to their kids, and simply like it and or don't want to consider nobody is helping us.

FYI, if your argument that a God exists is because you got picked or bullied as a kid, so what. I was bullied and picked on as a kid too. That is a horrible thing to go through as a kid, but that is not evidence of any type of god by any name. I also survived my childhood. 

Good and bad happen to everyone all 7 billion humans, some to greater or lesser degrees depending on individual and or geography. There is no magic to good or bad happening. If we want to, as humans reduce suffering, we should be helping each other, not depending on utopias that do not exist.

(May 7, 2017 at 3:13 pm)Alex K Wrote: Ah, the compelling argument from dental work. Is that one of St. Augustine's?

Did you know there was a god shaped cavity built right into our teeth?  True story!

(May 7, 2017 at 11:27 am)Grandizer Wrote:

(May 7, 2017 at 11:19 am)Mamacita Wrote: I have several protests to her family's claims "God is good all the time and all the time god is good".

How irritating. That's a quote from that fucking movie "God is not dead".

Actually god seems terribly inept.  Useless motherfucker.

(May 11, 2017 at 3:56 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

(May 7, 2017 at 11:27 am)Grandizer Wrote: How irritating. That's a quote from that fucking movie "God is not dead".

Actually god seems terribly inept.  Useless motherfucker.

Right? Because if he was any sort of loving god, I wouldn't be going on nearly 3 years without my oldest daughter. 

Loving god my fucking ass.

(May 11, 2017 at 9:28 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

hopey Wrote:I actually have plenty of personal evidence, evidences that God has shown me. I know, not just believe. I believe if you are open God can show you Himself too.

The thing about personal evidence is that it's personal. If you experienced getting abducted by aliens, you have personal evidence of that occurrence. But that doesn't mean I should believe it really happened if all you've got is a story.

My bold.

Well, if someone experiences getting abducted by aliens they certainly have personal evidence of the occurrence of that experience. But the question is.... is that experience real?

(May 11, 2017 at 6:15 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote:

(May 11, 2017 at 9:28 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: The thing about personal evidence is that it's personal. If you experienced getting abducted by aliens, you have personal evidence of that occurrence. But that doesn't mean I should believe it really happened if all you've got is a story.

My bold.

Well, if someone experiences getting abducted by aliens they certainly have personal evidence of the occurrence of that experience. But the question is.... is that experience real?

Claims of Aliens or vampires, seeing the dead, or even thoughts a god/supernatural are products of the brain, nothing more. Those thoughts can occur because of early indoctrination and power of suggestion combine that with a hallucination and poof, you have a REAL FALSE PERCEPTION.

Haha I'd say that's a contradiction. A false perception is a perception of something that isn't real. Hehe.

I'd say it's an existent false perception, not a real one... but that's only because I believe there are existent things that are real and existent things that are imaginary/illusory.

That just comes down to different versions of metaphysics and different answers to the question of "What is reality?"

Like... I got to this particular viewpoint of mine by asking myself the question "Does the imagination exist?" and answering "Yes of course." and then asking myself "Is the imagination real?" and answering it "Of course not."

Like... superman exists as an imaginary object/concept/work of fiction.... but he isn't real.

Also part of this is I think all things are existent but not all things are real. I think that if a thing isn't existent it isn't a thing at all. That's what it means to say "There's no such thing as ghosts." It's not that ghosts are things that aren't existent... they're just not things at all. Because a non-existent thing is simply not a thing at all. I think the idea of there BEING SOMETHING that DOESN'T EXIST makes no sense. A non-existent thing is not a thing.