(October 29, 2017 at 9:02 am)possibletarian Wrote:

(October 28, 2017 at 9:58 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: No probs!

In those times, when they said "The Law of the Prophet" they were specifically referring to the 10 commandments.  

Personally I don't even know what Leviticus law is.

Levitical law would be a better phrase, and you really don't know what it is ?

Where does it say 'The law of the prophet' ?

Do you mean 'The law and the prophets' ?

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(October 29, 2017 at 6:49 am)Captain_Nemo Wrote: This is what many miss today.
The mode of communication 2000 years ago was different to what we use today.

To decode the past one must teach oneself to code in the same way. One has to understand things like informational warfare. Sabotage of the code etc.
The greatness of Jesus can actually only be seen when one understands the way humans communicate in a broad sense.

Let's compare it to ant feromone - there is no smell like Jesus, no behaviour like the behaviour of a true believer - and it already lasts over 2000 years.
I mean others smell good too - like Socrates, Confucius etc. but their smell is hidden and has to be looked for. Jesus no matter if You like him or not is just present in the air all the time.
Of course there is no way to grasp the glory of God - it's as if teaching a worm mathematical algorithms - but God is able - if You allow him inside he will teach You those algorithms. With those algorithms one becomes powerful enough to influence reality.

Faith could be translated into trust - if You stick to something long enough it will be woth it. Some subjects need years to achive full mastery. Love (not the romantic one) also needs training, but its like runnning on a completely different fuel. To never fear again, to never be demotivated, to feel this constant hunger for more.

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Ultimately -  people react to religious writings like somebody who saw morse code the first time and complaints about dots and strokes. Imagine getting a page in morse code and having to decode it - it would take a few hours at least.

Has the distinct smell of bullshit to me, I've never seen such a concentration of gobshyte in one place.

It's (a very bad) way of saying 'If you believe then you will believe', once you believe something to be true then of course you find every hidden meaning. The same though can be said of the hunger of any religion, creed, conspiracy theory or dogma.

I thought so too, but then I read the whole of the Guru Granth Sahib - basically the book said the same thing over and over again.
It's not about knowing something - but how You know. You can know about the existence of all spices and still not know how to cook.
Same goes for religions and worldviews, You can know about the existence of different thoughts, but if You do not know in what proportions to combine them the end effect will not be tasty.

That is why Christianity isn't just Christianity - it changed over the years and places to get the real deal one has to be able to cook the same dish Jesus did 2000 years ago. Just change the proportion of one of the ingridients in a dish and it turns into something completely different. Faith requires one to swallow everything that is served so that the main point is not lost. If I were Satan I would add disgusting things into Jesus's soup and tell people, see that and that -  don't eat it.
So just use Your imagination do "time travel" in the sense of deduction and try to find out what Jesus really meant to say.

Again if we were to compare it to ants. Depending on how You feed the larvae it will turn into a worker, soldier or queen. Same for humans depening on what kind of information You put into Your mind You will be either a worker, soldier or queen (meaning ruling class). Information similarly as food could be classified as to their richness in calories. Since religions by their function aspire to a be a control mechanism they are an obvious place to look for this kind of information.

In Rome they had the legend about a golden branch that had to be broken off of a tree to gain freedom. It's just a branch of knowledge that has to be incorporated into one's worldview.

(October 5, 2017 at 6:21 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Ok, so let's suppose that God really does exist and that He proved His existence to you. He showed up and did exactly whatever was needed to convince you personally that He is real.

Right there we are taking quite the bold step. I honestly can't realistically think of such a scenario.

Quote:You had a conversation with Him for many many hours, over the course of many days in a row, and He even showed you things... like certain things in the future of humanity so you could see how everything will ultimately fall together. He took you back in time so you could see particular events, including many moments from the life of Jesus. He showed you what the afterlife is like, fully answered every single one of your questions about why He allows certain things to happen, etc, and cleared up all misconceptions and misunderstandings you have had that made you think He was bad.

I don't think He is bad. Sure, many of his traits are bad. But ultimately I think he is unreal and defined in such contradictory, unrealistic ways that he can't possibly exist for real.

Quote:Let's say you came away from all that realizing God isn't who you thought He would have been, but is actually completely good. Would you then want to be with Him? Want to follow His ways?

Who knows, Lady? Such a scenario is so far removed from what I can realistically conceive... for instance, what would I understand to be His ways at the end of such an exercise? No way to tell.

Quote:Feel remorse for the times in your life when you acted wrongly?

More than I already do? Simply because some version of Abraham's God turned out to actually exist?

Do you think that makes sense? I sure do not.

Quote:...Or would you feel angry and continue on hating the idea of God (even after learning He actually is good), hating the idea of having to "answer" to a higher being, etc?

God and the idea of God are different things - at least according to the scenario that you propose.

Do you truly think that it includes the idea of having to answer to such a God? That is a direct contradiction IMO.

The whole exercise suffers from a lack of grounding on realistic parameters, and therefore it is difficult to give a reliable answer to you.

Quote:1. I think it's perfectly fine and good to use reason and logic to come to the conclusion to believe in the supernatural. That's how it should be.

Deb? Seriously? I'm tempted to put this in my sig with all the other golden nuggets of wisdom.
But I'm not. Because you have a nice ass sadly! Yeah, I'm a bit shallow like that...

I don't see what is so wrong with what I said. People who believe that the supernatural exists should do so because it makes logical sense to them, for one reason or another. If I didn't think the existence of the supernatural made any logical sense, I wouldn't believe in it.

Part of it for me is the origin of the universe. Everything in the natural, physical world has a beginning and comes from something. Nothing in nature materializes on its own from nothing, and neither has it always existed. To me, this points to the existence of something that is not bound by the laws of nature.

Quote:People who believe that the supernatural exists should do so because it makes logical sense to them, for one reason or another.

Perhaps "illogical sense" would be a better choice of words?




You have to willingly jump through lots of hoops to get there.

There's actually a term for it.  Internal logic.  For example:

"All these natural laws point to something that can break them"

.....um..........how? As in, how -could- they point to that?

(November 1, 2017 at 1:11 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: People who believe that the supernatural exists should do so because it makes logical sense to them.

Many children believe in their imaginary friends because it makes logical sense to them that the imaginary friends are real. However, as reasonable adults who should understand the difference between reality and fantasy, should know better. Those imaginary friends are not real. The same logic applies to theists and their belief in god; as reasonable adults we should know that god is merely an imaginary friend for adults who cannot seem to properly cope in reality without believing in him, and these adults need to start acting like adults by putting away such childish notions as imaginary friends and imaginary gods.

(November 1, 2017 at 1:11 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Part of it for me is the origin of the universe. Everything in the natural, physical world has a beginning and comes from something. Nothing in nature materializes on its own from nothing, and neither has it always existed. To me, this points to the existence of something that is not bound by the laws of nature.

Filling in the gaps of knowledge with god is not the way to go. Is it not better to state that you do not know, rather than to illogically state "god did it"?

(November 1, 2017 at 2:03 pm)Lutrinae Wrote:

(November 1, 2017 at 1:11 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: People who believe that the supernatural exists should do so because it makes logical sense to them.

Many children believe in their imaginary friends because it makes logical sense to them that the imaginary friends are real.  However, as reasonable adults who should understand the difference between reality and fantasy, should know better.  Those imaginary friends are not real.  The same logic applies to theists and their belief in god; as reasonable adults we should know that god is merely an imaginary friend for adults who cannot seem to properly cope in reality without believing in him, and these adults need to start acting like adults by putting away such childish notions as imaginary friends and imaginary gods.

(November 1, 2017 at 1:11 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Part of it for me is the origin of the universe. Everything in the natural, physical world has a beginning and comes from something. Nothing in nature materializes on its own from nothing, and neither has it always existed. To me, this points to the existence of something that is not bound by the laws of nature.

Filling in the gaps of knowledge with god is not the way to go.  Is it not better to state that you do not know, rather than to illogically state "god did it"?

Ultimately we don't have concrete evidence, so we can't know for sure. But I see nothing wrong with saying "Based on what I do know, this is what I believe is probably the case." We do that all the time in real life, with all sorts of things.

The problem probably lies in "based on what I do know".........

(November 1, 2017 at 2:13 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Ultimately we don't have concrete evidence, so we can't know for sure. But I see nothing wrong with saying "Based on what I do know, this is what I believe is probably the case." We do that all the time in real life, with all sorts of things.

We don't have concrete evidence to support the existence of many things, yet we are perfectly comfortable daily stating for a fact that they do not exist: unicorns, Santa Clause, etc. There is no reason for god to be eliminated from that list.

Bolded: Provide an example or two of which sorts of things.