Hello atheistforum

[brotherlylove]

If you don't believe that, then you don't believe in the teachings of the Christian Bible. And you are misrepresenting the doctrine.

John.3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Unless of course you dismiss the writings of John as being undependable and false teachings.

It's a subtle difference we're talking about here, but it is an important one. Unbelief is a sin, but it isn't accurate to say you are condemned for unbelief. You are condemned for sin, of which unbelief is one. Unbelief is particularly grievous, because it slams the door on your salvation, but by definition it is a sin and not a special category of sin.

I don't believe that spirit is something to 'have'. We either are spiritual beings or we aren't.

If we are, then we all are, and our true nature is that we are all eternal beings. And we always have been even before we were born into our current physical bodies.

After all, if you can believe in life after death, why should it be so hard for you to believe in life before birth?

If we aren't spiritual, then the secular atheists are probably right.

Why do you believe we are spiritual beings, and why do you think it necessarily follows that we have always existed if so? Why couldn't we have been created? What in your experience informs you about this?

I have no clue, and I'm quite sure that no one else does either. This is why I prefer mystical philosophies that confess that they are indeed based on mysticism. They don't claim to know what cannot be known.

Why are you so certain that no one knows? Wouldn't that be knowing something about it for certain?

If One thing I am totally convinced of is that spirits aren't delved out at birth as 'souls' by some egoistical male-chauvinistic God who has devised a plan where the vast majority of these souls will be cast into eternal suffering and punishment.
And again, that's what Christianity teaches. In fact, according to the New Testament rumors Jesus himself supposedly taught this.

The following is supposed to be Jesus speaking and verifying that those who do not make it into the kingdom of heaven will indeed be cast into a place of everlasting punishment.

Matt.25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

The following is supposed to be Jesus speaking and verifying that only few will make it into the kingdom of heaven.

Matt.7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Notice that Jesus claims here that FEW will make it to eternal life.

So unlike what you have claimed, the Christian God does indeed condemn people for merely not believing in his son (according to the gospel of John) .

And the teachings attributed to Jesus have Jesus himself confessing that the biblical God, as a creator of souls, is a loser God, and that he loses the vast majority of souls that he creates and that only FEW will make it into the Kingdom of this God.

So it's a story of a male-chauvinistic God who most certainly will condemn and hurt people severely for merely not believing in the name of Jesus (according to these scriptures).

So if you're going around telling people that this God will not condemn anyone for merely not believing in him, you need to do a bit more research on the religion.

The truth isn't what you prefer, though. You may prefer not to believe that many will end up in hell but that isn't how you evaluate the truth. The truth is what it is regardless of what you prefer. You have said that no one can know the truth, which again on its face is knowing something about it, but you have to admit that the mere fact that you have a spirit strongly suggests someone gave it to you, since you were in fact created here.

If "Tat t'vam asi" comes from Eastern Mystical spiritual philosophies. If you have to ask, you're clearly ignorant of the Eastern Mystical philosophies because this is pretty basic stuff. Kind of like believing that Jesus is the son of God is to Christianity.

I can only suggest that you seek out courses and/or books on Eastern Mysticism if you'd like to know more about it.

I know quite a bit about Eastern Mysticism and I know what people mean by that in general, but I am asking what does that mean to you in particular?