Why be good?

[pocaracas]

That reminds me...

[LastPoet]

I would prefer a spitfire!

[dyresand]

That reminds me...

You have a tank with no ammo 

[The Grand Nudger]

That's how they getya, the shells (and the undercoating). Don't even get me started on the track. Shit is constantly coming off the rails.

[dyresand]

I would prefer a spitfire!

Same here i would like Spitfire F MK.XIVe 

or maybe the Sea Jesus aka Sea Meteor F MK.3

[robvalue]

Still beats a guy with no tank!

[dyresand]

Still beats a guy with no tank!

It's like oh the bank is sending a tow truck to seize my tank oh ill run that tow truck over.
But hmm.. refueling that thing would get expensive

[pocaracas]

That reminds me...

---

---

You have a tank with no ammo 

Only silly people buy a tank with no ammo in it.
Although, judging by the avatar on that guy...

[Jenny A]

Now, I can't gloss over the fact that you are NOT seeking God per se, but in that you may be trying to do (what is actually His will) known to you only by the dictates of your own conscience, you may be saved.

Sorry, I must admit I am not seeking god. Not your brand or any other. You see things that exist, don't have to be sought out in this way. You may have to search to find something, but the results aren't dependent truly wanting to find it. The Higgs Boson particle for example was very difficult to find, but there were good reasons for thinking it existed, and finding it depended not on faith, but evidence.

Now, if god obviously existed, it might make sense to say you have to seek out an acquaintance with him in the ways you've suggested. But that's not the case. God appears to be findable only with pick your phrase: an open heart; grace; contrition, etc. We don't find real things by the dictates of our conscience. That is simply a way of saying, you can only find him by fooling yourself. Sorry, but I don't fool myself on purpose. God either exists or he doesn't and my conscience has nothing to do with it.

And it's perfectly obvious that as a method of fooling yourself, ask, seek, find works really well. You can use it to "find" Allah, that The Book of Mormon is true, Yahweh, Jesus, and messages from your dead grandmother. The fact that things people find this way are culturally dependent, and contradictory ought to be fairly good evidence that as a method it's flawed.

[Esquilax]

I'm sorry to hear that. Who do you blame for that?

Why, I blame my abuser.

You get the blame, however, for bandying about cavalier questions about child abuse to a room full of strangers, and as a result, detonating a huge conversational landmine; if you don't know your audience, you cannot be reasonably sure whose toes you're going to step on, or how hard, when you fire blind like that. And I don't know where you think you're going with that question, but if you're intending to make some insinuation that I blame religion for my abuse, then not only are you crossing additional lines of decency, but you're also barking up entirely the wrong tree, because my abuser was not religious.

That's something I debated adding to my initial answer, by the way. I didn't, because I wanted to see if that's where you were really going with this.

I assumed nothing of the sort. I'm guessing your parents were members of some sort of fundamentalist group. Care to share which?

My parents were not religious. Australia doesn't have nearly as much of that stuff as other countries. But the point is, when I brought up threats of hell, you responded by dismissing me because you had not gotten threats of hell during your upbringing. If you're not assuming that yours is the only religious education that a child can get, then surely that leaves room for the fire and brimstone sermonizing that I describe here; I didn't get that from nowhere, you know. My wife had that childhood, evidently some others here have too; I daresay it's fairly common, actually. You might not consider it to be legitimate or right, that's fine, I don't either, but it is happening, and questioning its scriptural or moral legitimacy doesn't make it go away.

There are demons who "stalk the earth"; what's more important is that every believer should know that "He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world."

So, do you believe in a literal hell or not? Because this demons thing implies that you do, and yet you object to children having it presented to them?

What is the subject matter, the "stuff", about which science may speak?

I don't yet know the limitations of science, as there are undoubtedly developments still to come within science that will make other things testable. I'm certainly not going to take a bare assertion that something is beyond the reach of science seriously, however.

Give me an example of something non-material, non-physical that is studied by science.

I'm sorry, did we enter a parallel universe where the burden of proof is inverted and everyone else is obligated to prove you wrong, when I wasn't looking?

Besides, I don't have to; science can test the material world, we both agree on that, and so anything that has ever interacted with the physical world is up for grabs. If god has done that, he's testable in some way, and you're wrong. If god has not done that, then he cannot be the god described in the bible, and you're wrong. Either way, I'm in the clear without ever having to prove your fiat presupposition wrong.