A Question for Believers and Non Believers

[Nick_A]

"Quality of the moment?" I have never considered what this means, because when I do, my head hurts.

It's not even subjective, it's just non-sensical. Like "the flavour of blue" or the "taste of baroque music."
James.

I agree. You haven't thought and your head hurts. I'm concerned with those who are willing to think for the sake of understanding even at the risk of a headache. They have experienced the relative conscious quality of the moment in themselves. One moment they have a higher perspective analagous to that of the forest. At the next they are fighting amongst trees having lost a conscious perspective and lowered the quality of the moment.

A person seeking to sustain a higher perspective, a higher quality of the moment, wonders why they continually lose conscious self awareness, become caught up in negative emotions and experience dulled senses as well. You are not concerned with these things so you are better off just taking two excedrins and not concerning yourself with it.

You misread, I'm afraid. When I do consider what this means, my head hurts. Not from the idea of Christianity, the idea of horrible metaphor. I did give other examples of such metaphors.

Any religion that burns and stones people because they do not believe the same way is evil.That represses their "God-given" thought processes is evil. That takes the greatest gift of their god [sex] and makes it sinful, or casts them into an everlasting torment is evil. That glorifies slavery and the repression of women is evil. I would never worship such an evil being.

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (KJV)

I also really don't like having to know more about someone else's holy book, because they don't read it themselves. Read the sections in Isaiah and Proverbs about adult nursing (how wives' are given this gift to prevent their husbands from going astray) sometime; no preacher in any church will read those to you, but they are there, and you would know it if you had read your holy book. (I have, it is a matter of self-defence from the endless missionaries.) You need a religion like mine, that has no such book at all. Or one like Discordia. If anyone can make sense out of the Principia Discordia, I applaud them. It's a hoot.

If the Bible had been written today, it would not be for sale to minors. It is a tale of the worst horrors both men and a god can ever inflict on humankind. Drowning everyone and repopulating the Earth by incest would never fly in a children's book.

You misunderstand the purpose of the Bible. You prevent it from doing its job


"The Bible: a book which either reads you or is worthless" ~ CHAZAL ...

[Anymouse]

You misunderstand the purpose of the Bible. You prevent it from doing its job

"The Bible: a book which either reads you or is worthless" ~ CHAZAL ...

An appeal to Chazal means nothing to me, I don't know who that is.

If you read the Bible like an "instruction manual," it is rules and regulations on when and with whom you can have sex, how you can kill them if you don't like what they did, how to treat your slaves, beat or kill your children, when to kill enemies who surrender including their children but save the virgins for rape, or make any kind of image (not just graven ones) of any kind of thing in heaven or earth (KJV), submission to authority even when it is cruel or violates your rights, impossible earth sciences, teaches adult nursing as a way for a woman to hold on to her husband (actually that is one of the few good parts there), usury is ungodly (but so many Christians have no trouble with that one), &c. And today's parents complain about such games as Grand Theft Auto. My own son was prohibited from reading the Bible until he was of the age for any other pornography and violent material.

As I said before, it is an evil book. Same order as Mein Kampf, but, Hitler didn't kill as many people. Though he was a Christian too.

He was less hypocritical too, as he actually practiced a lot of what the Bible says to do.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the Flag and carrying a Cross" - CS Lewis, a counter-quote for you from someone I have heard of.

[Epimethean]

Maybe it's just me, but Nick's ongoing insertion of religious quotes to shore up his arguments is grating on my nerves.

[Nick_A]

Anymouse, the Bible is neither an instuctional manual or a historical account. It is primarily a psychological document for the purpose of bypassing our ordinary dual mind in order to arouse the contemplative mind. It contains meanings within meanings. That is why Chazal said its value is in reading you, allowing the mind to open. If a person can contemplate beyond the superficial, the Bible has great value. its value is really for those capable of thinking for themselves in the context of awareness of the human condition within them. When read superficially, I would agree that it can also cause harm.

[Epimethean]

Are you specifically referring to the New Testament there, Nick? I don't see much in the O.T. that reflects the "inner journey," and to be honest the mysticism of the N.T. is, once Jesus gets his message out, pretty much a kool-aid cult. The O.T. is an interesting text for the way it shows the contradictions so common in monotheism. The N.T. really reads as propaganda.

[azharrison]

Atheism and theism are polar opposites! There is no unity possible. Religion requires agnosticism and faith in order to exist. Atheism does not.

Just relax and enjoy your "Cave".... build a fire and work on simplifying your arguments down from the verbose meaningless drivel you are spewing here

[Anymouse]

Anymouse, the Bible is neither an instuctional manual or a historical account. It is primarily a psychological document for the purpose of bypassing our ordinary dual mind in order to arouse the contemplative mind. It contains meanings within meanings. That is why Chazal said its value is in reading you, allowing the mind to open. If a person can contemplate beyond the superficial, the Bible has great value. its value is really for those capable of thinking for themselves in the context of awareness of the human condition within them. When read superficially, I would agree that it can also cause harm.

So you are not of the "every word of the Bible is true" crowd? But why put faith in a book which you state is not factual? Contains errors, perhaps? If there are errors, are you sufficiently omnipotent to cherry pick the errors out? Two thousand years of Christian thought have not settled that; you are claiming an awfully tenuous position if you state the Bible is not entirely true, because then you must expose the untrue parts. Which parts aren't true in your mind? Either of the creation stories in Genesis (and they are mutually exclusive), the improbable lifespans of the patriarchs, that a Roman provincial governor would turn over a known seditionist for a man which had caused the Empire no harm and had broken none of its laws, putting all species of land animal and plant on a boat only one third the size of a football field?

And if some of it is untrue, why is it a stretch for you to picture that all of it might be untrue?

"Dual mind?" Another phrase which has zero semantic meaning to me. I'll go for dual gender (as there are only two, but that is even subject to shades, even in humans), which makes for fun fertility faiths like mine, but I do not understand what you men.

If you mean "either-or" thinking, like I have epilepsy and you do not, and there are no "in-between" positions (it's black-or-white; you do have it or you don't), I would understand.

But you seem to me to apply such terms as "dual mind" and "quality" to subjective positions like religion (there are a whole series of shades of Christianity, a whole series of religious beliefs that propound all sorts of sometimes irreconcilable positions, and even several shades of atheist and agnostic). I do not see "dual mind" or either-or thinking in this.

On the question of does a particular god exist (for example, yours), one could adopt the position that a person believes that god exists, yet does not choose to worship it/him/her. You are certainly aware of such gods and goddesses as Thor and Ishtar, but you do not believe those. On those, you are atheistic, just as much as any other atheist here. The only difference between them and you is they believe in one (or three) less god/s than you.

Your lack of faith in my own faith's very dualistic concept of god/dess does not change one iota whether they exist or not. Even within my own faith, there are many opinions about the nature of deity. But we don't kill people over it; we, like the majority of atheists, derive our morals from within, not a book that teaches killing in the name of God can be the highest good to solve a problem.

But I am open to clearer terminology than the "new age" terms you are using. Are you sure you are Christian?

I suspect (but do not know) that you are also guilty of either-or thinking in your religious faith. You were either raised in it and choose to follow it, or you were converted to it from another position. But in either case, I presume you have not studied: other religions, deisim, or the atheist position from a standpoint of learning and critically comparing them to your own position to see if it stands up to your scrutiny; I suspect if you have studied them at all it is to poke holes in them. Many religions have little in common with Christianity at all. Religions are generally a solution to vexing questions that a society cannot resolve through deduction and inferrence. They are certainly not science, and societies have come to an amazing array of religious solutions which have nothing to do with each other.

A true scientific approach to any problem is to analyse all the data, and compare it to what one already has theorised (in your case, Christianity), not with a desire to punch holes in the data, but to see if it has any worth. If it does, then your theory must either accommodate it, or it becomes dogma. You will find very quickly that dogma does not fly well around here, though generally, as long as you are civil, you will be politely told why certain evidence you present is really dogma. As I am fairly sure you have not studied other religions with an eye for assimilating data and coming to a conclusion, you are guilty of pandering dogma. Won't fly in a free-thinker environment.

Anyone trying to take the foolish position of rationalising religion as science takes a fatal position for their religion. If one were to provide incontrovertible evidence that a particular religion has evidential basis, then the atheists (those that are rational, most), will simply add the data to their store. You on the other hand, will have proved your religious position to be factual, and in that instant it ceases to become religion and becomes part of the body of science. Should you ever "prove" such things as souls, Heaven, Hell, God, Jesus, &c., they are no longer religion. It would be a far more complete destruction of religious faith than anything a whole planet of atheists could do.

You would also be taking away the "believing without seeing" blessing of your New Testament. In short, you would condemn all who follow to be without that blessing, as such an empirical proof would destroy faith and make it science.

To make religion science would almost be like assuming the mantle of your faith's anti-Christ. A belief system is almost always destroyed most effectively from within. Anyone who could prove the claims of the Bible would be that anti-Christ; they would take the mystery and faith out of the religion and make it knowledge.
James

[Justtristo]

I am closed to all religion, because none of the world's religions (unlike science and the methodological naturalism built into it) are accurate in describing life, the universe and everything (including religion).