Post #133,595
1/4/04 10:33:51 PM
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Re: What I believe
What I believe is that God created everything, and that the creation stories in the bible were told to early humans in terms they could understand. So humans got made out of Earth rather than primordial soup, there was a blast of light instead of a bing bang, the dinosaur age got skipped, and two groups of people explained things as they thought they were to get included in the book of Genesis. It was explained before the creation of writing, so the story got told over and over again before someone wrote it down. So there are certain truths to it, and some things that didn't get retold quite right. The thing that is important is that life, the universe, and everything has an Intelligent Design to it. I always wonder about that theory, it is saying that God intentionally chose to mislead the vast majority of humans about the nature of the universe. This is really an admission that god is fundamentally evil, for how else could you describe a god that creates a universe and guides it to contain sentient life then intentionally misleads those beings about where they came from or why they are there. Would it really have been that hard for God to tell Ezra to add a little index throwing something indisputable in? Just a few pages explaining the principle of photon - electron equivlence or particle/wave duality or something that would indisputable show that the bible has an understanding of the world greater then the humans that wrote it, Ezra wouldn't even have to understand it. Heck, just a clear cut statement that the Earth was roughly spherical and orbited the Sun would a massive step in the correct direction. Some being must have thought about it before creating it. Why? For that claim to be true as an absolute you must be claiming that nothing is random. I would like too see you provide any evidence for that. A creator, or God if you will. You need to be more carefull in your terminology here. God implies the Christian god, god implies some divine being, creator only requires a entity with powers well beyond those currently available to humans. Those things are not in any way interchangable. Even if ID turns out to be true despite the evidence against it, it is also likely that humans at some point might gain the understanding and power needed to create our own universes and join the ranks of the creators. It has yet to be disproven that God exists. Nor has it been proven that he does. To allow God into science without evidence is to leave a gap in our understanding and say we are not going to look there because that is reserved for God. This is an act of foolishness, if something was done by God then science will find nothing, if it was not then it was an error to lable it so in the first place. Jay
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Post #133,744
1/5/04 8:21:13 PM
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Re: What I believe
I believe that a distinction needs to be noticed re the 'God' concept:
For Xians of multitudinous individual stripes - the idea of a "personal-God" is a root of the orthodoxy.
Others may use a similar name to 'God' (the Indian continent postulates a pantheon of Gods), endowing each with notably human qualities/ +and- yet all the while acknowledging a concept of The Absolute - and clearly 'saying' about That: "The Absolute is without attributes, is beyond knowing/not-knowing, being/non-being etc."
ie: beyond our illusionary world of Opposites {also implicitly recognized as 'illusionary'}.
It is within this Personal God\ufffd idea, where mischief begs to be done: "God hates the ___. God loves the ___. I Talk to God." yada yada. God (here) is "assigned attributes" by every overheated preacher and demagogue politico using the simplistic ideas to acquire more Power.
Personally, I find the thought that, 'God is within all things' idea sustainable without logic-fault or dance, or absurd ideas of proving the Ineffable. It hasn't caught on in the land where the real Deity is [Moi + $$]. I wonder whyever not?
I Who Be
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Post #133,919
1/6/04 5:04:06 PM
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While you were out:
When: 5:00 Universal Time
Who: God
Number: 5x2 (folded)
Concerning:
Ashton,
God told me that he wants you to stop posting evil things about HIM. He's got something for you at the gates. Unless you repent soon, well, you know.
Just the messenger,
Pope c.o. Danno
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Post #134,026
1/7/04 4:03:12 AM
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s'OK Danno
Not to worry.
She's made it abundantly clear to moi - that there really is no Hell such as.. an infinite NT-farm needing hourly rebooting.
{It was just a nightmare She intercepted from someone in a place called 'Redmond'} -
She hadn't ever visited there - so when I explained about the place..
She promised to do something Innovative, when a certain New Arrival showed up.
Arch-Daemon moi
Notre Dame des Citr\ufffdens
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Post #134,009
1/7/04 2:16:41 AM
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I see it as this
we are like children to God. Unable to understand all that God knows. God works in mysterious ways and does not reveal all of his secrets to us. Instead he wants us to try and discover them. It is debatable if the story of creation was told by God, or holy men. Maybe God told the whole story, the holy men couldn't understand most of it and wrote down what they understood or thought that God said. Repeat the retelling of it for thousands of years before writing is invented and the story loses a lot of details and gets changed a lot. Perhaps God was misquoted? :) For another example read the book of Revelation, John had a vision and wrote down what he saw, he explained it in a way that did not make sense and was cryptic. It was like a dream or a vision, need Joseph from the Old Testiment to translate it for us. A mystery or puzzle to solve before time runs out. We may see the truth but be unable to recognize it or understand it. We do our best to describe it, but being flawed, we have flawed observations. Over time we can create the tools, theories, ideas, etc to understand it better, but still we are flawed. Maybe we cannot put the pieces of the puzzle together yet.
Even if ID turns out to be true despite the evidence against it, it is also likely that humans at some point might gain the understanding and power needed to create our own universes and join the ranks of the creators.
It is also likely that we will fail because we don't understand it absolutely, and maybe never will? Maybe trying to do so will destroy our current universe? Oops, misplaced a decimal place, must be missing part of the formula, now we are all going to oblivion! :)
"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"
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Post #134,025
1/7/04 3:51:29 AM
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Didn't address the issue
It is debatable if the story of creation was told by God, or holy men. Maybe God told the whole story, the holy men couldn't understand most of it and wrote down what they understood or thought that God said. Repeat the retelling of it for thousands of years before writing is invented and the story loses a lot of details and gets changed a lot. Perhaps God was misquoted? The issue is this, if God is actually all-knowing then he knew exactly how it's story would be misused. God intentionally did things in a way that would condemn the majority of humanity to hell, because he didn't feel like providing a clearer guide to how to be a good Christian. The only way out of this is claim that the bible's view of God, Jesus and religion is inaccurate. At which point you cease to be Christian, since you have now rejected all of the basic claims of the religion. Jay
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Post #134,073
1/7/04 10:46:02 AM
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Disagree
You claim that for God to let The Bible has mistakes condemns most people to Hell.
But that isn't necessarily so. What if God only cares about mistakes that actually might condemn people to Hell? Had The Bible been scientifically accurate about things that could only confuse in 200 AD, would that have made it more or less effective?
That said, it is true that most Christians believe that most of the world is going to Hell. Whether this squares with your impression of God is a well-known debate on the problem of evil. How you resolve that depends entirely on your impression of God. Since there seem to be as many of those as there are believers, and I don't subscribe to any of those, it is senseless for me to have a position on that.
I just wanted to point out that perfect accuracy in religious texts might not matter that much to a Deity. See the Baha'i faith for an example of a religion that claims that. More specifically they say that most religious texts are distorted in various ways to make them more effective at reaching people of that time and place and limited understanding.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #134,084
1/7/04 11:44:38 AM
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That's true
But that isn't necessarily so. What if God only cares about mistakes that actually might condemn people to Hell? Had The Bible been scientifically accurate about things that could only confuse in 200 AD, would that have made it more or less effective? Because it wouldn't matter so much how the world came about, in living one's Christian life, as it would to follow say, the 10 Commandments, or other things God would have you to do. The way things happened isn't part of how to live. Nightowl >8# "It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences." Harry S. Truman
"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude." Timothy Bentley
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Post #134,147
1/7/04 8:04:24 PM
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Re: Disagree
But that isn't necessarily so. What if God only cares about mistakes that actually might condemn people to Hell? Had The Bible been scientifically accurate about things that could only confuse in 200 AD, would that have made it more or less effective? That was actually the point of my second paragraph. That it is possible to have concepts of god that don't fall into the problem of evil, but that such religions are no longer Christianity in any meaningfull sense of the word. The problem of evil is largly a Christian problem because the Christian faiths are among the few ones that postulate a god that is all powerful, all knowing, perfectly good and yet for some reason only gives certain people a chance to avoid eternal torment. Jay
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Post #134,440
1/9/04 1:58:20 AM
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It's most likely pointless
In Murica, the prevailing form of religiosity is carried out within our Murican language, somewhat like English. There really aren't any common words which can assist in 'signifying' some of the problems with talking about er, "that which we are incapable of Grokking to Fullness". Further - there is precious little general Interest in such matters: these matters are settled permanently via early inculcation. Period. For most. (My experience, anyway)
Arguing Dogma with a dogmatist.. must be a lot like trying to describe ephemeral levels of sublimely timeless musical compositions - in a school for the hearing impaired. Further, as with geography - the average Murican is bone-ignorant of the rich tapestry of metaphysical thought in the world -- ancient or modern. (And often - even about the one chosen by default, by others) QED?
Norman's 'take' - in my experience - IS umm The Norm.
We believe, most of us, that which we Like; those in dire need of a 'personal god' - will invent one, no matter What. And the idea that there could be Evidence of such [either. way.] -- swears at all efforts 'mankind' has ever made, to build a language capable-even, of truthful admission: of one's incapacity to deal with certain 'issues', at all.
But then, these foribuses sometimes seem, occasionally, to come close to certain 'intimations', so .. WTF! Beats arguing Who was the Best fussball Coach ever, no?
Ashton
uh, never mind, I guess
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