MOD ALERT ~ people want God

the others were right, you ARE entertaining

 

but back to the point .... you say "life can be ugly", as though that explains profound evil.

shouldn't a benevolent god be the ultimate role model, and not use evil to get its point across? why are you so okay with the idea of responding to violence with violence, and to murder with murder, etc? there's no point trotting out that hoary old chestnut "god is god, and man is man". if you hold god to a lower standard than you do man (which is exactly what this suggests), then you're not really in a position to claim anything remotely moral on gods behalf. such low standards mean ANYTHING could potentially pass muster.

 

I can't trick God. He knows all. How do I have any choice? It is already known what I will or won't do. Oh well. I thought I had free will for a brief period.

 

the old free will paradox takes another one out

 

Do you have short term memory loss? If so please let me know as I don't like to correct those with physical/mental challenges?

 

Your too much fun I can't help but continue to provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate your good christian morals to all here.

 

Why is god important if he's not going to send anybody to hell for not believing in him. Without sending people to hell your god has no power to motivate folks to worship him.

 

HEY!!! LOL!!!

OK....it was a difference of opinion.

But I admit you made sense...damn it!

AboveAlpha

 

I've encountered a lot of crazy christians on this forum but this guy takes the cake!

I do feel a little sorry for him though as he doesn't have the mental faculties to understand that I'm not insulted just amused!

 

It's all pointless anyhow as iamkurtz has pointed out that no one is going to be sent to hell for not believing in god/jesus.

 

I can't stop laughing!!! This guy is the funniest christian I've encountered so far on this site!

 

Well, to the extent that I can be said to have a sense of humour, it doesnt seem to take in that kind.

 

If you adhere to a GOD CAN DO ANYTHING....ideology....then it really shows me you can't think for yourself or don't want to.

Let's look at the evidence....oh wait....there really does not exist any evidence for what is written in the Bible happening exactly as it is written.

But what evidence do we have?

Well....we know that both the New Testament and the Old Testament are riddled with mistranslations and mistakes and we can definitively prove this and have such as how it has been definitively proven from properly translating the actual ancient Hebrew Stone Tablets that detail Moses and Exodus....and when these are properly translated we find that Moses never parted the Red Sea but instead Moses and the Hebrews walked over at low tide a marshy tidal area between the Med and Red Sea which was known as the REED SEA.

The Vatican was even asked about this and they knew this was a mistranslation and that Moses did NOT PART the RED SEA as that is not even where Moses and the Hebrews crossed....but the Vatican said to change this well loved Biblical story now even though it is not accurate would just confuse the Faithful.

What else do we know?

Well...we know that the Roman Emperor Constantine was responsible for the creation of the New Testament and that he appointed a BIBLICAL CANON which were a bunch of men who changed over the years as it took HUNDREDS OF YEARS for the New Testament to be created and many Gospels and Books were left out of the New Testament and the REASON why only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had their Gospels selected...just only 4 Apostles out of 12 as the others wrote Gospels as well....was because the Gospels of ONLY 4 OUT OF 12 said that Jesus taught he was the ACTUAL SON OF GOD....as all the Gospels of the other Apostles said that JESUS TAUGHT THAT ALL MEN COULD BECOME THE SON'S OF GOD BY FOLLOWING HIS TEACHINGS.


This is a FACT.

What else do we know as FACTS? Let's see...well we know that there does not exist one single original Gospel in existence as since the Roman's were persecuting Christian's all original Gospels were destroyed along with any copies and thus they were re-written by other men who had to do this from memory and then THESE WERE DESTROYED AGAIN....and so this went on and on thus we do not know for certain just how different the Gospels are from the way they were originally written.

I could go on but I think I made my point.

AboveAlpha

 

Think away.

everyone knows that god made sure the word was kept intact and inerrant.

I mean honestly, get with the program.

 

so why would I continue a discussion with someone so narrow-minded?

 

ME? Narrow minded? LOL!!

The discussion I was attempting to have with you was basically asking why you get angry when anyone might bring forth a know fact that in of itself does not contradict the possibility of a GOD existing but rather contradicts what is written in a religious text that we know to begin with is flawed.

AboveAlpha

 

Did you see the movie?

Maybe you should. . .just in case you still believe that all the stories "inspired" from the Bible's fairy tales are about "God," and "Christianity!"

You couldn't be more wrong!

 

Before the concept of "God," can be dismissed, perhaps it's best to define what God is.

Biblically, God is anthropomorphized into an entity with human characteristics...God in the Old Testament feels both love and wrath...the full gamut of the human experience..until finally in the New Testament, God literally becomes human, the Messiah, the Savior, the Christ.

The struggle, I think, isn't so much whether God, as an entity, exists, but how we define what that entity actually is.

The underlying struggle for us, as human beings, is to find meaning and purpose to our lives. The religious believe the Universe itself has purpose and was created for a purpose...we're just part of the unfolding of cosmic events.

The issue with Atheism is that it is ultimately an absurdist philosophy; there is a dichotomy between the individual's search for meaning and the apparent meaninglessness of the universe. If we are part of the whole and the whole has no meaning, any attempt to bring meaning to any aspect of it's constituent parts (including you and I) is therefore..well...absurd. Taking the Shakespearean approach...life is a tragic comedy.

Religion is the transcendence of absurdism.

Not only do you and I have both meaning and purpose, the whole of the Universe does as well.

 

I have yet to see one prove it happened at all.

 

so much absurdity

I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the kids and adults rifling through rubbish mountains in SE asia, looking for old plastic shopping bags to wash and sell, before retiring to their jury rigged shanties in city-fringe slums, spend precisely ZERO minutes a year thinking about their purpose and the meaning of life. that anyone actually does waste good portions of otherwise useful and productive time thinking about such things is a direct result of too much leisure, too much safety, and too much money. It would have as much to do with any actual god/s as does the rubbish mountain.

If you want meaning and purpose, get off your arse and help the people referred to above. Get rid of the rubbish mountains (stop being a consumer), and the conditions which lead to people depending on them. That ought to keep you from dwelling on your own awesomeness.

 

There in lies the paradox.

Because of Quantum Mechanics we understand that everything upon it's smallest base level exists as a variety of Quantum Particle/Wave Forms such as Quarks, Gluons, Leptons, Higgs-Bosons...etc.

Hadrons are categorized into two families: baryons (such as protons and neutrons, made of three quarks) and mesons (such as pions, made of one quark and one antiquark.

Here is the thing....within all Hadrons there exist a number of Quarks that can exist between a numerical minimum and maximum but NEVER more or less than these maximums or minimums.

These Quarks are literally BLINKING IN AND OUT OF UNIVERSAL EXISTENCE.

At first we thought perhaps they might be exchanging within other Hadrons in our Universe but we found that they are not.

Now we believe and the math dictates this....that these Quarks are leaving OUR Divergent Universal Reality and exchanging and adding to other Hadrons existing in Alternate Divergent Universal Realities existing within our Universal Grouping as an INFINITE NUMBER of Universal Groupings with each Grouping having unto itself INFINITE DIVERGENT STATES OF IT'S OWN.....and each Universal Grouping exists with INFINITE OTHER UNIVERSAL GROUPINGS within a MULTIVERSE.

As I said....the MATH backs this.

Because of this there are INFINITE versions of you and me existing within INFINITE DIVERGENT VERSIONS of this Universal Reality.

There is a version of me that did not type this post. There is a version of you that did not read it...etc.

Basically it is thought that due to PROBABILITY....Quark transfer between Hadrons existing in Alternate Divergent Universal States is what is driving this transfer and when Quarks exist at their minimum number within Hadrons Probability is dictating a low possibility of a specific event to unfold.

When Quarks are existing at or near MAXIMUM within Hadrons...Probability is dictating a HIGH POSSIBILITY that an event will occur thus creating an entire NEW REALITY AND TIMELINE as a NEW DIVERGENT UNIVERSAL STATE IS CREATED.

The thing to remember is there originally was ONE BASELINE REALITY....at least for this ONE SINGLE UNIVERSAL GROUP.....and as there also exists Infinite Universal Groups as well having completely different Physical Laws and Constructs than our own Universal Baseline Reality....they as well have their own constantly Diverging Universal States being generated.

MY POINT?

My point is that in order for A CHOICE TO EXIST....EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE OUTCOME MUST ALSO EXIST.

How are we fairly certain this is a fact?

Experimentation using Quantum Particle/Wave Forms such as Photons and Electrons have shown us results that lead to the conclusion I have just laid out.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

We created a Micro-Electric Motor on a Molecular Level...a NANO-BOT....a machine capable of being powered up by a SINGLE ELECTRON.

At the same time we designed the Nano-Bot so the Electron could either power the Bot or run to a ground and we set up Individual Electron Detectors.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

SOMETHING AMAZING!!!

What a person would expect is that a SINGLE ELECTRON would either power the Nano-Bot or run to Grown and be detected there....but what we found was a SINGLE ELECTRON DID BOTH!!! It did not do this all the time....but it did often and when we tested other Quantum Particle/Wave Forms such as Photons in the Double Slit Experiment we began to understand WHY this could happen.

It seems that Electrons and Photons existing as both Particle and Wave can actually also exist as MULTI-FUNCTIONAL.....sort of like having a baseball and throwing that ONE SINGLE BASEBALL TO THE PLATE WHERE AT THE SAME TIME THE BASEBALL IS BOTH HIT FOR A HOME RUN AND AS WELL STRIKES OUT THE BATTER AND ENDS UP IN THE CATCHERS MITT!!!!!!

WHY did this happen?

Because such Quanta are not just existing within OUR Universal Reality alone but in fact are being SHARED AND EXCHANGED WITHIN ALL DIVERGENT ALTERNATE UNIVERSAL REALITIES EXISTING WITHIN OUR UNIVERSAL GROUPING WITHIN THE MULTIVERSE.

If anyone want's to check out something fascinating LINK....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuv6hY6zsd0

It's a video.

The thing is that Scientific Discovery IS NOT IN CONFLICT WITH ONE'S BELIEF IN GOD....and the vast majority of Christianity and Christian Leadership....and it all started with Pope John Paul II....when he and the Vatican Science Team made a BRAVE CHOICE as they came to understand that if the Church did not evolve it could possibly go extinct and 95% of ALL CHRISTIAN SECTS LEADERSHIP followed the Pope's example and EVOLVED as they understood it's pretty F@%$!&$ STUPID for anyone in this day and age to try to say Evolution is not a fact when WE USE IT IN PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS EVERY DAY.

In fact any person with a small microscope, slides, sugar, water and bleach....can see VISUALLY EVOLUTION OCCURRING RIGHT BEFORE THEIR EYES OVER A FEW HOURS....and any Member who wants to do this experiment and actually SEE this PROOF of EVOLUTION....I was an Assistant Professor at a world renown Massachusetts based Higher Learning Institute and if you PM me I will be more than HAPPY to tell you how to do the experiment and it costs very little money to do.

Christian Leadership understand that the Bible has some issues and they understand the Bible and in particular the New Testament was written by men who were struggling to understand reality and the Earth and the Universe....these people didn't even know the world was round yet....and let me tell you if GOD had inspired the writings in the Old Testament....having a line in Genesis that said....the world is ROUND and the SUN is a STAR...well I can tell you if THAT had been written in thousands of years ago I would seriously be impressed.

But it wasn't.

Consider this....Revelation was REJECTED over and over and over again....then FINALLY when the Church's Politics changed as Revelation had always been considered TOO CRAZY...TOO OLD TESTAMENT....TOO WRATH OF GOD....AND ...NOT A GOOD FIT FOR THE LOVE AND FORGIVENESS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT....for Revelation to be allowed in.

So....time and time again Revelation was REJECTED....but then the Church Politics changed as after many tries and rejections by the men comprising the Biblical Canon created by what would be known as the Roman Catholic Church....Revelation was approved in 397 AD only to again have to wait until 417 AD due to infighting in that many saw Revelations addition to the Bible as a mistake.

Here are 4 BIG MYTHS OF REVELATION.

Here are what she says are four big myths about Revelation::

1. It’s about the end of the world

Anyone who has read the popular “Left Behind” novels or listened to pastors preaching about the “rapture” might see Revelation as a blow-by-blow preview of how the world will end.

Pagels, however, says the writer of Revelation was actually describing the way his own world ended.

She says the writer of Revelation may have been called John – the book is sometimes called “Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine” but he was not the disciple who accompanied Jesus. He was a devout Jew and mystic exiled on the island of Patmos, off the coast of present-day Greece.

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“He would have been a very simple man in his clothes and dress,” Pagels says. “He may have gone from church to church preaching his message. He seems more like a traveling preacher or a prophet.”

The author of Revelation had experienced a catastrophe. He wrote his book not long after 60,000 Roman soldiers had stormed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., burned down its great temple and left the city in ruins after putting down an armed Jewish revolt.

For some of the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem was incomprehensible. They had expected Jesus to return “with power” and conquer Rome before inaugurating a new age. But Rome had conquered Jesus’ homeland instead.

The author of Revelation was trying to encourage the followers of Jesus at a time when their world seemed doomed. Think of the Winston Churchill radio broadcasts delivered to the British during the darkest days of World War II.

Revelation was an anti-Roman tract and a piece of war propaganda wrapped in one. The message: God would return and destroy the Romans who had destroyed Jerusalem.

“His primary target is Rome,” Pagels says of the book’s author. “He really is deeply angry and grieved at the Jewish war and what happened to his people.”

2. The numerals 666 stand for the devil

The 1976 horror film “The Omen” scared a lot of folks. It may have scared some theologians, too, who began encountering people whose view of Revelation comes from a Hollywood movie.

“The Omen” depicted the birth and rise of the “anti-Christ,” the cunning son of Satan who would be known by “the mark of the beast,” 666, on his body.

Here’s the passage from Revelation that “The Omen” alluded to: “This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.”

Good movies, though, don’t always make good theology. Most people think 666 stands for an anti-Christ-like figure that will deceive humanity and trigger a final battle between good and evil. Some people think he’s already here.

Pagels, however, says the writer of Revelation didn’t really intend 666 as the devil’s digits. He was describing another incarnation of evil: The Roman emperor, Nero.

The arrogant and demented Nero was particularly despised by the earliest followers of Jesus, including the writer of Revelation. Nero was said to have burned followers of Jesus alive to illuminate his garden.

But the author of Revelation couldn’t safely name Nero, so he used the Jewish numerology system to spell out Nero’s imperial name, Pagels says.

Pagels says that John may have had in mind other meanings for the mark of the beast: the imperial stamp Romans used on official documents, tattoos authorizing people to engage in Roman business, or the images of Roman emperors on stamps and coins.

Since Revelation’s author writes in “the language of dreams and nightmares,” Pagels says it’s easy for outsiders to misconstrue the book’s original meaning.

Still, they take heart from Revelation’s larger message, she writes:

“…Countless people for thousands of years have been able to see their own conflicts, fears, and hopes reflected in his prophecies. And because he speaks from his convictions about divine justice, many readers have found reassurance in his conviction that there is meaning in history – even when he does not say exactly what that meaning is – and that there is hope.”

3. The writer of Revelation was a Christian

The author of Revelation hated Rome, but he also scorned another group – a group of people we would call Christians today, Pagels says.

There’s a common perception that there was a golden age of Christianity, when most Christians agreed on an uncontaminated version of the faith. Yet there was never one agreed-upon Christianity. There were always clashing visions.

Revelation reflects some of those early clashes in the church, Pagels says.

That idea isn’t new territory for Pagels. She won the National Book Award for “The Gnostic Gospels,” a 1979 book that examined a cache of newly discovered “secret” gospels of Jesus. The book, along with other work from Pagels, argues that there were other accounts of Jesus’ life that were suppressed by early church leaders because it didn’t fit with their agenda.

The author of Revelation was like an activist crusading for traditional values. In his case, he was a devout Jew who saw Jesus as the messiah. But he didn’t like the message that the apostle Paul and other followers of Jesus were preaching.

This new message insisted that gentiles could become followers of Jesus without adopting the requirements of the Torah. It accepted women leaders, and intermarriage with gentiles, Pagels says.

The new message was a lot like what we call Christianity today.

That was too much for the author of Revelation. At one point, he calls a woman leader in an early church community a “Jezebel.” He calls one of those gentile-accepting churches a “synagogue of Satan.”

John was defending a form of Christianity that would be eclipsed by the Christians he attacked, Pagels says.

“What John of Patmos preached would have looked old-fashioned – and simply wrong to Paul’s converts…,” she writes.

The author of Revelation was a follower of Jesus, but he wasn’t what some people would call a Christian today, Pagels says.

“There’s no indication that he read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or that he read the gospels or Paul’s letters,” she says. “….He doesn’t even say Jesus died for your sins.”

4. There is only one Book of Revelation

There’s no other book in the Bible quite like Revelation, but there are plenty of books like Revelation that didn’t make it into the Bible, Pagels says.

Early church leaders suppressed an “astonishing” range of books that claimed to be revelations from apostles such as Peter and James. Many of these books were read and treasured by Christians throughout the Roman Empire, she says.

There was even another “Secret Revelation of John.” In this one, Jesus wasn’t a divine warrior, but someone who first appeared to the apostle Paul as a blazing light, then as a child, an old man and, some scholars say, a woman.

So why did the revelation from John of Patmos make it into the Bible, but not the others?

Pagels traces that decision largely to Bishop Athanasius, a pugnacious church leader who championed Revelation about 360 years after the death of Jesus.

Athanasius was so fiery that during his 46 years as bishop he was deposed and exiled five times. He was primarily responsible for shaping the New Testament while excluding books he labeled as hearsay, Pagels says.

Many church leaders opposed including Revelation in the New Testament. Athanasius’s predecessor said the book was “unintelligible, irrational and false.”

Athanasius, though, saw Revelation as a useful political tool. He transformed it into an attack ad against Christians who questioned him.

Rome was no longer the enemy; those who questioned church authority were the anti-Christs in Athanasius’s reading of Revelation, Pagels says.

“Athanasius interprets Revelation’s cosmic war as a vivid picture of his own crusade against heretics and reads John’s visions as a sharp warning to Christian dissidents,” she writes. “God is about to divide the saved from the damned – which now means dividing the ‘orthodox’ from ‘heretics.’ ’’

Centuries later, Revelation still divides people. Pagels calls it the strangest and most controversial book in the Bible.

Even after writing a book about it, Pagels has hardly mastered its meaning.

“The book is the hardest one in the Bible to understand,” Pagels says. “I don’t think anyone completely understands it.”

AboveAlpha

 

So what's the "purpose"???

- - - Updated - - -

Excellent post and true!!!! Well put!

 

Well....I agree from an ideological point....but since I am aware of the economic realities....I also know that U.S. Consumerism by and unto itself keeps about 3 BILLION people alive on planet Earth.

In fact if it was not for the endless amounts of bags of U.S.AID containing Wheat and Corn and Rye and Soy,,,,it is estimated over 2 Billion people a year would starve to death.

Never mind that we ship MILLIONS of Mosquito Nets to Tropical and Sub Tropical areas all over the world from Africa to India, Bangladesh, Vietnam....a country by the way that is BEGGING for the U.S. Military to come back and set up their bases again....and rural China as well to name some.

The facts are out of all the nations in the world....THE UNITED STATES IS THE ONLY ONE THAT HAS GOT OFF IT'S ASS!!!!!!!

If anyone want's....take some time to compare the amount of Food, Medical, Water, Supplies, Mosquito Nets, Vaccines, Genetically Engineered seeds designed to grow in any climate given for free and the list goes on....compare what we do against the rest of the entire world.

It's a JOKE!!!!

Many European Wealthy Nations have records so dismal in such things as donating clothing and shoes that a network of 6 Churches in Ohio were able to ship and donate more shoes and clothing than the entire NATION OF FRANCE DID THAT YEAR!!!

Fact is that our crazy consumerism is responsible for keeping a LOT of people alive in some VERY 3rd World Countries.

AboveAlpha

 

Guess the bolded above was answered with the non-answer