I will give you a little theology lesson Jesus was showing you options. Lets say you desire eternal life and you were a Jew. What did you have to do. I believe it would be keep the law and make the required sacrifices. But that was not easy. And as Paul pointed out, the works of man are filthy rags in light of the perfect ideal one would expect to have. So if you are are a lawyer or you are sent by a lawyer like group of priests. Jesus will give you the answer you expect. Keep the law. Knowing that your lawyer like friends will probably fall short of the Law. Now if you are the type of guy who is a great person and almost ideal, how are you going to achieve eternal life back then when you had family pressures. Cut your ties with family if that is prevented you from following God. Now if you are one of the masses, seeking to hear Jesus teach about eternal life. What is one of the only objective ways you can know you will have eternal life. Go to communion, discern the real presence of the lord in the food and he blood you consume during communion and you will have Jesus within you and eternal life. You do and believe that and Jesus will come into your life and your works will be his works and you will be saved. Jesus was not screwing with you, he was giving you options.
no offense intended, yet my vision of god is different. i'd rather spend ten minutes listening to him than hours and hours writing about him. and when you say i feel uncomfortable, yes, somehow it feels that way when i read posts of you. it is really difficult for me, because from my point of view you are running in a wheel from post 1 onwards. see, i do not necessarily contradict to some of your conclusions, just can't help asking myself why in the world you are writing this in such a lengthy format. when you do meditation, you come to a point where you see "through" your normal process of arguments and you sense that a subject like god can only be scratched on a hair-thin surface of this very subject by "arguments" and rational "thinking". but your experience, not your thinking, opens up so much more insight, than all "discussion" going back and forth could ever do. my point on this is easy. every concept of an almighty god excludes all things that just make him kind of superhuman hero. an omnipresent god is present at each moment in each place at the same intensity. if there was a second such "mighty" thing, than our first is again reduced to superhero. impressive, yes, but not god in the almighty and omnipresent sense. if there was at some place at some time less of his presence than the same would apply. there is a saying: when you ask if god exists it is like a fish within the ocean asking if water exists. actually it is probably even more accurate that a single H2O molecule within the ocean asks that question. but the real point is that what i just have said must have an effect. or it is plain talking. does it have an effect? yes. it does. you are a serious person, raising serious questions and trying seriously to find answers. do well and forgive me my nasty little post. peace
Proof #40 - Understand Christian motivations Here is what we know about God: There is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. (see Proof #11) There is no scientific evidence indicating that God answers prayers. (see Proof #2, Proof #41) If we set up an unambiguous situation -- like asking God to restore amputated limbs -- God never answers prayers. (see Proof #9) The Bible is clearly the work of primitive men, not of an all-knowing supernatural being. (see Proof #13 and Proof #30) Etc. In other words, God is imaginary. It is obvious. Yet, if you talk to actively practicing Christians, they ignore all of this evidence. They will tell you that God certainly does exist and that he is answering prayers for them every day. Christian bookstores and Christian magazines are filled with stories of answered prayers. Christians believe that God is reaching down out of heaven and answering billions of prayers on Earth for Christians. Therefore, the question arises: If there is all of this evidence showing that God is imaginary, and if there is certifiable, undeiable scientific evidence showing that God never answers prayers, then why do Christians insist that God is real and that God is answering prayers for them on a daily basis? What would prompt Christians to make these statements despite all the contrary evidence? To put it another way, what might motivate Christians to ignore the strong evidence that God is imaginary? Here are five possibilities: Christians might choose to believe that God is answering their prayers, despite the evidence that "answered prayers" are nothing more than coincidences, because they are affraid of death. As described in Proof #27, there is no evidence whatsoever that there is a "heaven" or an "afterlife." Yet the prospect of permanent mortality is very uncomfortable to many people. Because of this discomfort, they may have such a strong reason to believe in Jesus' promise of eternal life that they need to support their belief with other evidence. Since Jesus also promises that he answers prayers, they are willing to turn any coincidence into an "answered prayer" and ascribe the answer to Jesus. (see Proof #27) Christians might choose to believe that God is answering their prayers, despite the evidence that "answered prayers" are nothing more than coincidences, because it is a huge boost to the ego. This explanation works both for big "miracles" and small ones. Imagine this: Imagine that you have cancer, you pray to God for a cure, you undergo surgery and chemotherapy, and the cancer does go into remission. What cured you? The surgery and chemo -- all evidence indicates that this is the case. If God was going to cure you, you would have been able to skip the surgery and chemo. Yet, as a Christian, it is a huge ego boost to believe that the all-powerful creator of the universe cured you. It means he has "big plans" for the rest of your life. Or imagine something much smaller: you pray that God remove a stain from your favorite blouse when you wash it, and after you wash it the stain is in fact gone. It is the detergent that removed it. But a Christian interprets the event differently. What it means to a Christian is that the all-powerful creator of the universe has reached down from heaven to specifically hear and answer a prayer. If you selectively ignore all the prayers that God does not "answer" with the statement that "it is not part of his plan", then the idea that God is listening to and responding to you individually can be tremendously satisfying to the ego. It means that you are special in God's eyes. The entire thing is an illusion that is created in the mind of the Christian to stroke the ego. Christians might choose to believe that God is answering their prayers, despite the evidence that "answered prayers" are nothing more than coincidences, because they are affraid of being alone. They need an invisible friend to talk to in order to cope with lonliness, and God is the "community sanctioned" invisible friend that is accepted in our society. It may be that, for millions of people, an invisible friend is the only way they can cope with being alone. In order to make this invisible friend seem more real, it may help the illusion if you believe that he hears and answers prayers. When we are born, we instinctively have a place in our brains for an "all-knowing, all-loving being". When we are young this being is called a parent, and children naturally and instinctively bond to their parents. What if a large number of people never outgrow this phase, and need to fill this place in their brains with something once they have left their real parents and moved on? In other words, what if this place in the brain remains into adulthood for many people, long after it has served its need, and people feel lonely unless they fill this place with something? Having an "all-knowing, all-loving" invisible friend would be an obvious thing to fill it with. If you can heighten the illusion by believeing that this imaginary friend answers prayers, all the better. Christians might choose to believe that God is answering their prayers, despite the evidence that "answered prayers" are nothing more than coincidences, because it makes them the center of attention with their peers at church. If you ever watch a group of Christians comparing their answered prayers, you can see how this process works. One Christian starts the conversation, "Well, my dog Binky was suffering from terrible skin sores, and the vet gave me some medicine and it didn't work when I first put it on, but I prayed to God and four days later the sores were gone! Praise Jesus!" Now what can happen is a game of one-upmanship. Another will say, "Well, I was planning my vacation and I had no idea where the money was going to come from, so I prayed to God and that very day a credit card offer came in my mail and the credit line was just enough to cover the bills! Praise the Lord!" In such an environment, if you don't have a prayer story to tell, it appears that you have lost favor with God. Therefore, you may be willing to exagerate a little, and even make something up, in order not to lose face with your peer group. Is this a direct proof that God is imaginary? No. But it shows that Christians have strong incentives to delude themselves into believing. What you can see is that Christians -- especially Christians who are members of church communities -- have strong reasons to make up stories about prayer and to ignore all the evidence that "answered prayers" really are coincidences. These motivations completely explain the phenomenon of "answered prayers" in Christian communities.
Proof #41 - Flip a coin If you are a Christian who believes in the power of prayer, here is a very simple experiment that will show you something very interesting about your faith. Take a coin out of your pocket. Now pray sincerely to Ra: Dear Ra, almighty sun god, I am going to flip this ordinary coin 50 times, and I am asking you to cause it to land heads-side-up all 50 times. In Ra's name I pray, Amen. Now flip the coin. Chances are that you won't get past the fifth or sixth flip and the coin will land tails. What does this mean? Most people would look at this data and conclude that Ra is imaginary. We prayed to Ra, and Ra did nothing. We can prove that Ra is imaginary by using statistical analysis. If we flip the coin thousands of times, praying to Ra each time, we will find that the coin lands heads or tails in exact correlation with the normal laws of probability. Ra has absolutely no effect on the coin no matter how much we pray. Even if we find a thousand of Ra's most faithful believers and ask them to do the praying/flipping, the results will be the same. Therefore, as rational people, we conclude that Ra is imaginary. We look at Ra in the same way that we look at Leprechauns, Mermaids, Santa and so on. We know that people who believe in Ra are delusional. Now let's try the experiment again, but this time let's pray to Jesus Christ instead of Ra. Pray sincerely to Jesus like this: Dear Jesus, I know that you exist and I know that you hear and answer prayers as you promise in the Bible. I am going to flip this ordinary coin 50 times, and I am asking you to cause it to land heads-side-up all 50 times. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Now flip the coin. Once again, after the fifth or sixth flip, the coin will land tails. If we flip the coin thousands of times, praying to Jesus each time, we will find that the coin lands heads or tails in exact correlation with the normal laws of probability. We can gather together a group of Jesus' most pious followers to do the praying and the result will be the same. Jesus will have zero effect on the coin. This makes complete sense. It is not like there are two laws of probability -- one for Christians who pray and the other for non-Christians. We all know that. There is only one law of probability because prayers have zero effect. That goes for all prayers. Jesus has no effect on our planet no matter how much we pray. We can prove that conclusively using statitical analysis. If you are a Christian, watch what is happening inside your mind right now. The data is absolutely identical in both experiments. With Ra you looked at the data rationally and concluded that Ra is imaginary. But with Jesus... something else will happen. In your mind, you are already coming up with a thousand rationalizations to explain why Jesus did not answer your prayers: It is not his will He doesn't have time I didn't pray the right way I am not worthy I do not have enough faith I cannot test the Lord like this It is not part of Jesus' plan for me And on and on and on... One rationalization that you may find yourself developing is particularly interesting. You may say to yourself: âWell, of course Jesus doesnât answer me when I pray about a coin toss, because it is too trivial." Where did this rationalization come from? If you read what Jesus says about prayer in the Bible (see Proof #1), Jesus does not ever say, "don't pray to me about coin tosses." Jesus clearly says he will answer your prayers, and he puts no boundaries on what you may pray for. You invented this rationalization out of thin air. If you are a Christian who is offended by the notion of praying about a coin toss, then let's try this instead. Get down on your knees right now and pray as follows: "Dear Jesus, son of God, the almighty, all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe, we pray to you to cure every case of cancer on this planet tonight. Please hear our heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer and fulfill your promises in Matthew 7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19, Mark 9:23, Luke 1:37, James 5:15-16 and many other places. We pray knowing that when you answer this prayer, it will glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways. In your name we pray, Amen." Will every case of cancer be gone tomorrow? Of course not. If you are a believer, you can create dozens of rationalizations for this unanswered prayer. But that does not change the reality of the situation. There is zero effect from praying, and it does not matter what you pray for. You are an expert at creating rationalizations for Jesus. The reason you are an expert is because Jesus does not answer any of your prayers (see Proof #2). The reason why Jesus does not answer any of your prayers is because Jesus is imaginary.
Proof #42 - Listen when "God talks" If you know a group of devout Christians, you will frequently hear them say to each other (and even to people outside the group) things like this: My husband and I are not sure what to do in this situation. We are going to pray to God and see what he tells us to do. According to televangelists and ministers, God also frequently talks to them as well. In other words, Christians believe that God transmits divine messages to his followers in response to prayer. Christians actually believe that the almighty, all-knowing creator of the universe is talking to them personally and guiding their decisions. Now think about this. Let's say that the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe was going to transmit personal messages to Christians. Wouldn't you expect the people receiving these messages to blow the rest of us away in every intellectual endeavor? Wouldn't you expect someone who is directed by God to be a genius? Wouldn't every Christian student get a perfect score on every test simply by praying to God for the answers? Imagine, for example, that a Christian is having trouble deciding what color couch to buy. So she prays to God for guidance. Wouldn't you expect the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe to come back with a message that just completely blows all of us away? For example, wouldn't you expect a Christian to say: You know, I prayed to God to help me decide which color couch to buy, and the next thing I hear is God's voice in my head! And he starts telling me how to build a nuclear fusion reactor that will completely solve the world's energy problems! It's some kind of crazy laser-pumped Tokamak thing. I have no idea what he was talking about, but I was the vessel for his spirit, and I have transcribed the messages and diagrams that God sent to my brain in these 14 notebooks. You can see that we now have complete construction details for a perfect, pollution free, inexpensive fusion reactor -- Praise the Lord!" Yes, that is what you expect from the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe, if God were real. You would expect the messages that God sends to blow us out of the water with their brilliance. The fact that God's messages to Christians are completely mundane tells us that God is imaginary. What the Christian typically gets is this message: "Buy the red couch." That message, of course, is the Christian's own brain making a decision, because God is completely imaginary.
Proof #43 - Realize that a "hidden God" is impossible Here is a line of reasoning that Christians will frequently use to try to rationalize the complete lack of evidence for God's existence. In the book "The Case for Faith," the author Lee Stroble interviews Peter Kreeft, Ph.D. Dr. Kreeft says the following: "Scripture describes God as a hidden God. You have to make the effort of faith to find him. There are clues you can follow. And if that weren't so, if there was something more or less than clues, it's difficult for me to understand how we could really be free to make a choice about him." Clues? Hidden? According to the Bible God incarnated himself. He created an entire human body named Jesus. That is not a "clue" -- that is a huge, obvious piece of evidence. It is very hard to "hide" a 170-pound human being who is running around performing miracles on every street corner. Then you collect the stories of those miracles and publish them in a book. Where is the hiding in that? There are examples of God's desire for publicity throughout the Bible. The best known is God's parting of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus, chapter 14: Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. That is impressive, and it is utterly obvious. Thousands of Israelites witnessed this event. There are many other events that are equally obvious: manna from heaven, the Ten Commandments carved onto stone tablets, the Passover massacre and so on. All of it is described in the Bible, which God wrote so that billions of people can read about these events and experience them vicariously today. It is pretty hard to hide something that you do in front of thousands of people and then describe and publish in billions of books. Clearly God is not a hidden God. But there is an even more impressive sign that we often forget. If God exists and God wrote the Bible, then rainbows are actually proof that God exists. God is not hiding at all. If you read Genesis 9:12-13 you will find this: And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth..." What could be more obvious than that? God left a sign for all future generations, according to the Bible. Clearly God does not want to hide. There are also plenty of cases in the New Testament. For example, Matthew, Chapter 17: After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!" These are not exactly the actions of a God in hiding. Apparently the free wills of Peter, James and John were not that important to God. And again it is published in the Bible so that billions of other people can read about it. Or take this passage from the book of Matthew, Chapter 3: As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." Again, not exactly a hidden God. Or this passage from the book of Luke, Chapter 2: And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." The free will of the shepherds was certainly tarnished a bit here. In 1 Corinthians 15:6, Paul says, Then he [Jesus, after the resurrection] appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time. Those 500 people must have lost their free will. And John says: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. (John 21:25) That's an awful lot of miracles -- so many that the world would not have room for all the books describing them. Presumably at least one person witnessed each miracle. Think of how many names fill just one phone book. Now imagine a whole world full of phone books. That's a lot of people. Weren't all of their free wills affected? How is God hiding if millions of people saw Jesus and the miracles he performed? Jesus claims to be God, and Jesus is a physical being running around Israel for all to see. He apparently performed millions of miracles in front of millions of people. The God of the Bible is not hiding -- God is so hungry for publicity and exposure that he actually incarnates himself and then starts performing miracles for everyone on the planet. Then he creates a God-breathed book to describe everything and publishes billions of copies all over the world. Yet, for some reason, God wants none of us today to see any of those miracles because he "needs to remain hidden" so that he will not "taint our free wills." Does that seem likely? Or is it more likely that Jesus never performed a real miracle? When you combine this evidence with the fact that Jesus answers no prayers (start with Proof #1), it is clear to us what is actually happening. The idea that God is "hiding" is ridiculous. The fact is that God is completely imaginary, and that is the real reason why there is absoutely no evidence for God today.
RE: Enemies Brother, the war with yourself is almost over. The journey's end is at the place of peace. What do I mean by "yourself"? I mean that you are the Son of God, and we are brothers. We are one. The Son of God is all around you. Nothing around you is but part of you. Look upon it lovingly and see the light of Heaven in it. Therefore how can you have enemies? How strange indeed becomes this war with yourself! No one is strong who has an enemy. No one can attack unless he thinks he has an enemy. Belief in enemies is therefore a belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the will of God. It is as certain you will fear what you attack as it is sure that you will love what you perceive as sinless. Walk you in glory, with your head held high, and fear no evil. The innocent are safe because they share innocence. Nothing they see is harmful, for their awareness of the truth releases everything from the illusion of harmfulness. And what seemed harmful now stands shining in their innocence, released from sin and fear and happily returned to love. The innocent share the strength of love because they looked on innocence. And every error disappears because they see it not. Who looks for glory finds it where it is. Where could it be but in the innocent? Do you not see the opposite of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? Innocence is strength, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear, for sin of any kind is weakness. You are not asked to love the sinful. You are advised to love the innocent, for in this way you love yourself. Are you not innocent? He walks in peace who travels sinlessly along the way love shows him. For love walks with him there, protecting him from fear. And he will see only the sinless, who can not attack. You will believe that everything you use for sin can hurt you and become your enemy. And you will fight against it and try to weaken it because of this; and you will think that you succeeded, and attack again. Think what a happy world you walk with the truth beside you! Brother, you are innocent. You cannot be attacked, attack has no justification, and you are responsible for what you believe. The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the relationship of anger to fear is not always so apparent. Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one's own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others. Anger cannot occur unless you believe you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it. Given these three wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is worthy of attack rather than of love must follow. What can be expected from insane premises except an insane conclusion? The way to undo an insane conclusion is to consider the sanity of the premises on which it rests. You cannot be attacked. You have no enemies. Take me as a model for learning. For learning purposes, let us consider the crucifixion once again. Set aside for the moment any fearful connotations you may associate with it. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion that is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood. The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. It's value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. This is because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. The crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it. It has a definite contribution to your own life, and if you consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher. ...Continued...