Yes! This is a pic of hole 6 at Gehenna Greens just outside of Jerusalem. It was a par 666 with all kinds of sand traps, pitfalls, and rocky soil. It was unreal! Jesus
Maverick1, I have read carefully what you say, as it is obviously thoughtful and considered. I would like to respond directly to the main points you have raised as follows: It would not be possible to constructively engage the points you raise because in effect you have closed off the debate before it starts. Declaring Christ/God as given before the conversation even begins, is basing anything subsequently talked of on unsubstantiated pre-suppositions. Like saying the earth is flat, debate the flatness. That is where I would say you are abandoning the logic. By what archimedes has so expertly and intelligently articulated how could anyone have credible reason to understand he was not "born again" and , I'm not sure the marriage analogy fails for the reason you give. It is valid to say an individual can judge his position from being both first inside and then outside of marriage. It does not mean he/she was never married when they are no longer. Judging position with ideas of God from once believing then not believing gives a far better understanding I would argue. It does not mean he/she never belived in God or was not "born again" when they do no longer. "The gospel of John says you that you are condemned if you do not believe. " Then the Gospel of John says his God's love is conditional. An all loving God whose love is declared conditional is not all loving and is contradiction. Here we are not even debating flat earth, as the argument is made illogical when the earth is declared bumpy. This all may mean archimedes was never born again by the debating flat-earth-with-bumps- in-it logic, or in other words christian apologetics - but from reasoned debate, he certainly has shown must have been. There I agree with you in principle Mav. Problem as I see it lkh should not be able to do that. The Bible text should really be like breathing according to the claims it makes. So obviously true it could not reasonably be countered. But there are seemingly endless, reasonable, compellingly overwhelming reasons to understand the Bible is fiction, lkh has given many . There are non to understand a belief in breathing is anything but reliable. Mav, There is no choice BUT to make God from ones own intellect. That's how you do it.
You can find time defined in Physics from Galileo to Newton to Einstein. It is an illusion according to metaphysics not physics. Metaphysics of course is as near to pseudo-physics as it is possible to get without actually naming it so. Like salvation it's all in the mind. A case of mind over matter and when you don't mind, it just doesn't matter.
Never said life is a "cosmic joke"... if anything I have repeatedly stated my belief that life is both profound and beautiful. As with many other ad hominems, the notion that nonbelief = cynical nihilism is something of a canard. Calvinism is the best of a bad lot. I've studied all the major branches of Christian theology, and Calvinism was the only one that had a semblance of philosophical sense. Therefore, I use Calvinism as a proxy for Christianity's "best argument." It's a long discussion, but the short version is that Calvinism is the most straightforward approach to biblical doctrines and philosophical questions re God's omnipotence. Most Calvinists would say they do not follow Calvin per se; Calvinism is simply a label to indicate that branch of doctrinal belief which hews closer to biblical truth than the others do. Catholicism and Arminianism both choke on Isaiah 46:10, Romans 9:18, John 6:44, the entire book of Job, and literally dozens of other verses and passages. They try in vain to deny what Calvinism embraces openly--the reality of God's iron fist. The central, undiluted message of God's omnipotence, as laid out in scripture, is that 1) God is in absolute control, 2) God does whatever he pleases, and 3) man's eternal destiny is wholly in God's hands, not in man's. This is also the only tenable conception of an omniscient, omnipotent God. Attempts to remove God's ultimate responsibility for eternal punishment--to make God into a nice guy with his hands tied behind his back--are philosophically bankrupt from the start. They are the theological version of absolving God from natural disasters. It just doesn't make any sense. Ergo, a Calvinist would say, if you're going to uphold the truth of the bible you should be honest about its dominant message. Many Christians argue that Catholics aren't actually Christians at all. I've heard the same argument in reverse from old Catholic friends. John Wesley, the great preacher, is on record essentially saying that if a doctrine as horrible as Calvinism were true, he would tell Jesus to piss off. There is a ridiculous amount of mud flinging and damnation slinging, even within the body of 'believers.' (As I've stated previously in this thread, the ear-splitting cacophony is testament to the fact that God's word is either incompetent or deviously obscure. The bible says God is not a God of confusion... and yet His book surely is.) My story revolved around Calvinism because I was a Calvinist, but also because, after much study and contemplation, I believed (and still do believe) that Calvinism is the most rational, honest approach to biblical doctrine as a whole. With that said, it's not as if I've merely rejected my old theology and I'm waiting around for another a-ha! moment so I can start believing the bible again. My post-Calvinist journey has led me to understand that it's all bullshit. Christianity on the whole is morally and philosophically untenable. It is not just a question of sorting out historical facts or clever arguments... the central message of popular religion is a sociobiological ruse meant to play on man's vulnerable instincts. Edward O. Wilson used the term 'metanarrative' to describe the overarching, 360 degree view of how someone sees and interprets the structure of reality. A person's metanarrative is the backstory of why they are here, why the world is here, and so on. Having moved beyond Christianity does not mean I am casting around in darkness. I have found a stronger metanarrative... a more truthful and coherent one. (There is life, glorious life, outside the ringfence!) Just because I don't know God's name--or if God exists in intelligible form at all--doesn't take away from my metanarrative. In fact, it wholly makes sense to me that, if a higher intelligence exists, its lack of communication is intentional. The lack of message can be its own message of sorts, whether it comes from a closed mouth or no mouth... silence is a clue as to what we're supposed to do. (There's that inner beat poet again.) The average person--not just the religious person--has a real problem putting themselves in someone else's shoes. We aren't cognitively trained to consider different perspectives than our own. So when a religious person tries to 'think' like a non-religious person, they invariably make all kinds of hidden assumptions, based on their own worldview, that aren't accurate at all. Take the existence of monsters and demons and hell, for example. Doesn't everyone believe these things could exist, or at least shudder occasionally in the dark of night? Well, no. Not really. If one conceptualizes a universe that makes logical sense from here all the way back to the big bang, there is no reason to make room for bugaboos at all. Observable evidence argues strongly that, if a higher intelligence exists, then he / she / it is of the distinctly rational sort, at least as far as the laws of physics go. (Overwhelming evidence of consciousness as emergent property puts the spirit world to bed also. How is it that a brain surgeon can change your personality... change you... with the slip of a scalpel?) Try thinking of it like this: learning a new metanarrative is a bit like learning a new language. Say you wanted to pick up Portuguese, or functional Japanese. Could you do this over night? No... you would have to immerse yourself for a time, do a lot of thinking, put some significant hours in, get some good practice in viewing the world with a different pair of eyes. When I say that I have moved beyond Christianity, part of what I mean is that I can now turn around and see everything more clearly than ever before. This includes an ability to see and understand Christianity in terms of how it evolved... why it exists... why it continues to thrive... and why it is a myth.
"Quote from Maverick1: But you see, lkh wants a god that he can fully explain, one that he can define completely and accurately, in other words, he wants a god that he can neatly fit in his little box. Only then would lkh be satisfied, but would he? The truth is that lkh has made a god of his own intellect, which he sees as infallible and which I see as deeply flawed and fallible. It is a sad sight when man elevates himself to such heights that he can't even see his own fallibility and limitations." I do not want a God that i can fit in my box. I am simply opening the box provided by God according to christians,the bible, and dissecting the evidence with logic and reason. If God says he will move a mountain if asked in his book i am simply asking "then why has God never moved a mountain" and then trying to provide a few questions that might lead us to the reason as to why. Ie he does not exist as described. To further fine tune this argument i will stipulate that there could have been some kind of first mover. It could have been Zeus,one of the hundreds of other gods man has conceived or Flying Spaghetti Monster. All of my arguments relate to Biblegod. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
I am going to take this thread in a new direction for a while in our search for the truth. Mav claims that once you believe you can never not believe. He has accused those of us that changed our minds of never believing to the level that he believed. In other words our belief was inferior to his. I though it would be helpfull to those that may take him seriously to hear from a few other people who deconverted from christianity based on the evidence. For the next few weeks i will post some of the better deconversion stories i have run across: Out of Fundamentalism By Mickey Williams I am smack in the middle of my journey out of fundamentalism. However it has been a process that has been going on for about 5 years now. You don't just throw off 30 plus years of indoctrination all at once. Also, lets be honest, it hurts. I wanted to, and did for 30+ years, believe that this book was God's words to us. I wanted to believe that there was a loving God, who could and would help me through the problems of life. I wanted to believe that if I was in God's will I could expect his blessings on my life, and it hurt like hell to do all I was expected to do, and then still find my world crashing down around me. It hurt to pray, and pray, and pray, and never get one answer to any of those prayers, (except NO I suppose), which everyone is so happy to bring up to me. Let me be totally upfront about something here. I understand how hard it is to question your or your family's long held faith. It is probably the hardest thing a person will ever have to do, to question what has been accepted on faith, as absolute truth, by a lifetime of friends and family and community, and which you believed yourself. I admit the easy road is to simply not rock the boat. Most of my friends and family are this way. They have never even thought about investigating the Bible, or the claims in the Bible, nor have they, or will they, ever investigate it for themselves, or look at their faith with a critical eye. Just the thought of it makes them cut the conversation short. They have believed and accepted the things they have been taught as the absolute truth, and as long as life doesn't throw anything totally unbearable, or totally at odds with everything they believe, then there is no reason to think differently. All of their friends have accepted this same faith. All of their family have accepted this faith, their mothers, their fathers, their aunts and uncles, and grandmothers and grandfathers, and on, and on. However what should a person do, when they begin to realize that something is just not right here, something is simply not as I was taught that it should be? What do you do when real life does not match with the faith you have been taught? There is a reason why there is that little nagging question in the back of your mind which is telling you that something about all of this is just not adding up, and itâs not the devil. I was "saved", or "born again", when I was 9 years old, and I am 49 now. My father was a preacher and pastor, and has been for 30+ years. My Father in law is also a Baptist preacher. We grew up in the Methodist Church, and then later we joined the Baptist denomination. For the past 30 years I, (pretty much like anyone else around me), accepted that what I had been taught by my parents and family about God and the Bible was the absolute truth, based on absolute undeniable facts. Anything in the Bible which seemed to be contradictory, or was impossible to understand, or reconcile with the morals of the Church today, were simply ignored, overlooked, or filed away as something which could not be understood by fallible men, about an infallible God. To keep questioning the unknown areas, or to really seek answers to the hard scriptures, or to still harbor doubts about the scriptures which made no sense, was seen as a lack of faith in God. I was taught that the Holy Bible is the inerrant, infallible, inspired, Word of God, directly from God himself. What did this mean exactly? Well it is pretty self-explanatory really. First of it is attested that this book has no errors in history, philosophy, nor any incorrect idiom of science, or natural history. It is Godâs very own words, or at the least his words as dictated to man, as the doctrine would imply, so then the implication is that a perfect God, would have sent us a perfect Word. Secondly, to hold to this position one has to accept that âinfallibilityâ means that its message is consistent from beginning to end, and does not suffer the problems of modern books whose ideas and philosophies and viewpoints must undergo revisions every few years when new data becomes available or when new science proves old theories wrong, or simply because human enlightenment has advanced the values of society. Lastly you must believe that âinspirationâ, only in the case of the Bible (and this case only) means that; âthese words were breathed directly from Godâs mouth to menâs ears, and put directly down on paperâ. As you can imagine this is a very, very weighty measure of any book, much less one written by many different authors over thousands of years, and assembled by independent church leaders, councils, debate and compromise as the Bible has come down to us. This is however the view of the Bible, which I was taught to believe in, and accept unequivocally as the first tenant of faith; anything else was heresy. However, does the Bible really hold to this standard? Does it meet and pass all critical analysis? Are we allowed to use our God given common sense, and critical thinking when evaluating this book, as we would with any other book in the world? To even begin to understand the Bible, I was taught that you must first start with a few preconceptions right up front, which must be accepted unequivocally (even without proof) as absolute truths. This is that Jesus is the son of God, who gave his life for us, and rose again to save us, and the Bible is Godâs infallible words to man, and our guide in spiritual things. Then with those pre-conditions accepted and set in stone as the saying goes, you can then hopefully begin to interpret the supporting evidence for those "absolute truths", and the supporting evidence of course is the Bible itself. Doing it that way does sort of help to pre-determine the outcome before you even start doesnât it? However many Christians, like myself, even with the preconceptions set in stone in our minds, do still have trouble interpreting the Bible, even with a strong faith in the basic principles there are still many things which just don't seem to add up. When in doubt about a scripture, or when there are things stated in Old Testament scriptures that we would have moral objections to today, or if there seem to be contradictory statements in other scriptures, we simply fall back to the original presuppositions: Jesus is the son of God, who died and rose again to save us, and the Bible is Godâs infallible words to man, and our guide in spiritual things. Therefore it follows, and in fact we are told at that point, that it must be us who simply can't understand the things of God, not that the Bible may actually be contradictory, or actually morally repugnant. This type of reasoning of course, can become a very tenuous juxtaposition to rely on at times, and thus it leads many people to simply decide to ignore the hard scriptures, or the contradictions, precisely because they can't be reconciled with the preconceptions we have all accepted, that Jesus is the son of God who died and rose again to save us; and the Bible is Godâs infallible words to man and our guide in spiritual things. We are forever in the mode of defending the very book, the very evidence that is supposed to be the proof and foundation of our Faith, and then in the end we wind up admitting that a lot of this book we simply cannot understand, nor will we ever understand, and somehow this too is in God's plan, because he is God, and he is perfect and his book is perfect and we are not perfect. Does that make perfect sense? You will have to admit, that this is exactly the opposite of what you and I, and everyone else in the world does, when it comes to anything else in our lives, such as in the study or examination of things like scientific research, or in legal matters, or in the proof of anything in this world which "claims" to have the absolute truth. We don't assume guilt before concrete evidence is presented in a trial. We don't assume someone has absolute truth even before they can prove that they have the absolute truth. If I were of another religion, and I claimed to have the absolute truth, wouldnât you ask me to prove that I have absolute truth? Yet with the Bible we all accept as absolute truth, even though no proof has been provided, based simply on the premise that others before us, or our parents accepted it as absolute truth, or that my family accepts it as absolute truth. Shouldn't we demand more? (more) http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/outoffundamentalism.html
One of the great things about using religion as a moral guide line is that you can pick and choose the rules that are most convenient for your lifestyle , and just throw out and discount the rules that you find too constraining. Here is one small example: http://www.ku-klux-klan.org/KluddKorner/cistudies.html ⦠oh, of course some guy is going to pop out from the peanut gallery and scream « But they are not true Christians ! » ⦠just as every religious nut thinks he/she has the monopoly on the truth.
Proof # 666 - Atheism's Body Count It is obvious that Atheism cannot be true; for if it were, it would produce a more humane world, since it values only this life and is not swayed by the foolish beliefs of primitive superstitions and religions. However, the opposite proves to be true. Rather than providing the utopia of idealism, it has produced a body count second to none. With recent documents uncovered for the Maoist and Stalinist regimes, it now seems the high end of estimates of<a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM"> 250 million</a> dead (<a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF">between 1900-1987</a>) are closer to the mark. The Stalinist Purges produced <a href="http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/04/how-many-did-stalin-really-murder.html">61 million dead</a> and Mao's Cultural Revolution produced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story">70 million casualties</a>. These murders are all upon their own people! This number does not include the countless dead in their wars of outward aggression waged in the name of the purity of atheism's world view. China invades its peaceful, but religious, Tibet; supports N. Korea in its war against its southern neighbor and in its merciless oppression of its own people; and Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge kill up to 6 million with Chinese support. All of these actions done "in the name of the people" to create a better world. What is so strange and odd that in spite of their outward rejection of religion and all its superstitions, they feel compelled to set up cults of personality and worship of the State and its leaders that is so totalitarian that the leaders are not satisfied with mere outward obedience; rather they insist on total mind control and control of thoughts, ideas and beliefs. They institute Gulags and "re-education" centers to indoctrinate anyone who even would dare question any action or declaration of the "Dear Leader." Even the Spanish Inquisition cannot compare to the ruthlessness and methodical efficiency of these programs conducted on so massive a scale. While proclaiming freedom to the masses, they institute the most methodical efforts to completely eliminate freedom from the people, and they do so all "on behalf" of the proletariat. A completely ordered and totally unfree totalitarian State is routinely set up in <strong>place</strong> of religion, because it is obviously so profoundly better society. It is also strange that Stalin was a seminarian who rejected Christianity and went on to set up himself as an object of worship. It seems that impulse to religious devotion is present in all, whether that be in traditional forms or secular inventions. And while it is often said that Hitler was a Christian, the Nuremburg documents clearly reveal the heart of this ruthless man who believed in <a href="http://www.csustan.edu/History/Faculty/Weikart/response-richards.htm">social Darwinism</a> and had devised plans to completely <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/shiflett/shiflett012102.shtml">eliminate Christianity</a> after <a href="http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/endC.htm">the Third Reich was firmly established.</a> He wanted to use religion to subvert it for his own political purposes, but he had rejected his Catholic heritage long before. What should be of concern to every atheist is that Hitler thought he could best succeed if he eliminated the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat">Church's influence on politics</a>. He promised not to persecute Catholics if the Catholic Church agreed to stay out of politics. However, many Protestants could not accept Hitler's claim to be a German Messiah or submit to an absolute allegiance to the German State, and many Protestants and Catholics were put into Concentration Camps along with the Jews for their resistance to the Furehr. Hitler's view of the Master Race was highly influenced by both Neitschean Philosophy and <a href="http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&program=CSC%20-%20Views%20and%20News&id=2620"> modern, Darwinian evolutionary view of science</a>. So we can also obviously see that evolution must be wrong because it lead to more than 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews murdered in this quest for Furehr worship and absolute power. My point is this: you cannot say anything about the existence or non-existence of God by comparative body counts. What people do in the name of religion is no worse than what people do in the name of atheism. All it proves is that human beings are capable of unspeakable evils, regardless of their affections or faiths. The Book of James says as much; that people used the cloak of religion to hide their greed and oppress one another: "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Arenât they caused by the selfish desires that fight to control you? You want what you donât have, so you commit murder. Youâre determined to have things, but you canât get what you want. You quarrel and fight. You donât have the things you want, because you donât pray for them. When you pray for things, you donât get them because you want them for the wrong reason--for your own pleasure." James 4:1-3, GWV. While the desire to see justice on this earth is understandable, and the desire laudable, the lack of justice actually points more to the existence of God. Why? Because of our innate sense of injustice when things go wrong. Why in a universe of chance and accident, where morals are the mere fictions of weak willed and weak minded men, deceived by superstitions, should banal ideas of "justice" stand in the way of the success of the Supermen, who possess superior intellect and who are not bound by the trifling morals of lesser men? "Pay attention to this if youâre rich. Cry and moan about the misery that is coming to you. Your riches have decayed, and your clothes have been eaten by moths. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be used as evidence against you. Like fire, it will destroy your body. You have stored up riches in these last days. The wages you refused to pay the people who harvested your fields shout to God against you. The Lord of Armies has heard the cries of those who gather the crops. You have lived in luxury and pleasure here on earth. You have fattened yourselves for the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered people who have Godâs approval, even though they didnât resist you." James 5:1-6, GWV.
So if a fine christian mother is praying for her 15 yo daughter to survive a heart disease (true story)and those prayers are ignored, Gods excuse for ignoring it is because "you donât get them because you want them for the wrong reason--for your own pleasure."