“The work of God”?

Saddleworth2 said:
I take my hat to you for sharing this so honestly on a forum like this. You must have known the reaction you would get but then you do love a good debate ;-).
The first 10 years of my life were spent in a gentle dip into the waters through sunday school and church. As soon as I hit my teens that was binned I'm afraid. I have quite a bit of experience of the results of a catholic upbringing, both the good and the bad through marriage. Have never met anyone that has had a late conversion like you have described.

If I'm totally honest I don't have a concrete belief either way. I often used to think quite deeply as a child about the nature of the universe and our place in it. How could we be the only world in the whole of creation to hold sophisticated life? I still don't believe that question has been answered definitively. I may well keep my options open just in case I need to :-)
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I certainly expected lots of piss taking, I didn’t really expect one or two to get angry about it but hey ho, I don’t mind the odd harsh comment.

It’s very common for that to happen to people, in what happened to you. I read recently 7/10 people raised in different Christian denominations households/schools etc. have binned it by 18.

To be honest up until I was 18 I had zero interest in the big questions or politics etc. City and girls and drinking beer was pretty much all I thought about until then.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
I'll remind you of that on the Scottish Politics thread next time ;-)
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I’ve certainly mellowed in there.

I don’t think there’s much use in discussing IndyRef2 until it’s in the calendar so I can’t really be bothered at the mo.
 
When the anti-religionists on here begin to discuss something like Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamikakarikas, the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi, Meister Eckhart, the mystical insights of Ibn Arabi, or the impenetrable lyricism of Dogen’s Shobogenzo with some kind of rudimentary facility, it might then be possible for a meaningful discussion to take place.

Until then....
 
Ban-jani said:
I’ve certainly mellowed in there.

I don’t think there’s much use in discussing IndyRef2 until it’s in the calendar so I can’t really be bothered at the mo.
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I hope you don't mind me saying but I notice a mellowing in general and a greater tolerance of contrary views. Thats a compliment be the way.
 
Brightwells left peg said:
It doesn’t take grit to stand up for your faith. Faith by definition is believing something without evidence, so all you need to do is just keep deluding yourself.

As for putting the onus on Atheists to disprove your delusions, that is a typical religious cop out, but I’ll go with it. Can you please disprove my belief that up in space there is a rainbow coloured unicorn currently having tea with Elvis. Until such point as you can disprove it, it’s more believable than anything you currently believe in.
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You can also have faith in something with evidence to go alongside it.

I have faith City will win tonight because we’re a better team than Everton.

Anyway, what he meant by grit, is that defending it despite the ridicule and abuse you receive.

Agnostics have nothing to prove as they’re not claiming to know how the universe was formed, an atheist is claiming that it wasn’t created intelligently and with that claim, they’re making an assertion without evidence too.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
I hope you don't mind me saying but I notice a mellowing in general and a greater tolerance of contrary views. Thats a compliment be the way.
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I don’t think that’s all down to my faith but it’s certainly helped.

When you view even those you disagree with as God’s children too, you tend to not get as angry with them.

Some arguments were during a time when I was under a lot of stress earlier this year and it’s why I took a break to be honest.
 
Ban-jani said:
Science and religion aren’t mutually exclusive.

Science has shown us there’s a Big Bang, which religion arrived at there being a beginbefore science.

Science has shown us the universe is incredibly finely tuned and “looks as though it’s been created” I think, according to Einstein?

Also, eye witness accounts are taken in a court of law now, especially independent ones, so why are they so readily dismissed now?

Atheism doesn’t have a monopoly on science, it’s a belief that also takes faith.

Are you going to claim you know more about science than Francis Collins or John Lennox?

By the way, your comparison to a flat earther would be a reasonable one if we’d found the body of Christ and then I still believed in the Gospels, that would be a ridiculous thing for me to do as there is evidence I can view about the truth, just like now, where I can see the curvature of the world.

It’s a lazy, stupid argument.
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So much to go at in this post but i really can't be arsed
 
stonerblue said:
@Ban-jani s xmasses have all come at once on this thread. He gets to argue, sorry, 'debate' with almost all the members at once.
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It’s actually been quite interesting with some.

Others have described Christians as “horrific”, “flat earther types” and morons.

All the aggression and the sour arguments have come from a handful of atheists, not the other way around.

But don’t worry, you get back on your high horse and pretend otherwise.

Have a lovely day.
 
ZenHalfTimeCrock said:
When the anti-religionists on here begin to discuss something like Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamikakarikas, the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi, Meister Eckhart, the mystical insights of Ibn Arabi, or the impenetrable lyricism of Dogen’s Shobogenzo with some kind of rudimentary facility, it might then be possible for a meaningful discussion to take place.

Until then....
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Well as this buddhism isn't a theism the teaching on the middle way are irrelevant to this thread on god as though dieties can exist they are not important , and as for eikhart, he was a dominican monk and we all know they were heretics - Franciscans rule and all that well I did go to the monestsry as a kid.

Oh and from my experience tibetan/east asian buddhism is much more slack compared to the Theravada school,

As for the rest I couldn't say I know anything without looking them up
 
Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.

Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person

Christopher hitchens
 
Oh and I need to correct this god came down to earth as jesus to help his people was a unique thing.


The Jade Emperor used to do it all the time and the original holy trinity of vishnu, bhrama and shiva would oftern pop down from time to time.


Think this thread is very insulting to other dieties that have equal claim to the title god

YHWH gets far too much special treatment.
 
BimboBob said:
Jesus, the start of Christianity.
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My thoughts on Jesus, the start of Christianity, are mirrored in Part II Chapter XII of this book:

Also in this expert from another book:
(click on the pdf link within the link)

It’s all just a plagiarism of older myths from older religions. And it just happens to be, that these [much] older religions and identical stories were from places that were on the trade route from China, through India, through Persia, to Arabia. The stories of Buddha, Chrishna, and the Zoroastrian religion came into Arabia with the travellers to and from these areas through trade.

Closer to Arabia was Egypt, Crete, Greece and Rome, as well as the older religions and empires of Akkadia Cannaan Assyria and Babylonia who all pre-dated Judaism and Christianity... all of these have pre-dating similar and even identical religious stories to what was eventually plagiarised by the Abrahamic religions.
 
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Ban-jani said:
It’s actually been quite interesting with some.

Others have described Christians as “horrific”, “flat earther types” and morons.

All the aggression and the sour arguments have come from a handful of atheists, not the other way around.

But don’t worry, you get back on your high horse and pretend otherwise.

Have a lovely day.
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Your arrogance is breathtaking.
I notice you haven't asked the atheists what they actually believe, rather you have told them what you think they believe.
So, for example, you told me I believed that the universe was the result of a "random" event. Interestingly, this is an active area of current scientific debate: what rules appertained before the big bang? Where were the rules of physics before? In any case, there are more choices than an intelligent designer vs a random event.
Actually, I have no view on this other than a passing layman's interest in science. I am an existentialist by inclination and thus think the question is irrelevant, except to scientific enquiry.
Similarly, I do not think my brain is the sole source of my moral views. There is a higher power, but it is not divine, it is the process of civilization. The higher power is man, and, while I am free to develop whatever personal moral philosophy I wish, I do not think that it is a good idea to ignore the intellectual weight of millenia. Metron Anthropos is a very old idea. Man is the measure, not "I am the measure."
 
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