I've had it up to here with religion!

Oh Jeeze, fd, keep up with the program! Are you that thick headed that you can't see yourself picking out part of what I said for the sheer purpose of having something to throw in my face????

There is nothing wrong with that, it was the explanation (trying to be as simple as I could) for whyJesus was performing that and other miracles.


And no I do not claim to have been there. I do not need to show you proof or anyone else that insists on it. You would n't believe any proof I'd have to offer you anyway, now would you?

Tell me something. What do you know about the Spanish Inquisition? Tell me some things that you know about it.


JLP, please feel free to lift this over to the religion thread. I let them draw me out here, so here's where I expect them watching.

I would believe it if you had proof. Of course I would. In your own time...

It was not magic, the people there that experienced/witnessed it did not think of it as a magic trick that any man could learn and repeat. They knew that this man, Jesus, had to be more than a mortal man to do the things he was doing.

Source? Were you there perhaps?

Again I ask, where you there? You are making a claim here that you know what the people where thinking at the time. How do you know what the people were thinking? You really should take the comment back, unless you have categorical proof that the people 'did not think of it as a magical trick' that 'they knew'...etc.

Please stop trying to be smart and answer the question directly. Failure to do so will lead me to only one conclusion.

[JLP]

OK I have moved the posts asrequested. But I would like to ask a couple of questions. If God intended us to be vegans, why did his son feed people fish?

Also Julymorning, how do you see God? Do you perceive him to be an elderly man with a long beard? Or something else entirely?

Basically, these two annoying traits (being vegan and believing in the Biblical God) simply aren't compatible, you have to choose one or the other.

On the balance of things, I probably find vegans more annoying than God-botherers, but ultimately they are harmless so probably the better of the two.

[JLP]

Basically, these two annoying traits (being vegan and believing in the Biblical God) simply aren't compatible, you have to choose one or the other.

On the balance of things, I probably find vegans more annoying than God-botherers, but ultimately they are harmless so probably the better of the two.

I do not mind anyone being vegan or believing in God, that is their choice. What i do have a problem with is when those beliefs are challenged and we are put down as idiots or whatever.

If God intended all animals to be vegan, what the hell to crocodiles eat?

OK I have moved the posts asrequested. But I would like to ask a couple of questions. If God intended us to be vegans, why did his son feed people fish?

Also Julymorning, how do you see God? Do you perceive him to be an elderly man with a long beard? Or something else entirely?

Do you mean how do I see him in my mind? I don't. No, I do not perceive him as an elderly man with long beard, nor the embodiment of anything visible to the naked eye. I couldn't begin to hazard a guess along those lines. If you consider the Biblical account to God showing himself to Moses, he had Moses hide himself in a rock crag while God "passed"over him. When Moses came down to the Israelites, Moses was glowing-(like radiation, my guess)-and it scared the crowds so badly they asked him to cover himself up.

Instead I think of God as the ultimate mathematician, engineer, and power source, among other physical abilities. I think of God as having perfect containment/control of his creative energy, which necessitates having the likeness of what we call love, justice, and wisdom. That is the image of Him that man has, not a physical likeness.
These are just man-words. Our attempt to label so that we can understand. There is nothing wrong with that, but we tend to limit the meaning of words to our scope of experiences, when they can very well encompass meanings well beyond our imaginations.



I asked fd what he knew about a certain period in history. I didn't see an answer, just more challenges to me. My point of asking him what I did, was to see if he'd offer any comments about it. The truth is he wasn't there. I don't know how old he is, but I venture to guess he was not born before the assassination of JFK. So anything he might say, or believe of any world events prior to any generation now living that did not witness those events, have no proof that they happened, it's all heresay. Yes, certain facts may be proven if they involve unshakable physical evidence. But those facts are limited and can never tell the whole story. At some point circumstantial evidence has to be introduced to see if it fits into the physical puzzles to have it make some sense.

Is anything read in any book any more deserving of belief than what is in the Holy Bible? I read a comment by a friend on fb the other day that history is written by the winners.
The Bible is quite different, in that the losers had their accounts right up there too.

I asked fd what he knew about a certain period in history. I didn't see an answer, just more challenges to me. My point of asking him what I did, was to see if he'd offer any comments about it. The truth is he wasn't there. I don't know how old he is, but I venture to guess he was not born before the assassination of JFK. So anything he might say, or believe of any world events prior to any generation now living that did not witness those events, have no proof that they happened, it's all heresay. Yes, certain facts may be proven if they involve unshakable physical evidence. But those facts are limited and can never tell the whole story. At some point circumstantial evidence has to be introduced to see if it fits into the physical puzzles to have it make some sense.

Historians have a pretty robust way of assessing evidence of the past and as such are able to build a narrative of the past with a high degree of confidence. Of course there are gaps in our historical knowledge, but for the most part, they are gaps that we are at least aware of. We know with pretty high certainty that Julius Caesar existed, for example. We can be reasonably sure that a guy called a Jesus existed, but the historical Jesus doesn't really tally up completely with the Biblical one (eg no evidence of a census 1900-2100 years ago in the Bethleham region), and in fact there is more definitive evidence of the existence of Buddha, who pre-dated Jesus by a few hundred years, than of Jesus. It helps that he was a Prince, I guess.

We all have to accept some things as facts without seeing the evidence for ourselves. How trusting we are is a personal choice based on personal criteria. For example, I've never actually seen the Earth from orbit but I trust that it is indeed round, and I know that if I committed enough time to the cause, I could read the various proofs of it, and if I had enough money, I could see the curvature of the Earth for myself. I trust that it's true and I know that the only barriers to my own personal proof are time and money. And Foucault's pendulum appeases my curiosity in the meantime.

I asked fd what he knew about a certain period in history.

I ignored it, because it wasn't a valid argument...well, the one that you were about to make.

I don't care that you believe, it makes no difference to me...but unlike others who will say 'I respect your right to believe in god', I really don't respect it at all. I have zero respect for anyone who believes in god. It seems to me to be so utterly self-absorbed and selfish.

YAFF, you do not annoy me because you are a vegan. You annoy me by insulting me because I choose to eat meat. You call me names and compare my habits to those of the Nazis.

You do act all superior in your vegan beliefs.

I could be worse though...he could be religious.

he is.

I follow no religion.

I follow no religion.

Yet you do believe in a god...now that's NOT the same thing as following a religion in and of itself (someone can even be an atheist and be in certain religions), but correct me if I'm wrong, you do more or less believe the Bible, right? That's kinda following a religion right there, isn't it?

I know, I'm totally going off on a tangent....someone can move this to one of those religion threads, maybe.

I follow no religion.

Yet you do believe in a god...now that's NOT the same thing as following a religion in and of itself (someone can even be an atheist and be in certain religions), but correct me if I'm wrong, you do more or less believe the Bible, right? That's kinda following a religion right there, isn't it?

I know, I'm totally going off on a tangent....someone can move this to one of those religion threads, maybe.

what's wrong with believing in the Bible?

I follow no religion.

Yet you do believe in a god...now that's NOT the same thing as following a religion in and of itself (someone can even be an atheist and be in certain religions), but correct me if I'm wrong, you do more or less believe the Bible, right? That's kinda following a religion right there, isn't it?

I know, I'm totally going off on a tangent....someone can move this to one of those religion threads, maybe.

Yes I strongly believe in some kind of "God"

I believe the Bible is a useful resource of information including, of course, some biographical details about Jesus of Nazareth and how Christianity succeeded against the odds.... but I am light years away from claiming the Bible is infallible and "written by God". When I am talking to Bible-believing Christians (like my friend Julymorning) I am able to have a discussion about the Bible due to a couple decades worth of research and experience belonging to several sects.

.....but I don't follow any sect of Christendom and am not closed minded about other Non-Judeo Christian belief systems or even none at all (I've been an atheist, an agnostic, a Deist and a Theist at one time in my life). I try to reconcile my beliefs based on where the evidence leads. For example I can not possibly believe in a Young Earth because of scientific knowledge that the earth is billions of years old. If Science effectively disproves something I believe I think it' would be foolish to hold onto to such a belief.

On the other hand I find the evidence of a "god" of some sort existing much much more probable than not. Like I've said before I believed God has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The key word is "reasonable" and also what exactly "God" is. Should new science disprove a beginning of all/any universes, and that nature can blindly produce something as complex as the genetic code, that the universal constants that govern are universe aren't really all that fine-tuned, etc....as it stands now. Based on what we know..God most probably does exist.

OK, fair enough, maybe I got the wrong impression from some of your other posts, or even remembered some of them wrong

You said "also what exactly "God" is".....yeah, that's kind of the big question, isn't it? If you say you believe in a god, does it really make sense to say that if you don't have SOME kind of definition of God?

what's wrong with believing in the Bible?

I wasn't saying there was anything wrong with it.

Anyway, I should probably shut up about this.....wrong thread anyway

OK, fair enough, maybe I got the wrong impression from some of your other posts, or even remembered some of them wrong

You said "also what exactly "God" is".....yeah, that's kind of the big question, isn't it? If you say you believe in a god, does it really make sense to say that if you don't have SOME kind of definition of God?

True but I do have a definition..the one Unconditioned Reality