Hello
Offline Hello, I’m a open theist Christian and ordained minister. I own a paper tiger church and two non profit Christian humanitarian missions. I am an old fart having made my way three quarters through this life more or less if my genes are as good as my grandparents all who have lived over a century. I am American citizen, but learned French before English, due to my grandparents and parent being rabid, fairly anti USA French nationals (my other parent is a USA citizen now). I was born an atheist as I assume we all are, then, to make a very long, (decades) story short I dabbled in most major religions, the periods lasting up to a year and a half. I apostated from Christianity and atheistic beliefs several times, but have been a Christian for over ten years now. Ummm’ what else? I suppose we will get to that eh? Oh I have an MA in Comparative religion and my BA/BS major was microbiology with emphasis in archeology, I was a fine art Major (BA).
The reason I joined this forum was meet more people of the atheist persuasion. I hope that the members here can learn from me. I've tried many forums and have quit many where atheists and religious folk alike were too vicious and mean. I do not like that sort of thing and dislike becoming angry. Of course my emotions do get the better of me at times, thanks to my pride. Pride is negative emotion and one I hope to eliminate being one of the last obstacles I have to overcome as per biblical teachings. Being prideless as possible is to ‘be one with God’. (that is a Dharmaic’ enhancement/influence of my Christianity speaking!).
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Um actually Isiah 45:7, "I create good, I create evil, I the lord do all these things"
Here comes the dodge, I'll post your response for you, since I've had this chess match before.
"Which version"
DON'T CARE.
If I have a child, I cant stop them from finding the gun in my house and shooting someone or themselves with it, so if I never allowed guns to exist, they would have nothing to shoot, even if I didn't invent the gun myself, I still allowed it.
So what's god's excuse for creating humans that harm each other? Did he need lab rats? Are we his toys? If he is not to blame for the game he set up, then who is?
Your god character sounds like Rupert Murdoch trying to say "I didn't know". Maybe Murdoch didn't know but he certainly created the conditions that lead to the wide spread hacking.
If your god created humans then he created the conditions for us to do horrible things.
Here is reality.
Your god didn't create or allow nor can blame humans for the choices they make because there is no god watching all of us. There is simply you buying into an absurd master puppeteer claim that can even take responsibility for what he started in the first place.
MIND YOU, I am strictly talking about god as a literary character, not a reality.
Why all the drama? If nothing happens that god doesn't want happening then he is responsible for the bad things that happen too. Otherwise the better option to reality is that neither good or bad require any superstitious being by any name.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Malachi 2:3 says "Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces"
Now here is why I don't get into "interpretation"
One Christian came back with
"Thats the KJV version, the NIV uses the word "refuse"(trash)
So what? Take your pick "trash or feces" would your god literally do that? If so, then he is a nasty prick. We don't even allow that kind of torture(minus say Bush Jr). If not it is metaphor. If it is metaphor how do you get to decide for everyone else what is or is not metaphor? If that is metaphor then why cant the virgin birth story or zombie god story of his death be metaphor as well?
This is why I skip this crap. Give me a million Muslims and you will have a million interpretations of the Koran. Give me a million Christians and you will have a million interpretations of the Bible.
There is to much contradiction in either of those holy books to take "interpretation" seriously. Much less neither of the books are scientifically accurate by any stretch.
NOT to mention to swallow word one of either means to buy a disembodied magical super brain, even before you get to the first word.
WHEN you take into consideration the tribal nature of all societies back then and the do or die attitude of these tribes, who fought each other, the god character, which was merely a rip off of prior polytheism in the Canaanite region, it is obvious as to why the god character behaves in the same alpha male reality we humans are merely projecting as a god.
The gods are an invention of culture and perpetuated by successful marketing.
Humans invent deities, just like they thought the volcano was was a god, just like the Egyptians falsely believed the sun was a god. Your god claim is no different. It is merely a product of human imagination.
To me, you saying that you know how to interpret the bible would be as silly as saying you know how to interpret the Klingon language. Yea, I can read too but that does not make invisible friends in the sky any more real than Klingons.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
A priori 'knowledge' does not really exist, beyond instincts. Gödel came up with some great ideas in logical analysis, but in other fields, he was often an amateur.
Only empirical evidence counts in science, and String theory is not treated as established knowledge, but it does provide a very interesting and potentially useful model of underlying reality. We have genuine and credible evidence that 'quarks' are real, or more properly, that matter particles behave very closely as if there are such particles as quarks.
Talk of '100% certainty' is totally irrelevant to science, what counts is degrees of likelihood or relative confidence in a given theory or proposition.
Your comments seem to show a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and significance of scientific enquiry.
One thing that is damn close to 100% certainty is that the likelihood of a God is near zero, based on observation and historical evidence.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
This will sound conceited but I agree that what I consider true Christians are not very common. Nor are rational Christians. I like the Gandhi quote; “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” congrats on your educational and your religious achievements, as well as the courage to follow your heart and mind. I am happy that you are now comfortable in your atheist life. I must say that we lose many Christians as they progress through academia. I may have went your route if I had of went to seminary first instead of attending regular university for the first four years. The causes for the falling away of spiritual people in higher learning is varied, but the way I see it, a person will ‘adjust’ to his place in the universe sooner or later no matter what his education is. Sorry for the cryptic words but its the only way I know how to say it in a brief way.
Orlando eh? Is platinum plus still there? The strip joint? I lived, and I am guessing on 33rd st with a roommate while going to MMI. I won a contest and for a free full Harley Davidson school program back in 1999-2000. Getting homesick eh? I know the feeling. East TN has always called me home. I hope to see you as well in the other forums soon, you sound like a kind 'old soul'. (its a compliment even though it doesn't sound like it!)
Every Christian has a different definition what a "true Christian" is so I'm not surprised. From your other comments, I don't blame you for wanting to disassociate yourself from them. The list is very long of scum soaking people for cash. Look at any mega church or any TV evangelist. I'd not claim them either if I were you.
As to my education, I too went to a state university first before I went for my grad degree at a Jesuit university. No matter, what I have learned both secular and regarding religion has served me well.
If you mean Pure Platinum across from The Dollhouse on South OBT, I think it is closed. Haven't been down there for a while as it's a crappy part of town.
33rd St? Near the jail is that where you lived? I have lived north of downtown near Lake Ivanhoe mostly until recently when I moved to Deltona.
OK, I'll see y'all in discussions.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
I am 57, I know I am granddad material, and could have been a great grand dad if I had had children by my first 16 year old wife (I was 15). I saw black Sabbath* and Blue Oyster Cult (as a back up band) in Johnson city TN in 72 right before I really screwed up and joined the army. I used to like Metallica (‘enter sandman’ was my favorite) too but before they cut the hair ha ha…( but they did change and I was pissed the way they went after their fans for downloading their music). I still listen to all kinds of music when doing my art, even black metal and death metal. However I am finally getting so old that thrash metal is not one of my favorites…
* (the OZ which is one of the very few old rockers that I still respect and like the music of).
I think your observation and statement about sigs being more telling than avatars was spot on. Thanks for the reply.
Hello redneF. Its 2:19 am here the day is just starting for me. To answer your reply (and thanks for it), When I say pride is a negative emotion I should of said its not a good thing for myself and Christians, or Buddhists etc ha ha. For starters pride has cost me a lot of busted knuckles black eyes, I have a scar that runs from the corner of my eye to middle nose on my cheek, and one from my upper lip to bottom of nose due to my pride. (I have somehow escaped with a nose unbroken). I used to rather fight than eat. Time is a good teacher so now I do not fight I just shoot em' ha ha just kidding, but there is a tiny bit of truth in that, I do love my guns.
I am trying to choose my words carefully in this next section so not to offend anyone, if I do its not intentional. Spiritually speaking pride makes living a christian life almost impossible. To enter heaven or be fit to stand before God, according to scripture, we have to come to him like a child. It makes sense if you are living that kind of life or are trying to. But I never did get it when I was an unbeliever and thought people like myself were weak. In other words if I am prideful I am questioning every detail and arguing with God. Me resisting God is like a middle school discontent student arguing basic physics with a PhD. As I said if you are an atheist etc it may be hard/difficult for you to understand that, just as its hard for me to understand some atheist concepts no matter how many times I have it explained to me. Thanks again for your reply~
I was speaking as a Christian. As a christian we must go by our manual i.e. the bible. And scripture suggests the less pride the better. If I were an atheist I would not be so concerned with pride unless it was excessive as my example in the post above related, that is when my pride got me in a fight nearly every time I went to my favorite types of dives, redneck bars. Today I don't go to clubs or drink heavily. Since atheists do not believe in the spiritual world I can understand why it would not be of concern to you.
I understand why you have an inaccurate idea of the whys of my personal quest to better myself by eliminating the emotion we call 'pride'. Maybe I could use another method to explain it? Lets use a different tact to try and explain it? As I said I was a practicing Buddhist for a little over a year when I first learned the benefits of eliminating my 'toxic' pride from my being. Specifically it was the concept of the warrior in Shambhala Buddhism that interested me. One aspect of that discipline the student would learn the principles of combat (Shaolin Kempo to begin with) , the way of the Tao, and together they would ensure his way to peace. So I am replacing pride which is erroneously seen as a strength i.e. instead of 'look at me wrong and I am going to rip your face off' with an inner peace. Now all that is practical stuff. The other part is as a christian I am taught by the bible, the new testament to be humble as well. I hope I haven't confused the issue even more!
Hi Ben! I hope I haven't already answered this, I don't see where I have, so I will re-post it. Open (christian) Theism when applied to me it means a very, very liberal christian. (I am not a full on Open theist, and am even more liberal than a real open theist)
To answer your second question, YES!!! I sure hope to learn from you guys! I made a mistake posting earlier. My WP cut out where I said I wanted to learn from ya all. It was embarrassing because my want to learn from the atheist community is one of the biggest reasons I am here! I have some hard questions concerning atheism, and hope that I can be taught with the least pain possible...ha ha! Thanks for your reply Ben. Hey I sure would like to be up there about now, its HOT down here in poverty land~
As a thinking person, you do not have to go by what the Bible says. You are obviously free to use it as a guide, where its edicts are comprehensible and seem to be applicable to your situation. But there are some damn stupid and sometimes morally bad edicts in the Old Testament. And some questionable assertions by that Jesus guy.
Taking any such text as something you must obey is the fundamental problem with 'practicing' a faith, whatever aspects of it genuinely appeal to you.
EDIT: Completely surrendering your moral judgement to an ancient text is unacceptable behaviour, IMHO.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Then there's obviously fallacies between different Christians and their bible. It's been told many times that the NT explicitly asserts that only through sincere belief in Jesus can one enter heaven, and NOT by the other 'good' deeds one has done throughout their life, which is obviously the 'attraction' to Christianity, since it claims to offer the 'get out of jail free' card of 'Salvation'.
Good news for those 'evil' choirboys.
A complete non sequitur from any Christian preaching and lecturing about 'moral absolutes' and the 'moral duty' of being 'moral' and 'good' in their life.
Is it not the case that Jesus can wash away all your sins, except for blasphemy?
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I've also challenged you to attempt to defend the soundness of the KCA with me 1 on 1. I'm surprised whenever anyone mentions it, let alone tries to stand behind such a transparent attempt to special plead.
I recently got a WLC fanboy to cop out when he couldn't even get out of the gate with it, and saw that he was going to be embarrassed, after running his mouth about how tough a debater he was in high school, and how brilliant he thought WLC is.
You want to give it a go?
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
Since you didn't come here for a discussion of Harleys, or questions about the nature of pride, etc. I'll go ahead and get to why you did come here. You're looking for the atheist perspective, and I will assume you're not just looking for the stuff we all agree on, like murder is wrong, rape is atrocious, so I'll get right to the parts where I disagree with you.
You describe yourself as a very, very liberal Christian. It amazes me how people of this walk of life always expect to be so well recieved. You and I can spend all day poking fun at or criticizing fundamentalist Christians, but I'll tell you something they have that you don't: You ask a fundamentalist why he believes, and he'll tell you it's because the Bible is authoritative and historical fact, or that the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy, or that the miracles of Jesus were witnessed by so many, etc. These are all reasons. They may not be good reasons, but at least they are attempting to justify why they believe the way they do. Intellectual honesty. While they may have to accept some pretty ridiculous assumptions to believe it, they at least attempt to justify their beliefs by rational means. The objections I hear from liberal believers are usually along the lines of "well, it gives my life meaning" or "I don't think I'd want to live in a world without God". Nonsense. These are not reasons, these are the transcript of a mind desperately trying to convince itself of things it knows are untrue.
What's also really disturbing to me is what kind of person you have to be to hold liberal religious views in the face of unspeakable tragedy. Survivors especially, how many of them think they were spared by the grace of God? How can one think such a sickening thing while watching bloated bodies float down the street with a tsunami? If you ask a fundamentalist why god would allow such destruction, the answer is quite simple: God must be pissed at us. He must be sending us another unmistakeable message about the evils of abortion or feminism. They recognize that things like tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, tornados, earthquakes, and other disasters that claim thousands of lives don't occur in a universe where God loves us and wants us to have happy lives. They recognize that if some bad shit happens in a universe with God in it, God must be pretty pissed off and out for our blood.
These are just the broad strokes, based on previous encounters with liberal Christians, but if you go ahead and give me a list of your ridiculous and/or morally reprehensible beliefs, I'll gladly write longwinded rants about why you should be ashamed of each one.
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Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
http://unpleasantcharacters.blogspot.com
Dayum!!
I like this guy!
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
If you can accept that people outside Christianity can live without your "manual" as you call the bible, then that should be proof that humanity doesn't need your claimed god or your "manual" to survive. Humans were around long before your "manual" was invented, and considering that cockroaches will outlast our species, I'd say that the significance of our species in cosmic time is a blip, and hardly special to evolution, or the universe.
You have fallen merely for wishful thinking. Our species will go extinct and when it does so will all the fictional super natural comic book claims with it because there will be no future generation to market the superstitious myths to.
It may scare you that our species will die like 99% of all prior life that has gone extinct. But getting scared over nature and then on top of that to ease one's fear with placebo fantasy may give you comfort, but it is not reality.
This is it. There is no god and there never were any god/s. There are just humans who invent them because they don't know any better and need false hope to give them a sense of security.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
MY POINT, which you seem to miss is that the "courtroom" analogy doesn't work.
All you are doing is saying "If citizen Joe Blow raises his hands and swears to pink unicorns existing" it must be true because you cant lie under oath.
No one here thinks you are lying. We know you truly believe what you think is real. We think you are wrong. And if you were willing to treat your god claim with the same method that lead to the discovery of DNA you'd understand quickly how absurd ALL god claims are.
Since you are not willing to apply that standard to your own claims you resort to "witness" argument, which by itself is hollow.
People can tell the truth about their point of view and be totally wrong about what they believe is true.
You have to have testing and falsification independent of your own pet claims. Witnesses in court cases have been proven wrong and can even lie deliberately.
The ancient Egyptians truly thought the sun was a god. The were not lying in saying that, but they were still wrong. The vast majority of the earth's population once believed the earth to be flat, and they were wrong.
Our perceptions in our species evolution have been notoriously wrong more often than not.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
That's EXACTLY how I feel about Metallica, hehe, I used to think they were the shit up until the self titled Black Album. After the whole Napster mess... the reason Metallica was "cool" is because they appealed to my rebellious nature. After that the message changed from "Kill'm All" to "I'm a greedy fucker". Not my cup of tea. I understand why they did it, they're just not cool anymore.
Offer still stands for a one on one discussion on your epistemological frame of reference. I'm not sure if you missed my request or if you're ignoring it because you're not interested.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc