Posts
Most religious people themselves say, "It's a matter of faith," when asked about their beliefs. They are referring to blind faith because they can not show or prove their god. The reason none of the faithful can show or prove their god is because the concept is based on myth and fantasy.
SR:
No, Jeff. You misunderstand what religious faith is all about. No surprise; it is a common misconception. Common enough that it is perhaps worth clarifying matters here.
The existence of God is not in question; it is apparent to reason, and can be directly experienced beyond possible doubt. It is not the subject of faith. Faith is, rather, acting accordingly: putting your life in God’s hands. Just as, if I say “I have faith in you,” it does not mean I believe you exist. It means I am prepared to put my trust in you to do the right thing.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of ‘converging and convincing arguments,’ which allow us to attain certainty about the truth.
Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.
Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.
18 comments:
Steve, you are calling black white again. I have already proved on several fronts that gods are invented by man and you quote, "Existence of God apparent to reason." It is not reasonable to believe in a god, I've proved this upsidedown and sideways.
All your arguments assume the antecedent by equating God to perfection, beauty, initial cause, etc., without proving there's a God in the first place.
This is exactly what is what's meant by blind faith: being loyal and believing even when it is contrary to reason (i.e without empirical evidence or logic).
A good example of blind faith is when you quoted, "Man is created in God's image." The only reason you think this is because the bible tells you so. However, you have already admitted that Genesis is myth. Thus, you don't even believe in your single source of epistemology. To go right on believing the fantasy of God as creator is blind faith to the nth degree.
When a child in a religious family asks his/her parents a question they don't the answer to, they can always cop out and say, "Because God made it that way." Thus, curiosity and further discovery are stifled (curiosity and discovery are the enemies of blind faith, this is why the faithful are uneasy with science). Preachers do the same thing when they are stumped, they say something like, "Ya gotta have faith."
For the more enlightened, these nebulous sorts of answers are not good enough. If my son asks a question I don't know the answer to, I simply admit I don't know and explore his query with him.
On top of all this, a simple dictionary can help to explain why religion causes war and terrorism, for "loyalty to God" is right in the definition of faith. This is what I've been trying to tell you all along. When people place their god above their fellow human beings, atrocity becomes inevitable because they place their sense of "almightiness" ahead of their reason.
This Steve, is why you can't answer my God dream question, because it's a dilemma that exposes your blind faith and lack of reason.
There's no doubt that the US president believes he is doing God's work while innocent people, including children, including his own country men, continue to be killed in Iraq. He can always fall back on the blind faith of the people with such sentiments as "God works in mysterious ways," or "Come on people, you gotta have faith."
Without the blind faith of the bible belt, Curious George would never have been elected in the first place.
Finally, I find an abundance of irony in your quote "Holy mother the Church." Mother? You mean the institution that is run primarily by men, that worships primarily men, that treats women as inferior based on biblical accounts, that literally burned women to death during the crusades, that turned Jesus' Apostle Mary into a whore, is that the mother you're referring to?
HI Steve and Ej,
I just retold a story today to my husband that i had not remembered in such a long time. It went like this.. When i was little i always knew that Jesus was a good son of a God.
My mother was a reformed Catholic and as such never practiced at all and we never spoke about religion I only knew about Jesus because of Christmas and Easter i guess.
Around about the age of 6 i was sent to Sunday school probably to give the parents some time off or at least to allow me to have some religious instruction.
I went for 3 weeks and listened to everything they said hoping to feel at home with Jesus but it all seemed false and something was not right.
On the 3rd Sunday i went home and told my parents that I didnt want to go any more to which they asked why not?
I said that the minister couldn't answer any of my questions and they couldn't explain what Jesus meant when he said "Suffer the little children that they come unto me"
I mean they said something but it wasnt correct in my heart and it wasnt what Jesus meant at all.
My parents in their wisdom said Okay you don't have to go anymore.
After that i was sent to a catholic school for 3 afternoons a week while my mom went back to work. ON the first day a nun caught me talking to another girl and for 2 hours I had to kneel before a 12 foot statue of Jesus nailed to a cross all bloody sword in the side and all..praying for my soul and to ask forgiveness from Jesus because i talked before class started.
My thinking at the time was that these nuns were not Jesus's messengers.And as i looked up at his wracked body i knew that the people who did this to him were not human and nor were the nuns. And i cried for him.They were all demons in his Churches using his name for their vile purposes.. I prayed for their forgiveness and salvation and made a promise to the heavens that this would never happen again to any God on earth.
And i was only 6.
After that I was close to Jesus most of my life and have since practicing Falun Gong become aware that i was alive during his life 2000 years ago as was one of my daughters and yes we were thrown to the Lions as we would not give up our faith in cultivation.
And here i am practicing Falun Gong today and here we have another grand play on the worlds stage once again - a battle between Good and evil with the actors this time being Falun Gong and the communist regime.And i once again will not give up my faith as the Falun Gong practitioners in China face persecution also thru torture each minute to give up their faith.
Yet to this day I still don't understand how people will not separate the organized religions of today from the simple teachings of Jesus before the bible was printed etc..
My point is I was born from an unshakable understanding of who we are into this life with even more faith and a memory of many lifetimes all leading me to this time here and now when the worlds people need our help and when the world is on the brink of destruction in all areas of our life on earth.
So EJ please do not tell me that Buddhas Gods and Daos do not exist. I understand that they dont exist for you but please be tolerant of other peoples beliefs other wise you will be no better than the religious maniacs and the atheist dictators and tyrants that slaughter people who don't believe in what they say.
EJ:
All your arguments assume the antecedent by equating God to perfection, beauty, initial cause, etc., without proving there's a God in the first place.
SR:
Jeff, here you are failing to see the distinction between a word and the thing it refers to. If the word “God” refers to a perfect being, then proving that a perfect being must exist proves the existence of God. Whether you want to call it “God” makes no difference.
EJ:
A good example of blind faith is when you quoted, "Man is created in God's image." The only reason you think this is because the bible tells you so. However, you have already admitted that Genesis is myth.
SR:
Jeff, here, as before, you do not grasp what a myth is.
Literally, the word means “story.” That’s all. But it really means the stories that have been preserved for the longest time, in any given culture. Oxford defines it as “1 a traditional story concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, typically involving the supernatural.”
Nothing here implies, note, that a myth is “false” or “untrue.” Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that all myths are almost certainly true. The fact that they have been preserved longer than any other human knowledge, that they have stood the test of time, demands a strong presupposition that they must be in some vital sense true. They must say something important and useful, or they would not have survived.
So it is crazy to dismiss them with barely a look.
What is false about myths is simply the common error of confusing them with history or science. That falsity is not in the myth itself, but in the misunderstanding of it. After all, if they were just history or an empirical description of the world, they probably would not have survived. Nobody would care enough to preserve them. History and science are not important enough.
Rather, they are necessarily the summation of some vital piece of wisdom about human experience. Something many generations have found profoundly useful to their understanding of the world.
Now, in the case of the phrase “man is made in God’s image,” the value of the statement is pretty self-evidently not scientific or historical. It is obviously an insight into the nature and meaning of human existence. It has been preserved in the Bible because many generations have found it to be a valuable insight; the Bible did not come from nowhere as a random collection of words.
EJ:
On top of all this, a simple dictionary can help to explain why religion causes war and terrorism, for "loyalty to God" is right in the definition of faith.
SR:
What is more, “loyal” is synonymous with “faithful.” Since loyalty is a virtue, I would think that might give you, an atheist, pause.
You are here arguing that loyalty is a bad thing. As that is the opposite of the usual assumption, I think you need to explain and defend it, not just assert it. You need to demonstrate, for example, how loyalty to God would cause wars. To do this, you need to prove that God advocates more often that he condemns or prevents violence towards one’s fellow man. You would have to prove that “thou shalt not kill” is the exception, rather than the rule.
Please.
EJ:
This is what I've been trying to tell you all along. When people place their god above their fellow human beings, atrocity becomes inevitable because they place their sense of "almightiness" ahead of their reason.
SR:
This is very close to the claim Pope Benedict made against Islam in his famous speech: that it, unlike Christianity, holds God to be above the laws of reason or morality. Now, Benedict may be wrong about Islam—Muslim scholars insist he is—but you have to accept him as an authority on Christianity.
So you are operating here on a false premise—Christianity (and apparently also Islam) holds that God necessarily does not violate the laws of either reason or morality.
Unfortunately, this also invalidates your “dream” premise—it is based on the hypothesis that God would do something morally evil. It also invalidates your supposed proof of God’s nonexistence; you are asking God to name the last member of an infinite set. Necessarily, there is no last member of an infinite set. God will not change this, because this is true as a matter of logic.
EJ:
This Steve, is why you can't answer my God dream question, because it's a dilemma that exposes your blind faith and lack of reason.
SR:
You just don’t like or perhaps don’t understand the answer, so you ignore it.
EJ:
There's no doubt that the US president believes he is doing God's work while innocent people, including children, including his own country men, continue to be killed in Iraq. He can always fall back on the blind faith of the people with such sentiments as "God works in mysterious ways," or "Come on people, you gotta have faith."
SR:
Jeff, this is again pure fantasy. Can you point to an example of Bush ever using either of those justifications? And yet you represent them as quotes! You have to deal with what people actually say and what the evidence actually is, not what you imagine about it or them.
Thank you Steve, I think we just have to accept that some people on this earth are not from the Gods maybe some are from the apes.Its all possible, so arguing the points over and over again are not worth it. As long as the man born evolved from apes is a good man to his fellow human beings then no harm is done unless he takes great joy in dismissing the Buddhas Gods and Daos then retribution will come but not necessarily from Heavens
Ms. J, thanks for the heart warming story. I truly respect you as a person. However, your subjective experience of Christianity proves everything I have been saying about the Church's brainwashing.
First, you said you didn't know much about Christ except for Christmas and Easter. I have explained how Christmas is the most brilliant form of propaganda imaginable as non church goers are exposed, bombarded with Christ.
Second, I explained how sadistic it is to expose children to a man being tortured with nails in him on a cross. As a little girl, you cried and fell for the church's brainwashing, hook line and sinker. In other words, by exposing you to the tortured Jesus, they pulled out of you the human trait of compassion and then transformed it into their dogma of the supernatural, which you still believe in today even though you didn't care for those who ran the institution. This is amazing.
You're right: I should not tell you that God does not exist any more than I should tell a child that Santa is not real, except that I choose not to humor you like a child and respect you like a fellow adult.
But that's just it. You haven't proved a perfect being exists to begin with. You're assuming it through faulty logic. I have proved there is no such thing as perfect. (You can't accept the truth, for example, that it is impossible to know all numbers. As usual, you avoid the fact with some nonesense that your god wouldn't violate laws of logic, when in fact, that is exactly what my proof shows explicitly.)
Imagine if your lack of logic was accepted in the courts. Defense lawyer: "My client is innocent your honour because the crime in question is against his nature.
Judge: "Against his nature you say? Okay then, let's ignore all the eye witnesses, the video evidence of him committing the crime and set him free!"
There are plenty of mythical stories that predate the bible. None of them prove the supernatural. The truth is found in metaphor i.e man wishes he can control things he can not so he invents gods with ridiculous powers.
Maybe we are getting somewhere when you equate loyalty to faith. Like jealousy, it's the degree of the phenomena that makes it healthy or not. For instance, when the church is loyal to a priest who molests children by covering up the crime, I think the idea of loyalty has gone to far. Would you still be loyal to your wife if she kept cheating on you? I wouldn't, I'd get a divorce.
Thus, loyalty has its limits. When people believe in a god, their loyalty exceeds reason because they place a mythical entity above their fellow human kind.
God, as a concept in the Bible, constantly violates reason and morality. The examples are vast. If He knows everything, He knows Eve is going to take the apple before He creates the tree. Does this seem rational to you or moral, constantly setting up scenarios he knows will cause such strife?
Then, there's the outright wrath in the bible, the genocide of entire populations. It's all right there for people to read. They just can't see the reality because they have been brainwashed to believe God is perfect.
I certainly did not ignore your answer to my god dream dilemma. You said God would never ask you to do something immoral like kill someone. I answered that he does it a lot in the bible. It is you who is ignoring the truth.
That Bush believes he's doing God's work is so obvious I will not waste time explaining it.
No doubt about it, nothing, not computer, nor man, nor mythical creature can know all numbers. This is but the tip of the iceberg when proving perfection is impossible.
Dear EJ,, I didn't fall for the Churches propaganda and thats my point. Because there is a huge evil propaganda machine working against the real teachings of Jesus and Buddha.
i was also aware of an innate presence of God and Gods son Jesus in me even in the first 6 months of my life.I remember the depression for being back here on earth with unenlightened humans yet again.This was confirmed by my mother who seriously thought something was wrong with me as i did not want to eat or interact with the family for the first year of my life. She said i was depressed and i can remember those feelings and thoughts quite clearly.
Our memories are virtually wiped as we are born and our eyes are stabilized over a period of time to see only this physical dimension and even then thats not correct as we all know what things including us look like under a microscope.
Babies have a fontanel which is a direct opening to their third eye and they can see for while after they are born into other dimensions . Remember how babies look around you and smile at other beings above your head?
My third child told me when she was 18 months old that her other family had gone now and was up there (pointing to the heavens).She then said i am here to stay now.
We only became closer after that revelation and i was not studying any spiritual path at that point so as to influence her.
I searched all my life for answers that could not be found in the churches or the bible or in spiritual pursuits. You are right they dont exist there.
(I wasn't until i began FAlun Gong that i realized my mission for being back here.)
As a baby Jesus was in my memory as being here on earth previously and I now understand that he came here to civilize the people of that time by teaching them the difference between right and wrong. Otherwise how would i have in my conscience the ability to understand what Falun Gong is all about today.And that goes with the Buddhas and Lao Tsu as well who all came down to help that civilization advance further in their understandings so that in this time all predestined people could understand Falun Gong. Which you have admit those who dont practice it find it very difficult to understand it.
For those who believe we came from apes we didn't just learn to be so called civilized humans over night and according to Darwins theory we have only been humans for a relatively small age perhaps 10,000 years.
So how can we explain all the existing tangible known phenomenon of previous civilizations? that objectively exist today and are carbon dated to have existed back up to 2 million years ago?
I have come to only begin to respect certain aspects of human science since quantum physics took shape.
If you believe Jesus was the son of God, you have fallen for the church's propaganda, for sure. History proves religion is manmade, completely arbitrary. Study from an accredited historian how a Jewish Rabbi named Joshuah became known as Jesus Christ the Roman icon and you will see what I mean.
Nobody, as far as I know, can remember anything from when they were 6 months old.
I can see why you are susceptible to superstition Ms. J. You have not done enough research and limit your learning to the myths of religion. For example, it's well known that humans have been walking upright for about 2.5 million years. I don't know where you got your 10,000 year idea. In fact, millions of Christians believe the Earth was created by God about 10,000 years ago, based to their interpretation of the bible. Could this have been where you heard this number?
If you want to break away from superstition, I recommend you begin with Norman Cantor's "Antiquity." Mr. Cantor is a respected historian who sums up the development of civilization with a great deal of coherence.
If you want THE truth about how man invented religion, this would be an excellent place to start.
It might be painful for you to face the truth, but in the end, you will be happier for it.
J writes:
After that i was sent to a catholic school for 3 afternoons a week while my mom went back to work. ON the first day a nun caught me talking to another girl and for 2 hours I had to kneel before a 12 foot statue of Jesus nailed to a cross all bloody sword in the side and all..praying for my soul and to ask forgiveness from Jesus because i talked before class started.
My thinking at the time was that these nuns were not Jesus's messengers.And as i looked up at his wracked body i knew that the people who did this to him were not human and nor were the nuns. And i cried for him.They were all demons in his Churches using his name for their vile purposes..
SR:
You learned a valuable lesson there, J; one that the sincerely religious must always learn. All that glisters is not gold; because someone declares himself or herself to be religious, does not mean they are. Hypocrisy is inevitable; if you are a bad person, and do not want to be found out, the most obvious thing to do is to masquerade as someone everyone thinks is a good person. As a result, as you observe, hypocrisy and hypocrites are a problem for all organized religions.
I can testify to this personally. I’m sure we all can.
Christianity, at least, warns the believer very clearly about this danger: it portrays the religious authorities of Jesus’s time quite clearly as hypocrites—the word “hypocrite” even comes from the New Testament--, and warns that “there will be false prophets” to the end of time. We cannot say we were not warned.
Requiring celibacy of the priesthood is one way the Catholic Church tries to reduce the number of hypocrites; as an obvious sacrifice, it is a test of sincerity. Another way the Catholic Church tries to prevent hypocrisy is with its rigid hierarchy: the priest’s bona fides must be confirmed by the bishop, and the bishop’s bona fides by at least two other bishops, the cardinals by the pope and the pope by the cardinals, and so forth. Though the system is fallible, most religions lack this much quality control.
What I don’t go along with, though, is the idea that, because someone else claims to be a follower of X, and behaves poorly, that this reflects on the truth of X, or is a reason why I should not believe it. In argument, this would be an ad hominem: the truth of a statement has nothing to do, really, with the character of the person stating it. The statement must be judged instead on its own merits, by reason and evidence.
If the teachings of Christianity are true, they are true whether or not your local parish priest, or your first grade teacher, was a louse.
EJ:
Imagine if your lack of logic was accepted in the courts. Defense lawyer: "My client is innocent your honour because the crime in question is against his nature.
Judge: "Against his nature you say? Okay then, let's ignore all the eye witnesses, the video evidence of him committing the crime and set him free!"
SR:
This works if you can produce evidence that God does tell people to kill unjustly. You still haven’t.
EJ:
There are plenty of mythical stories that predate the bible. None of them prove the supernatural. The truth is found in metaphor i.e man wishes he can control things he can not so he invents gods with ridiculous powers.
SR:
That’s your definition of metaphor? Something imagined as wish fulfillment? Again, you do not understand what the term means.
Merriam-Webster: “1: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.”
EJ:
God, as a concept in the Bible, constantly violates reason and morality. The examples are vast. If He knows everything, He knows Eve is going to take the apple before He creates the tree. Does this seem rational to you or moral, constantly setting up scenarios he knows will cause such strife?
SR:
You are confusing knowing something in advance with being responsible for it. These two are not related.
EJ:
Then, there's the outright wrath in the bible, the genocide of entire populations. It's all right there for people to read. They just can't see the reality because they have been brainwashed to believe God is perfect.
SR:
You are forgetting that God has the right to kill. The moral issue arises if and only if he orders some human to kill another unjustly. It would help your argument if you would cite a specific example. Then we could have a look at it.
EJ:
No doubt about it, nothing, not computer, nor man, nor mythical creature can know all numbers. This is but the tip of the iceberg when proving perfection is impossible.
SR:
This is true simply because there is no such thing as “all numbers.” Therefore, there is nothing there to know.
J. writes:
Because there is a huge evil propaganda machine working against the real teachings of Jesus and Buddha.
i was also aware of an innate presence of God and Gods son Jesus in me even in the first 6 months of my life.I remember the depression for being back here on earth with unenlightened humans yet again.This was confirmed by my mother who seriously thought something was wrong with me as i did not want to eat or interact with the family for the first year of my life. She said i was depressed and i can remember those feelings and thoughts quite clearly.
SR:
I couldn’t agree with you more, J. I have a very strong memory, and I too am certain I have such memories, memories of the womb and of a huge sense of loss at being born.
Isn’t it interesting that babies always cry as soon as they are born? Yet nobody ever seems to shed tears when dying…
And there surely is a huge evil propaganda machine working against the real teachings of Jesus and Buddha. Not anything directed by anyone in particular; just our collective human egos.
The only reason you can't see the injustice of God's murdering rampages is because of severe blind faith and bias. Any other instance of genocide, any other time a thug asks someone else to murder their own son as an egotistical display of loyalty, you'd see it as wrong immediately.
You're like a judge who let's somebody off the hook because the guilty party is a friend. In this case, you let God off with his sadistic acts because he is your imaginary friend.
God not only knows things in advance (supposedly), but he has created everything (supposedly). Thus, before he creates Eve he knows she will succumb to the snake, so he is totally responsible (i.e why invent her in the first place? Why not make a nice Christian girl for Adam to run around naked with?).
This is yet another obvious proof against an omnipotent entity, the whole ridiculousness of good vs. evil when God creates them both from the start (if there was such a thing as omnipotence, which there is not).
"God has a right to kill," you say. So it's, "do as I say, don't do as I do." This is exactly the illogic those who kill in His name go by. Spelled out for you:
1)God can kill whoever he wants, he has the right.
2) Believers are faithful to God and interject Him into their consciousness.
3) Therefore, BELIEVERS HAVE A RIGHT TO KILL!
They think they are doing God's will based on their conception of an intimate relationship with their imaginary friend. Delusions are like lies, in that one twists into another.
See how a focus on humanism unravels this mess? With no wrathful God, nobody mistakenly believes they have a right to kill (unless in self-defense).
Every number, thought of or not, is a thing, a concept. I could go on forever reciting numbers you have never thought of. According to omnipotence, no matter what number I recited, God would know it. However, this is impossible, because no matter how many numbers a god can know, there are always more.
You do not and can not prove you remember things from the womb. This is an example of one delusion leading to another.
And you are right about the propaganda machine surrounding Jesus. It began when his status was raised from human prophet to the son of God. This was brilliant propaganda because it elevated Him above the umpteen other cult leaders of those times who were all biding for a following.
Here's a historical fact that blows me away: You have circumcision to thank for the initial uprising of Christianity, for Rabbi Saul allowed men into his cult without having to suffer penis mutilation. If I lived in those times and one cult required me to snip my member while another did not, I know which cult I'd join!
Many males died of infection in those days from circumcision (they didn't know about germs so sanitary conditions were lacking). Thus, not only did Rabbi Saul attract male members through the avoidance of painful circumcision, but also, new converts were less likely to die of infection by avoiding the procedure. Brilliant, Saul, brilliant!
If Saul had stayed true to his Jewish tradition of circumsision, Christianity would never have taken off! (Hail the anteaters, down with the turtle heads!)
Of course, much later, once Christianity was established as a dominant religion, some sects went back to cicumcision (damn you Mom, why did you have to be Protestant!). Naturally, this divison between Christian sects led to warring (what else is new?).
Indeed, the arbitray nature of religion is absolutely facinating! I can't get enough of it. Free thinking gives you a profound sense of liberation. You should all try it.
The Epicurean Jesus said...
"The only reason you can't see the injustice of God's murdering rampages is because of severe blind faith and bias. Any other instance of genocide, any other time a thug asks someone else to murder their own son as an egotistical display of loyalty, you'd see it as wrong immediately."
I am glad to hear you admit to there being a God.
And I do understand you are really upset with this supernatural being called God who does murderous rampages?
Well I am glad you do believe in God after all but also very sad that you equate Jesus's father with allowing his son to be murdered.
Please allow me to explain. In the multi realms of heavens there are also a group of Gods who are very evil , we call them the old forces who abide by the old characteristics of the old universes. When someone as righteous as Jesus or Buddha or Mr Li come to earth to offer salvation to all sentient beings you can be sure that evil will be fast behind it trying to destroy it and if its not then its not a righteous path.
Jesus sought to eliminate much karma (sins)from people so that they could enlighten faster to his teachings. Only a great being can do this. But someone has to repay the Karma and the old forces exacted payment for this by taking that Gods son.
Have you ever wondered why the 2 men on the crosses beside Jesus did not cry out in so much pain?
It was because Jesus had to carry the full weight of karma from all those he touched and saved. His father also paid the price and could not do anything about it.
Today these old forces are propping up the communist regime to commit evil acts upon the very best of humanity Falun Gong.
This is what we are eradicating in the universe the evil old forces who only want things their way.
When this Law rectification is over and completed the old forces will be totally disintegrated and never again will any Gods son or any Buddha or any righteous religion be persecuted in this way.
This universe and all its realms had to rectified and thats why FAlun Gong is here to day.
Steve, thats so true babies do cry when they enter this realm and there is a great release and subconsciouses excitement when we depart.
EJ- yes free thinking can give you a profound sense of freedom. You should try and get away from all the dogma of religion for that is a true path to hell. The horror of what humans have had to endure in the name of religion has been so damaging .
I have found liberation and freedom in walking such a righteous path and my compassion for all sentient beings has emerged and i wish for all the ultimate freedom of being released from the vast sea of suffering that all human beings are in on this earth. No one knows it because we are born from the mothers womb in the same way.
I have never been more free than I am now and know that when my mission on this earth is over I am going home. My millions of years of reincarnations have all been for this time of Law rectification now.
Nice try Ms. J. Whenever I refer to a god, I'm referring to the mythical, man-made story of him. When you refer to Santa Clause, does it mean you think he is real?
Ms. J, there are good people who care about others, there are bad people who only care about themselves. When you complicate this obvious fact with "evil forces and "righteous gods," you are making human tentencies more extreme than they really are.
Now, haven't we suffered enough at the hands of extremist ideologies?
At the end of you last comment, you use more cult talk to justify your position. That is, all members of cults talk about being found and free, etc. Please, look up the term "pig happiness." This is the kind of freedom you are experiencing in your cult.
What I am talking about is happiness based on the actual truth, not the fiction of religion.
Dear EJ, show me one person on the planet today who has had 3 straight days in a row of happiness without one worry or bad thought.
I dont know any, never have and its what can be referred to as a giant joke. We as humans search for happiness and cannot find it but in fleeting moments here on this earth.Most people dont even know what happiness is when asked. More money more fame more girls etc..
So these statements you make all the time that if we put aside thoughts of Gods we will be happy are simply not possible . I dont see you as being a particularly happy person , excuse me for my forthrightness. You argue with everyone and dont bend or go with the flow preferring to stick to your God doesn't exist rhetoric believing that we have evolved from apes and will only be happy when Gods no longer are in our thoughts.
How come we haven't evolved into that happy state already? I mean it only took a mere 10,000 years to evolve from monkey to Human surely we should have already evolved to your impossible state of happiness right?.Monkeys seem to be pretty happy most of the time dont they? So what are we doing? going backwards as humans because the world has never been in a worse state morally ethically or peacefully as it is now with so many people on the planet?
To argue so hard about something that does not exist is dogmatic in it self, It does exists because you argue with it . Matter and mind are one.
My eternal happiness is based on the actual truth of being more free than i could have ever imagined.I am here right now not worrying about what is what if and what will be.I am not frightened of anything; are you? I am not out to kill anyone because they don't believe what i say nor I am out kill anyone in my Teachers name.
Falun Gong has never and I mean never anywhere in the world across 69 nations excluding China ever been accused of being violent in any way and thats why people do not understand us because human nature by itself is very violent.
Cults are violent and urge you to do bad things in the name of their leader.
The Chinese communist regime has become known as the Evil Spectre and Anti- Universe. It is against God and Buddha, it is against law and order in the universe.It is ATHEIST .
Where FG has Truthfulness, ccp has lies. Where we have Compassion, it has hatred. Where we have Tolerance, it has intolerance. FG allows people to find for themselves the truth through their own understandings. CCP doesn’t want people to have this much freedom as then the control is gone, they will no longer have control over what people think. They make the people think china would not exist without CCP.
The communist regime is a cult and has all the traits of being the biggest cult on the planet.
It has taken the ATHEIST CCP no more than 60 years to destroy the very essence of morality and spirituality which allowed the great nation of China to flourish for 5000 years. So by that rationale of yours then China who no longer believes in Gods Buddhas or Daso should all be wonderfully happy and content with life.But they are not are?
Falun Gong teaches people to be good and to look inwards before looking outwards; to accept criticisms and beatings and torture and even death with out fighting back or harming any other human being.
To always put the other person first before saying or doing anything. Apart from the 5 men who have started and maintained this Genocide against Falun Gong everyone else is forgiven if they stop now.
Those 5 men will be held accountable in an International court of law, So as to deter other dictators or tyrants from doing the same ever again.
Once again i repeat do not tar Falun Gong with the same brush as all other religions have now become.The teachings of the enlightened ones Jesus and Buddha have become distorted and only a person with very good enlighten quality like Steve will see thru the false teachings of today and see the real teachings of their teacher.
They were not that way when the enlightened beings were here and the teachings can never last for ever due to life and cosmic changes etc.
But Mr Li is here and doing what has never been achieved before.
What Falun Gong has achieved in this world to date is astounding. Dont you think we have found the secret to happiness and peace? It seems we have all in unison 100 million all in unison. How could that happen with out supernatural help?
EJ:
The only reason you can't see the injustice of God's murdering rampages is because of severe blind faith and bias. Any other instance of genocide, any other time a thug asks someone else to murder their own son as an egotistical display of loyalty, you'd see it as wrong immediately.
You're like a judge who let's somebody off the hook because the guilty party is a friend. In this case, you let God off with his sadistic acts because he is your imaginary friend.
SR:
This illustrates nicely, as J. has pointed out, an odd fact that always seems to be the case with atheists. They claim they believe God does not exist, but at the same time, they are extremely angry at him. This is of course a complete non sequitor. Obviously, if God does not exist, he has done nothing wrong. If he has, as you maintain, done all these terrible things, it follows that he exists. You just can’t have it both ways.
I always used to say, based on this phenomenon, that I didn’t think there really was such a thing as an atheist. At least, I’ve never met one.
Picking a fight with God is a natural thing, and something even good people sometimes go through: Jacob, for example. But watch out, Jeff. He packs quite a knockout punch.
You keep returning to the Abraham-Isaac episode: it seems so significant to you that you have apparently based your entire claim that God is evil on it. You have offered no other evidence for this claim. You might be interested in St. Paul’s interpretation of Abraham’s motivation in the New Testament—being in the Bible, it is, of course, normative for Christians. St. Paul claimed that Abraham chose to sacrifice his son as he thought God was telling him because he assumed God would immediately resurrect Isaac afterwards. This means, of course, that it did not at any point involve “murdering his son.” See Hebrews 11: 17-19.
EJ:
God not only knows things in advance (supposedly), but he has created everything (supposedly). Thus, before he creates Eve he knows she will succumb to the snake, so he is totally responsible (i.e why invent her in the first place? Why not make a nice Christian girl for Adam to run around naked with?).
SR:
The obvious and well-known answer is that God created both Adam and Eve with free will. Free will necessarily involves the possibility of choosing badly. God cannot violate the rules of logic.
EJ:
"God has a right to kill," you say. So it's, "do as I say, don't do as I do."
SR:
Very important, albeit emotionally difficult, point to grasp here, Jeff: God is God. You are not. By the same token, children live by different rules than their parents. Dad gets to swing axes around. Little Jimmy is not allowed to touch. I trust you have similar rules for your own child.
EJ:
This is exactly the illogic those who kill in His name go by. Spelled out for you:
1)God can kill whoever he wants, he has the right.
2) Believers are faithful to God and interject Him into their consciousness.
3) Therefore, BELIEVERS HAVE A RIGHT TO KILL!
SR:
By the very same logic, Jeff:
1) governments are free to kill—by going to war, in executing criminals.
2) as a good citizen, you of course obey your government.
3) therefore, YOU, JEFF HARMSEN, HAVE A RIGHT TO KILL!
I trust you do not believe this. It doesn’t work that way.
EJ:
Every number, thought of or not, is a thing, a concept. I could go on forever reciting numbers you have never thought of. According to omnipotence, no matter what number I recited, God would know it. However, this is impossible, because no matter how many numbers a god can know, there are always more.
SR:
You have to understand the logical distinction here, Jeff, between potential infinite sets and real, existing infinite sets. A real, existing infinite set is a logical impossibility. A potential infinity is not a logical problem: it could be infinite, but is not. The set of all possible numbers is the latter. You are understanding it as the former.
Here’s a classic illustration of the difference: imagine a hotel that has an infinite number of rooms. Now imagine all those rooms are filled. Now a guest comes and wants to check in. You immediately have a logical contradiction: in one sense, there is no room for him; all the rooms are filled. But, if there are an infinite number, how can infinity plus one be more than infinity? Therefore, there should be a room for him. Logical contradiction.
This is an actual existing infinite set.
Imagine, on the other hand, a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, but only a limited number of rooms are actually occupied. Then we have no logical problem: each guest, as they come, can be accommodated.
This is a potentially infinite set. This is the case with numbers. There is no “all” to know.
EJ:
And you are right about the propaganda machine surrounding Jesus. It began when his status was raised from human prophet to the son of God. This was brilliant propaganda because it elevated Him above the umpteen other cult leaders of those times who were all biding for a following.
SR:
As we have examined, Jeff, this imagined historical progression did not happen. Jesus was understood to be the son of God from the beginning.
EJ:
Here's a historical fact that blows me away: You have circumcision to thank for the initial uprising of Christianity, for Rabbi Saul allowed men into his cult without having to suffer penis mutilation. If I lived in those times and one cult required me to snip my member while another did not, I know which cult I'd join!
SR:
Paganism did not require circumcision either, Jeff. A dozen other competing sects did not. Only Judaism did.
EJ:
Of course, much later, once Christianity was established as a dominant religion, some sects went back to cicumcision (damn you Mom, why did you have to be Protestant!).
SR:
That’s a very weird comment, Jeff. No significant Christian group practices circumcision as a religious matter.
EJ:
Naturally, this divison between Christian sects led to warring (what else is new?).
SR:
Purely your imagination again, Jeff.
EJ:
Indeed, the arbitray nature of religion is absolutely facinating! I can't get enough of it. Free thinking gives you a profound sense of liberation. You should all try it.
SR:
None think so freely as the truly religious.
Ms. J, there is no such thing as perfect happiness. Happiness is relative to the person, a never ending quest. For one thing, we measure happiness based on unhappiness. Thus, if life was perfect, happiness would become irrelivant. Like beauty, happiness is in the eye of the beholder.
That all being said, the more one sees the truth, the more one can be truly happy (but again, I stress there is no ultimate state of it, especially as depicted by religion I.e a heaven).
So, it's not just a matter of putting aside belief in a god: it's a matter of seeing reality beyond the delusion of Him, then to keep going. That is, even when you see beyond the delusions of god, you still have to keep learning and developing yourself, it's the never ending quest of your life span.
Thank you for your concern regarding my happiness. I have to admit, going against the grain can be lonely at times. However, the quest of enlightenment is my purpose, it makes me happy. Other than this, I play guitar, this gives me a great deal of pleasure, I work out and take good care of myself, I'm writing my third novel, this give me purpose. All three of my children are thriving.
Things could be better, but they always can be. This gives us a reason to live.
Valid arguments are not dogmatic but slices of reality.
Respectfully, I suggest you read up on the theory of evolution. Your view of it ssems mistaken.
Your concept of eternal happiness is based on a lie. I have already proven this through and through. Did you look up the term "pig happiness?"
All religions, including yours, are cults (look up "cult" in the dictionary).
You say your cult has truth and compassion. That's great. Why don't you remove the supernatural delusions from your dogma and evolve into a philosophy? In this way, you can exist by morals you revere but at the same time, remove the deleterious effect of superstious behavior.
I have already conceded on numberous fronts that there are examples of atheists who are tyrants. However, it is impossible to be a HUMANISTIC atheist and harm fellow human beings.
I totally respect your cult's peaceful resistance. However, why can't you do it just because it is the right thing to do, instead of for a god?
It amuses me how you can not separate fact from fiction. Again, let me spell it out for you: when I refer to a god, I'm referring to it as a mythical concept. Thus, I am not angry at an actual supernatural entity (ie, I've already proven there is no such thing): my concern is with people who can not see the obvious sadism and brutality in the bible as wrong because they are brainwashed to see mythical god as always right (i.e lost their sense of humanity, i.e lost their basic sense of right and wrong).
Saul's account of Abraham's willingness to kill his own son is flawed. If Abraham really believed his son was going straight to heaven, he would not have had any qualms about murdering him. This is not the case. Instead, "All-knowing" god tortured Abraham with His sadistic game.
Plus, Saul's explaination demonstrates perfectly how delusions lead to murder. For example, if you dreamed God told you to kill your wife, your god delusion could lead you to a similar deadly conclusion, that it's not really murder because you are sending some one you love to heaven.
AND: the same sort of twisted delusions are apparent in terrorism as murders believe what they are doing isn't really murder, but god's will.
The free will argument holds no water for at least two reasons. First: even if God gives free will, he still knows everything and thus knows i.e that Eve, with her free will, will bite the apple.
Second: children's free will is stolen from them because the church (and parents) brainwash (as I have definded brainwashing) the kids before they have developed enough mental capacity to see the truth.
Your argument that wood chopping is the same as genocide is so flawed I can hardly believe it. We have already agreed that murder is wrong. Thus, for your analogy to hold water, you would have to use another immoral event for your analogy to be valid.
Thus, an appropriate analogy to God murdering people then telling people not to do it would necessarily involve examples of wrong doing. I.e a smoking parent tells her children not to smoke. An lacholic father tells his children not to drink. A mureous God tells his people not to murder.
Your "governments kill" analogy fairs no better. If my government tried to force me into an unjust war, I would refuse to kill. Unlike you and your bible, I can tell what is right and wrong because my judgement is not clouded by an unhealthy, blind, mafia-like loyalty.
I.e, no matter what my government does, I do not have a right to kill innocent people because my sense of morals in not dependant on the country's actions. If everyone upheld this moral conduct, war and terrorism would become obsolete.
Religious folks, on the other hand, have a tendency to lose their moral perspective when they introject biblical stories into their psyhes (i.e believing murder isn't really murder).
Infinity is a real concept, easily proven. It's impossible to have a hotel with infinite rooms. No matter how many rooms there are, we can always add more. Just like there can be no hotel with infinite rooms, there can be no god, because He can not fulfil the criteria of infinity.
Re history: After the crucifixion, Christianity was reduced to a small band of fisher men (the sign of the fish was their symbol, not the cross). Then, Rabbi Saul came up with the notion Jesus was the "God's lamb" as depicted by the old testament. (Jews during Jesus' time thought he was a warrior, the choosen one to overcome the Romans.)
Give me a non biased source (i.e not the severely edited version of Christian canon), and I'd be happy to look it up. My source comes from "Antiquity" by Norm Cantor.
I realize Pagans did not perform cicumcision. However, Saul was a Jew. He converted both Jews and Pagans to Christianity (i.e both anteaters and turtle heads).
Cicumcision is customary in several Orthodox Christian churches. That a divide in Christian orthodoxy (not just the foreskin snipping, but in dogma) caused war is indisputable.
The religous are not free thinkers, not by a long shot, because they are by definition parochial, blinded by the delusions of their faith.
Post a Comment