7/2/2003: "Finger" of God

[novice]

If, indeed we are the product of an omnipotent being, I consider it grossly and needlessly unfair that, having been given the intellectual ability to doubt and question the being's existence, we are sent to the fiery depths of hell if we choose not to.
Surely it would be more soul stocktakingly profitable to present ones self around the time Santa is looking dodgy and prove beyond any and all doubt that the "10 Commandments" is not just an NRA propaganda documentary.
So there

[quzah]

Originally posted by joydriven
If I accidentally kill my country's president or a vehicle full of national heroes--I might as well count myself dead for all the value "living" would have after such a travesty.

What are you kidding? You'd be a fucking hero to half the population!

Quzah.

[quzah]

Originally posted by joydriven
If I accidentally kill a gnat, oh well, you know? How can I walk around long breathing in and out and brushing my hair out of my face WITHOUT killing a gnat once in a while?

...snip...

The more important the individual you offend is, the more serious your offense against him is, and the more serious the consequences of your actions are. It is a correlative thing.

Make light of a gnat--nothing heavy about that. Make light of the One who designed everything from millions of galaxies full of supposedly-coincidental gas cloud formations down to the intricacies of a gnat's wings and digestive or reproductive systems--that's heavy.

A "harmless" jab at me would be quite a light offense. A "harmless" jab at an infinite Being is proportionately infinitely offensive. Making light jokes about God is always heavy.

The Jain would disagree with this philosophy. Forgive the horrible link, with all the flashing buttons and scrolling flashing text. If you require more, see Google.

Basicly the concept is that all life is precious. This should blow most of your minds, but the idea is that nothing at all, however so minute, should be harmed. That's it in a nutshell. Read up if you care to, or not.

I mean seriously, these fuckers don't believe in your version of God, so they're inherantly evil and will burn in hell forever.

And that, is my problem with your religion. Just because they don't believe the same as you, never mind the fact that they have harmed no living creature in their entire lives, they're damned to hell. It must be nice having such a superiority complex, eh?

Quzah.

[novice]

Originally posted by quzah


Basicly the concept is that all life is precious. This should blow most of your minds, but the idea is that nothing at all, however so minute, should be harmed. That's it in a nutshell. Read up if you care to, or not.


Quzah.

If you paraphrase the 10 commandments as "do unto others etc" and interpret 'others' to include all living creatures you have a tenet everyone can embrace without the need for the creation of a 'god'
By adopting this as the official policy of humankind it voids the "god doesn't exist therefore his rules don't either" defence.
Having said that, i'm not on a soap box disputing the existence of 'GOD' but i'm a seeing is believing kind of guy.
Anybody read "jesus the man" by Dr. Barbara Thierry? Thoughts?

[Uryoces]

2 Samuel 12:7, "And Nathan said to David, 'Thou art the man'."

[Uryoces]

Originally posted by quzah
Basicly the concept is that all life is precious. This should blow most of your minds, but the idea is that nothing at all, however so minute, should be harmed. That's it in a nutshell. Read up if you care to, or not.

I mean seriously, these fuckers don't believe in your version of God, so they're inherantly evil and will burn in hell forever.

And that, is my problem with your religion. Just because they don't believe the same as you, never mind the fact that they have harmed no living creature in their entire lives, they're damned to hell. It must be nice having such a superiority complex, eh?
Quzah.

More than likely not directed at me, but ...

There's a lot I can't simply dismiss about Christianity. Back in 600 AD Constantine and friends gathered around and spliced together what we now know as the bible. There were bits left on the cutting room floor, now known as the Apocrypha. We now have "Christians" haging around gay pride parades holding up signs that say "Burn in hell, fags". I see very peaceful people like the Jain and the Dalai Lama; very good people. To say something like they'll burn in hell is very ignorant of these fuckers. Hell, the Dalai Lama is teaching Christianity better than most preachers!

I once knew a burned-out former Satan worshipper turned born again Christian. The vacant look in his eyes and the verbatim regurgitation of bible passages made me think he wasn't happy to be a Christian or a Satan worshipper, he was just happy to be worshipping anything.

Using Christianity as a cruch is idiotic. This was supposed to be about love, but it got left somewhere in the dirt.

How's that for non-stick thread-jacking!?

[xoxoxoBruce]

If you paraphrase the 10 commandments as "do unto others etc" and interpret 'others' to include all living creatures you have a tenet everyone can embrace without the need for the creation of a 'god'

The "old testament" explained how god made a covenant with the jews, the rules being the ten commandments. The jews broke the covenant. End of covenant, old testment, ten rules, poof, all gone.
The "new testament is a new deal, this time it's christians and one rule. Love thy neighbor as thy self. You'll have to figure out if your neighbor is limited to humans or christians, or baptists or whatever.
Of course there's many people that see this clearly and are more than willing to set you straight...or else.

[joydriven]

Just a few responses. If you want me to segue over to Philosophy after this, I will. The "take it elsewhere" mentality seems inherently inconsistent, but I will let that go.

seriously, these fuckers don't believe in your version of God, so they're inherantly evil and will burn in hell forever.

> Please don't get the impression that I place stock in "my version" of God. If the God of the Bible is real, it does not matter what my perception of Him is. It does not matter what I think or say, nor what you think or say. God is very absolute in the Bible--very specific about how Creation took place, very specific about the only Way to heaven. If He really did create us, His prerogatives (such as to dish out judgment, offer forgiveness, and to explain the whole deal in written form) are not to be questioned and really have nothing at all to do with how we perceive them or how we perceive ourselves. If Someone was sovereign enough to create the Whole Shabang, our "take" is basically irrelevant. Responding or rejecting the truth is our privilege, but we will be held accountable for our choices.

Is Joy saying they're offended by the picture or the statements about it being the "hand of God" or about the resulting commentary? Which part was offensive?

> The picture itself is not an offense to me--it's merely a record of reality. The resulting commentary was predictable but problematic in the points where it mocked the righteousness of God and brought Him down to the level of human spitefulness. When God gets angry, He bombs cities and massacres children and floods the globe. The very idea of Him flipping off people He died for is not merely ludicrous. It is blatant mockery of Him. Now, as to who else might have been offended....obviously, MY resulting commentary was problematic for many readers. No, I don't want to preach or turn anyone off to truth just because I'm a fallible and offensive expresser of that truth, so I don't wish to offend people unnecessarily. On the other hand, the truth of the Bible is by its own nature offensive to people because of their own nature.

Quoting scripture to a non-believer is like asking the non-English speaking person "When. Does. The. Bus. Arrive?" You're still not speaking their language and irritating them further.

> You're correct. The Bible says itself that it's impossible for a regular Joe who says there is no God to be able to understand the things of God. The only reason I have any inkling what I'm talking about is because I've submitted to the Bible's authority as absolute truth and am trying to learn about God from it. I do recognize that it's way crossing cultures to be bringing these points up. I know it's not "my" community, but as a part of it I make concessions to the others here--I listen to their language and get over it. I guess I felt like this blog ventured onto familiar turf, sanctioning at least some extent of protest from me that could be swallowed maturely by you. We differ, we differ. But if I can read your plain English words, sifting them for kernels and blowing away the chaff as a good friend would, you can at least take a stab at reading and trying to understand mine. There's not much that's cryptic about a quote like "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."

they think rule their lives through poorly-translated and re-translated, centuries-old fairy tales of suspicious origin. I have concluded that there is just no satisfying some beings, supreme or no, and that all humor is fair game.

> You think it's ok to lightly mock my God. I think it's ok to lightly mock your favorite soda. What slays me is how it is fine for you to indicate I'm impossible to please and foolish for placing my faith in a source which, in your limited perception, based upon your limited knowledge and experience, is an inadequate/unworthy object of anyone's faith. If you'll note, I wasn't mocking atheism/agnosticism. I wasn't knocking free speech. I wasn't seeking to convert anyone. I wasn't even trying to rain on anyone's parade. So I fail to see why you see a need to launch an attack like the above. The inconsistency of expected tolerance levels blows my mind.

AH.

Too long, too heavy, too little, too late. I'll shut up now. Really, my apologies for the shortcomings in these words. Especially to those of you who are wishing you had a cosmic gas cloud (perhaps even toxic) to send my way right now.

[joydriven]

if you wish. i don't want to bog the blog further.
matthew1344@hotmail.com

[quzah]

I just find it hard to believe the concept of "God is Love", when for just not believing the right way damns you to an eternity of torment. Hardly my definition of love.

Chew on these generous numbers:
Let's say 1/6 people are doing things the "right way", and will "go to heaven". That's insainly generous on my part, the 1/6 figure. Given the number, there are over six billion people on earth right this second. Doing a touch of basic math, gives us five billion people who just because they don't happen to believe the exact way that they're "supposed to", are going to be eternally tormented.

Yeah, sure sounds like love to me.

And like I said, I'm being hugely generous with those figures (the 1/6 that are doing it 'right'). So as you can see, I don't see how it'd be so shocking to picture god up there going "watch the birdy".

Quzah.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Too long, too heavy, too little, too late. I'll shut up now. Really, my apologies for the shortcomings in these words. Especially to those of you who are wishing you had a cosmic gas cloud (perhaps even toxic) to send my way right now.

HA HA HA. Do you really think we find you offensive or annoying? That's funny! You're not even close to either.
If everyone that came to the Cellar had the same views we'd pack it in, so other views are always welcome. Some of us make a lot of noise but that doesn't make us right, just noisy.
Take a look around at some of the threads and you'll find some people that are really annoying and offensive.
So anyway you and anyone for that matter are always wecome to expound any opinion, theory or question you wish.
The Cellar...whatta country!

[Undertoad]

You think what I did was an attack? JoyD, firstly, you have no idea; shall we point you to actual online attacks so you can tell the difference?

Secondly, this is something that's happened all my life. Goes something like this.

Me: I don't believe in God.
Xtian: Unbeliever, you are going to suffer eternal torment.
Me: That's a load of crap, and you are welcome to bite me.
Xtian: Help, help, I'm being attacked!

If we don't share belief systems, and you tell me that I'm going to hell or that my statements are inappropriate and I'm going to cause pestilence and death, or going to hell, YOU ATTACKED ME FIRST.

[Undertoad]

On the topic of "bogging the blog", go ahead, that's what it's there for. This is for everyone to speak out, the more the merrier. If others can learn from your words then let's share them.

[juju]

Joydriven, killing someone is in no way similar to making fun of them. How can you even make that comparison?

Also, I wanted to say that seeing how your views are seriously underrepresented here at the Cellar, I think most of us would be very excited to have you here. We <i>like</i> discussions like this, and we also like diversity.

[Elspode]

I am always up for the inclusion of a rational, tolerant Christian viewpoint. It is just that they are so difficult to find nowadays. However, the Christian version of deity and creation is just as valid as any other version of the same things. It is, however, no *more* valid than any other version of the same things, and that's where we get into trouble.

Whenever anyone tells me that what they believe is *the* way things are, I stop listening. No one has a handle on Ultimate Truth, and anyone who ways they do has stopped paying attention to the world with an open mind.

That being said, I was a defacto Christian for the first half of my life, until I came to realize that Jehovah, if you read the Bible like I read the Bible, is a very insecure, petty and vengeful deity with a real problem with women. Even the whole 'love for mankind thing', which is pretty much a New Testament concept (New Improved Deity! Now with 50% more compassion), is suspect for me since it did in fact involve human sacrifice, and the acknowledgement of which requires ritual cannibalism in some sects of Christianity.

But...these are *my* problems with the religion, and I do not expect anyone else to believe what I believe. All I ever ask of anyone who professes to follow a certain faith is that they walk the talk.

That's damn hard to do, even for me.