The Holy Bible contains not any contradictions!

[ding]

No doubt there is a full distribution out there.

Personally I don't think I would have gone to all of that trouble. Did he give a reason for becoming agnostic?

Don't like to speak for him but I believe he saw the Bible was the flawed work or man but it may have been mostly the presence of evil in the world.

I see. I wonder if after all of that studying he realized the Bible literally tells us that we are at war with God. Because I am wondering why he would be surprised that there is “evil” in this world.

His words:

Suffering increasingly became a problem for me and my faith. How can one explain all the pain and misery in the world if God—the creator and redeemer of all—is sovereign over it, exercising his will both on the grand scheme and in the daily workings of our lives? Why, I asked, is there such rampant starvation in the world? Why are there droughts, epidemics, hurricanes, and earthquakes? If God answers prayer, why didn’t he answer the prayers of the faithful Jews during the Holocaust? Or of the faithful Christians who also suffered torment and death at the hands of the Nazis? If God is concerned to answer my little prayers about my daily life, why didn’t he answer my and others’ big prayers when millions were being slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, when a mudslide killed 30,000 Columbians in their sleep, in a matter of minutes, when disasters of all kinds caused by humans and by nature happened in the world?​

Like many concepts from antiquity the original meaning gets lost or distorted by the passage of time. So maybe your understanding of what prayer means and accomplishes is wrong.

The practical application of prayer is to alter the fabric of one's identity. In this regard it is similar to meditation. The key distinction though is prayer is communing with God rather than yourself.

The structure of prayer matters. Giving thanks and giving praise puts one in a thankful state of mind which has been scientifically proven to be one of the key behaviors of reaching a state of happiness. When we are happy two things will happen; dopamine will be released which gives us that happy feeling and all of the learning centers of the brain get turned on.

Lastly and probably most importantly, prayer should not be about what God can do for us. Prayer should be about us asking God what He wants us to do.

Structure of Prayer:
1. Give thanks.
2. Give praise.
3. Ask God what He wants us to do.
4. Listen.

It can be done anytime, but I believe we are most receptive to hearing the Spirit in the early morning when we are less full of ourselves.

I like it. I don't believe it but I still like it.

Thanks.

The central tenet of Buddhism is suffering and the ending of suffering. That’s what the Siddhartha Gautama taught. He believed the root cause of suffering to be desire. William James wrote, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary; and if it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands vindicated beyond dispute. It becomes an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill.

So what this is saying is that to be happy you not only have to surrender but you have to do so willingly and cheerfully. And to be able to do that you have to have no desires. In effect, you have to die to self which interestingly enough is also how you see objective truth instead of subjective truth which is man's main obstacle in progressing in consciousness.

 

[ding]

But are you seriously arguing against learning from failures?

Because that would be the greatest tragedy of all. That would make tragedy be in vain.

So assuming you agree with me that we do or should learn from tragedies, then good does come from them.

Again, you do not have complete knowledge. He does.

You're welcome to all those learning experiences. I'd rather learn from my own mistakes not from random tragedies like disease, war, and floods.

I don't have complete knowledge but that includes not knowing if He does.

But all of those events involve real people such as yourself. It is everyone's learning experience. You might as well be saying the universe revolves around you. Everything is connected. We live in complex adaptive systems upon complex adaptive systems. The order of complexity is astonishing. You say you don't have complete knowledge but you are literally boiling things down to some preordained outcome that you have decided upon. In effect, you are saying that you know that all of these things are bad and should not happen. That no good can come from it. But that just isn't the case. While you claim you don't have complete knowledge, you don't act like it. Because you still have not explored how these horrible events can possibly lead to good. So in effect you are still arguing that you know better which is an absurd and arrogant position.

 

[ding]

How many are on the "Way" that is Jesus without even knowing it is the Way?

Yes. I often see that atheists conform to the deeper implications of Kosher law by refraining from the flesh, teaching, of unclean creatures that do not ruminate, think deeply, while at the same time deriding that instruction as the foolishness of superstitious and primitive people.

They do not worship false gods. They do not lie in the name of God. They do not eat the flesh of anything that crawls on its belly. They do not eat the flesh of teeming vermin who go down on all fours. They keep meat, what is eaten by adults, separate from dairy, what is fed to babies with no teeth. They see and hear with their own eyes and ears the consequence for setting aside divine law with every conversation that they have with an idolator yet they do not believe in curses or acknowledge the wisdom or benefit that they enjoy daily by conforming to the way that Jesus taught to follow the law, the same way that they already follow encapsulated in the command to eat his flesh.


This life is very strange but at least God has a sense of humor.

Logically there are not multiple deities that exist. There is only one. Whose nature is beyond our comprehension. Who is capable of creating all of existence in its entirety of complexity. Pure consciousness with no limitations of energy or matter because it is beyond energy and matter. Whose intelligence cannot be bound or limited by a book that was written filtered through men. Therefore since there can only be one supernatural force, the only false Gods that can exist are created things. Created things that man desires and pursues at the exclusion of his creator.

Embedded in almost everyone of your posts is an attack on Christianity. This is you pursuing your desire. You aren't pursuing your love of God. You are pursuing your hatred of Christianity. As such, you are the idolater. Your hatred of Christianity is your god.

 

[ding]

But are you seriously arguing against learning from failures?

Because that would be the greatest tragedy of all. That would make tragedy be in vain.

So assuming you agree with me that we do or should learn from tragedies, then good does come from them.

Again, you do not have complete knowledge. He does.

You're welcome to all those learning experiences. I'd rather learn from my own mistakes not from random tragedies like disease, war, and floods.

I don't have complete knowledge but that includes not knowing if He does.

There's nothing random about any of this. We live in a logical universe governed by rules, laws and information. There has never been an uncaused event. The definition of reason is a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. The definition of purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. The consequence of a logical universe is that every cause has an effect. Which means that everything happens for a reason and serves a purpose. The very nature of our physical laws point to reason and purpose.

 

[alang1216]

But all of those events involve real people such as yourself. It is everyone's learning experience. You might as well be saying the universe revolves around you. Everything is connected. We live in complex adaptive systems upon complex adaptive systems. The order of complexity is astonishing. You say you don't have complete knowledge but you are literally boiling things down to some preordained outcome that you have decided upon. In effect, you are saying that you know that all of these things are bad and should not happen. That no good can come from it. But that just isn't the case. While you claim you don't have complete knowledge, you don't act like it. Because you still have not explored how these horrible events can possibly lead to good. So in effect you are still arguing that you know better which is an absurd and arrogant position.

How much did you learn from the most recent school shooting? How about the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that?

If I get robbed and lose $1,000 but the thief feels badly and leaves me $10 for bus fare. That's good but hardly offsets the $990 loss.

 

[ding]

But all of those events involve real people such as yourself. It is everyone's learning experience. You might as well be saying the universe revolves around you. Everything is connected. We live in complex adaptive systems upon complex adaptive systems. The order of complexity is astonishing. You say you don't have complete knowledge but you are literally boiling things down to some preordained outcome that you have decided upon. In effect, you are saying that you know that all of these things are bad and should not happen. That no good can come from it. But that just isn't the case. While you claim you don't have complete knowledge, you don't act like it. Because you still have not explored how these horrible events can possibly lead to good. So in effect you are still arguing that you know better which is an absurd and arrogant position.

How much did you learn from the most recent school shooting? How about the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that? And the one before that?

If I get robbed and lose $1,000 but the thief feels badly and leaves me $10 for bus fare. That's good but hardly offsets the $990 loss.

Let's look at it at a micro and a macro perspective. From the micro perspective, when anything horrible happens to a person their will be mourning. From that mourning we might learn that we took someone for granted and changed how we behaved in the future. From the macro perspective we could look at the holocaust and vow to never let that happen again. You don't have complete information. You don't know how events cascade down and go forward. Paths taken or not taken. All you know is suffering.

 

[ding]

If I get robbed and lose $1,000 but the thief feels badly and leaves me $10 for bus fare. That's good but hardly offsets the $990 loss.

Maybe you learned that there was something you could have done differently to avoid being robbed in the first place. Or maybe you getting robbed prevented someone else from being murdered. Who knows? None of us have complete knowledge. But only one of us is arguing that it wasn't possible for any good to come from it which does imply they have complete knowledge.

 

[alang1216]

There's nothing random about any of this.

Yes there is. If there is a creator, he made randomness and uncertainty part of the universe. Don't be telling God what he can't do.

 

[ding]

There's nothing random about any of this. We live in a logical universe governed by rules, laws and information. There has never been an uncaused event. The definition of reason is a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. The definition of purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. The consequence of a logical universe is that every cause has an effect. Which means that everything happens for a reason and serves a purpose. The very nature of our physical laws point to reason and purpose.

Yes there is. If there is a creator, he made randomness and uncertainty part of the universe. Don't be telling God what he can't do.

You aren't the first person to misapply or misunderstand the implications of the uncertainty principle. First of all there are constantly forces forcing particles to choose. Secondly, quantum mechanics never violates conservation laws. It is always predictable in that regard. Predictable is not random.

 

[ding]

It is the Absolutely Truth of God.
Lying hippi-dippie-atheists-commies-faggots-satanists misuse trust of folks who do not read this Holy Book and lie to them
Better read the Holy Bible by yourself and go to a born-again Priest from independent church asking for clarification.

When people seriously take time to clarify scripture linquistically, they sometimes end up with a completely different story that is written in modern bibles.

One of the biggest ones is that whole virgin birth thing. You have to go back to the Semitic linguistic of old to understand why modern bibles completly turn it on its head.

Actualy, you have to go to the Latin, then compare that with the Semitic texts to get it right.

There was no sexual connotation whatsoever until those lying scribes six linguistics later messed it all up. And that's just one thing. There's so much more that's translated all wrong.

Of course, those first century bishops created their own little form of Latin that only they understood. That's right after they already cleansed all of the good books out of the bible. Convenient, huh? Needless to say the congregation just ran with it. Ahem.

There's so many things wrong with the modern bible that it's darned near laughable even if it's just plain disturbing that hardly anyone studies what they're reading. There's more to bible study than just reading it and repeating the bold text in church.

You said Bible, but did you mean to say the New Testament of the Bible?

 

[ding]

I know of a man raised as an evangelical Christian and went to Moody Bible Institute. He was so devout he learned ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic just to read and study the Bible. He got a PhD, teaches Bible Studies at Chapel Hill University, and now he's agnostic.

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief."
Ecclesiastes 1:18

And 'ol Ecclesiates would be right>

ECCLESIASTES CHAPTER 1 KJV

To view life as incarnate futility, pursuant only to celestial gains, is the epitome of misanthopy. To be that objective is takes a little horsepower

Juxtaposed to jackbooted fundies defining ignorant bliss incarnate.

Ecclesiastes describes the divide, that grand gap bewtixt religion and faith ,where the ignorati would claim one can not be had w/out the other, and those who gain wisdom claim mutually exclusive.

~S~

I wish you would speak in english.

I'm not sure I fully get your drift, but if I do, let me repost this which I think addresses it.

The central tenet of Buddhism is suffering and the ending of suffering. That’s what the Siddhartha Gautama taught. He believed the root cause of suffering to be desire. William James wrote, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary; and if it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands vindicated beyond dispute. It becomes an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill.

So what this is saying is that to be happy you not only have to surrender but you have to do so willingly and cheerfully. And to be able to do that you have to have no desires. In effect, you have to die to self which interestingly enough is also how you see objective truth instead of subjective truth which is man's main obstacle in progressing in consciousness.

 

[hobelim]

Logically there are not multiple deities that exist. There is only one. Whose nature is beyond our comprehension.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have heard your spiel before and in case you forgot I think its bullshit.

You also seem to have forgotten that you openly worship a coequal trinity that became a man who you eat in the form of a lifeless matzo made by human hands for spiritual life.

Three coequal beings is not the same thing as one unequalled God. 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. Spiritual life is not edible. DUH.


Jesus said that knowing God is eternal life. If thats true, not knowing God is death....


The only reason that the nature of God is incomprehensible to you is because you have never seen him and do not know him.

You worship an edible trinity that does not correspond to any real living being ever in existence and have been carried away into the depths of hell by your unrestrained imagination.

Consequently, you only love and practice deceit.

 

[ding]

Logically there are not multiple deities that exist. There is only one. Whose nature is beyond our comprehension.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have heard your spiel before and in case you forgot I think its lunacy.

You also seem to have forgotten that you openly worship a coequal trinity that became a man who you eat in the form of a lifeless matzo made by human hands for spiritual life.

Jesus said that knowing God is eternal life.

If thats true, not knowing God is death....


The only reason the nature of God is incomprehensible to you is because you have never seen him and do not know him.


You only love and practice deceit.

Sounds to me like you are still obsessing over the form of religion. Thanks for proving my point.

 

[Natural Citizen]

You said Bible, but did you mean to say the New Testament of the Bible?

Hi, ding. How's it going? Technically I said bibles. But anyway. I'm of the studied view that the New Testament Gospels have been strategically manipulated. The authentic record is certainly suppressed. It's been systematic.

 

[ding]

Logically there are not multiple deities that exist. There is only one. Whose nature is beyond our comprehension.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have heard your spiel before and in case you forgot I think its lunacy.

You also seem to have forgotten that you openly worship a coequal trinity that became a man who you eat in the form of a lifeless matzo made by human hands for spiritual life.

Jesus said that knowing God is eternal life.

If thats true, not knowing God is death....


The only reason the nature of God is incomprehensible to you is because you have never seen him and do not know him.


You only love and practice deceit.

No one has seen God. It's more like feel or experience God.

 

[ding]

You said Bible, but did you mean to say the New Testament of the Bible?

Hi, ding. How's it going? Technically I said bibles. But anyway. I'm of the studied view that the New Testament Gospels have been strategically manipulated. The authentic record is certainly suppressed. It's been systematic.

It's all good. I hope you are well too.

What do you mean by suppressed?

I just wanted to make sure that I understood you correctly that you weren't challenging the OT too because it seemed like you weren't.

 

[hobelim]

Logically there are not multiple deities that exist. There is only one. Whose nature is beyond our comprehension.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have heard your spiel before and in case you forgot I think its lunacy.

You also seem to have forgotten that you openly worship a coequal trinity that became a man who you eat in the form of a lifeless matzo made by human hands for spiritual life.

Jesus said that knowing God is eternal life.

If thats true, not knowing God is death....


The only reason the nature of God is incomprehensible to you is because you have never seen him and do not know him.


You only love and practice deceit.

No one has seen God. It's more like feel or experience God.

No, Ding, you are mistaken.

There is nothing subtle, vague, or unclear about standing in the presence of the living God.

It is not like a feeling at all.

Did you ever read the bible and compare what the prophets reported and compared it to your jerk off feelings?

 

[ding]

Logically there are not multiple deities that exist. There is only one. Whose nature is beyond our comprehension.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have heard your spiel before and in case you forgot I think its lunacy.

You also seem to have forgotten that you openly worship a coequal trinity that became a man who you eat in the form of a lifeless matzo made by human hands for spiritual life.

Jesus said that knowing God is eternal life.

If thats true, not knowing God is death....


The only reason the nature of God is incomprehensible to you is because you have never seen him and do not know him.


You only love and practice deceit.

No one has seen God. It's more like feel or experience God.

No, Ding, you are mistaken.

There is nothing subtle, vague, or unclear about standing in the presence of the living God.

It is not like a feeling at all.

Did you ever read the bible and compare what the prophets reported and compared it to your jerk off feelings?

There is nothing subtle, vague, or unclear of my worship of God.

Just as their is nothing subtle, vague, or unclear of your hatred towards my form of worship of God.

Your interpretations of the Bible have never impressed me. It's almost as if you try to be intentionally misleading.

 

[Natural Citizen]

Start a thread if you wanna talk about it with just me and you. Like for later. I'm getting ready to jump off here, ding.

 

[alang1216]

There's nothing random about any of this. We live in a logical universe governed by rules, laws and information. There has never been an uncaused event. The definition of reason is a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. The definition of purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. The consequence of a logical universe is that every cause has an effect. Which means that everything happens for a reason and serves a purpose. The very nature of our physical laws point to reason and purpose.

Yes there is. If there is a creator, he made randomness and uncertainty part of the universe. Don't be telling God what he can't do.

You aren't the first person to misapply or misunderstand the implications of the uncertainty principle. First of all there are constantly forces forcing particles to choose. Secondly, quantum mechanics never violates conservation laws. It is always predictable in that regard. Predictable is not random.

Does God know the location, mass, and momentum of every wave and particle in the universe? If not...