Zone1 We are all NATURAL THEISTS with “homage to reason” unless we lock~in to or against revealed theist-ism vs anti-revelation atheist-ism

[ding]

At best they were deists and yet you and others have this intense need to shoehorn Christianity in so that your beliefs can be validated.

With respect to God, your beliefs align much more closely to the founders of socialism and communism.

 

[Crepitus]

I don't see it as needing the security of some all powerful being nor do I depend upon God to make everything OK.

Got anything else?

So what do you pray for?

 

[Dr.Destructo]

I am NOT a Theist, never have been, never will be, so don't tell me it's "natural" when it's not.


I DEMAND PROOF!!! Solid, concrete, undeniable HARD CORE PROOF, if I am to believe in anything.

Even when my granny used to take me to church with her when I was little, I couldn't understand WHY they were giving praise and singing to something they have never seen, never met, and don't have any proof of.

 

[Paradoxical#1]

Why does it bother you what others believe in the matter of religion and religious faith? What inspires your need to criticize others, to attempt to shake or destroy their faith?

Is it a fear the theists are right?

Unwittingly I'm sure your last sentence hit the nail on the head but for reasons you are clueless over. FEAR is the driving force in indoctrination and the number one propaganda tool of religious whack jobs and the reason THEY believe. When you get down to it Christianity preys on the innate selfishness of humans by using the fear of hell for nothing more than a nonbelief in this tyrannical dictator insane god who destroys civilizations and would burn and torture people for all eternity if they don't kiss his ass with belief.

Christianity makes people live in fear but then gives them the carrot to reward them for drinking the Koolaid because the inventors knew they needed a drawing card after they injected fear. It's like the Mafiosi threatening to burn a guy's restaurant down if he doesn't believe that his unseen mafia boss means business and demands a belief that he will do it.

 

[Paradoxical#1]

Because I didn't think you knew the answer.

You think I am lying about my upbringing and knowledge of the decadence of Catholicism?

 

[Paradoxical#1]

With respect to God, your beliefs align much more closely to the founders of socialism and communism.

So what? Those on the right don't like my beliefs at all about their religious beliefs because conservatives are supposed to be all pigeonholed and expected to have drank the Kool-Aid like the Heavens Gate cult did.

What comes closest to my beliefs are those of Spinoza who I doubt you have ever heard of.

Look up Heavens Gate and tell me why Catholicism is any different. It is a death cult just like they were.

 

[Foxfyre]

Unwittingly I'm sure your last sentence hit the nail on the head but for reasons you are clueless over. FEAR is the driving force in indoctrination and the number one propaganda tool of religious whack jobs and the reason THEY believe. When you get down to it Christianity preys on the innate selfishness of humans by using the fear of hell for nothing more than a nonbelief in this tyrannical dictator insane god who destroys civilizations and would burn and torture people for all eternity if they don't kiss his ass with belief.

Christianity makes people live in fear but then gives them the carrot to reward them for drinking the Koolaid because the inventors knew they needed a drawing card after they injected fear. It's like the Mafiosi threatening to burn a guy's restaurant down if he doesn't believe that his unseen mafia boss means business and demands a belief that he will do it.

What you know about Christians and Christianity isn't much my friend. Sorry you feel that way. I am quite confident I would never be able to convince you how very wrong you are. I will just use one of my favorite Thomas Jefferson quotes in response:

"To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.”--Thomas Jefferson

In other words, he acknowledged how some corrupt the faith but strongly advocated for the concepts promoted by Christianity as the proper choice to govern a nation.

To fail to separate the millions of unselfish and selfless Christians who are running soup kitchens, staffing homeless shelters, staffing ministries in leper colonies, who run loving orphanages, advocating for peace, justice, goodness in the world while they work among some of the world's most needs and desperate people from the few radical extremists and nutjobs out there. . .

. . .Is to not only do a dishonest disservice to Christians and Christianity, but it is to deny the mountain of good that has been done and is being done despite the far fewer abuses and misuses that happen with all things.

 

[OhPleaseJustQuit]

So what do you pray for?

.

Mostly prayers of thanksgiving.


.

 

[OhPleaseJustQuit]

View attachment 1115061

I am NOT a Theist, never have been, never will be, so don't tell me it's "natural" when it's not.


I DEMAND PROOF!!! Solid, concrete, undeniable HARD CORE PROOF, if I am to believe in anything.

Even when my granny used to take me to church with her when I was little, I couldn't understand WHY they were giving praise and singing to something they have never seen, never met, and don't have any proof of.

.

As someone who has experienced a miracle, I sincerely wish the same for you, my friend.

And, sorry, no, I will not discuss it here. It's a sacred thing to me and I will not allow jackals to do their best to tear it apart with their hateful jaws.

I do have a friend who is of the same faith as me, who has experienced a miracle that I can tell you about. He was working on a third floor, steeply pitched roof, and fell off. He said he remembered having the time to say to himself, "I'm going to die or break my neck and be crippled for life".

Then, about halfway down to the ground, he felt himself grabbed by some force which gently lowered him to the ground, without a scratch.

He is not a drinker beyond a weekend beer now and then, or a drug user. He is a very well respected man in my small town, where everybody has known everybody for several generations. He's a retired teacher, loved and respected by his former students and their parents. I am a fairly critical thinker and have no reason to believe he'd lie about this.

If you'd like to invest the time, I think there have been some honest scientific studies about Eucharistic Miracles, which are instances of the Holy Eucharist, the wafer of bread we use for Holy Communion, spontaneously beginning to bleed. In fact, all of the Eucharistic Miracles examined scientifically have contained human heart tissue and the same blood type of the blood samples examined on the Shroud of Turin. Examined by non-religious scientists, who were not told anything about the samples they were examining.

I've also read about so many miracles that, if only 1% of them are scientifically provable, that's enough for me.

Eucharistic miracle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you don't care to give up a few minutes of your time to look at this, that's okay. I'll still enjoy your generally wise posts.

.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

View attachment 1112646

With the coming of mindful self consciousness in a competent human being … We are all NATURAL THEISTS with innate “homage to reason” until/unless we take a locked~in position from the two irrational and unnatural opposites ~ revealed theist-ism vs anti-revelation atheist-ism.

View attachment 1112647

Where are you? Do you pay homage to reason as much as humanly possible?

View attachment 1112667

Only because we are all naturally irrational and superstitious and ignorant.

 

[BreezeWood]

Einstein, had a sense that there was something greater than themselves at work in their world ... atheist - how much they can strain at gnats to disprove/disparage/criticize/ridicule what others believe, I believe they all have a nagging sense of that Divine presence and are desperate to dismiss it lest they have to admit they were wrong.

is it to disparage those theist that worship divinity than to repeat the message of the 1st century and jesus all in the heavens are equal to understand fully the true balance of the universe.

 

[Foxfyre]

is it to disparage those theist that worship divinity than to repeat the message of the 1st century and jesus all in the heavens are equal to understand fully the true balance of the universe.

Again I should point out that those who write in riddles generally don't have a clue what they're talking about.

 

[Crepitus]

.

Mostly prayers of thanksgiving.


.

Did you forget which identity I responded to?

 

[whutTHEYsay]

Foxfyre Post #67 May 24 2025 …~… In other words, he {Thomas Jefferson] acknowledged how some corrupt the faith but strongly advocated for the concepts promoted by Christianity as the proper choice to govern a nation

whut I say …~… Why would Jefferson choose the “revealed” and “irrational” religion of Christianity to be considered a choice to govern the new secular nation that was founded on reason? He wrote that since the intriduction of Christianity, it has made half the world fools and the other half hypocrites..

 

[Dr.Destructo]

.

As someone who has experienced a miracle, I sincerely wish the same for you, my friend.

And, sorry, no, I will not discuss it here. It's a sacred thing to me and I will not allow jackals to do their best to tear it apart with their hateful jaws.

I do have a friend who is of the same faith as me, who has experienced a miracle that I can tell you about. He was working on a third floor, steeply pitched roof, and fell off. He said he remembered having the time to say to himself, "I'm going to die or break my neck and be crippled for life".

Then, about halfway down to the ground, he felt himself grabbed by some force which gently lowered him to the ground, without a scratch.

He is not a drinker beyond a weekend beer now and then, or a drug user. He is a very well respected man in my small town, where everybody has known everybody for several generations. He's a retired teacher, loved and respected by his former students and their parents. I am a fairly critical thinker and have no reason to believe he'd lie about this.

If you'd like to invest the time, I think there have been some honest scientific studies about Eucharistic Miracles, which are instances of the Holy Eucharist, the wafer of bread we use for Holy Communion, spontaneously beginning to bleed. In fact, all of the Eucharistic Miracles examined scientifically have contained human heart tissue and the same blood type of the blood samples examined on the Shroud of Turin. Examined by non-religious scientists, who were not told anything about the samples they were examining.

I've also read about so many miracles that, if only 1% of them are scientifically provable, that's enough for me.

Eucharistic miracle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you don't care to give up a few minutes of your time to look at this, that's okay. I'll still enjoy your generally wise posts.

.

What do you define as a "miracle"?

I've seen many people claim "it's a miracle" when it was their own doing that go them the happiness they recieved.

 

[Paradoxical#1]

What you know about Christians and Christianity isn't much my friend. Sorry you feel that way. I am quite confident I would never be able to convince you how very wrong you are. I will just use one of my favorite Thomas Jefferson quotes in response:

"To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.”--Thomas Jefferson

In other words, he acknowledged how some corrupt the faith but strongly advocated for the concepts promoted by Christianity as the proper choice to govern a nation.

To fail to separate the millions of unselfish and selfless Christians who are running soup kitchens, staffing homeless shelters, staffing ministries in leper colonies, who run loving orphanages, advocating for peace, justice, goodness in the world while they work among some of the world's most needs and desperate people from the few radical extremists and nutjobs out there. . .

. . .Is to not only do a dishonest disservice to Christians and Christianity, but it is to deny the mountain of good that has been done and is being done despite the far fewer abuses and misuses that happen with all things.

You forgot that he liked Jesus’s morals but never believed the story. Why?

 

[whutTHEYsay]

Religious liberty came from Christianity and was not despite it

Then why do white Christians who have a very strict biblical worldview and vote for Republicans some 45 million strong, do so because of their religion, and pressure the state and the courts to restrict the liberty of women when they become pregnant?

 

[Foxfyre]

You forgot that he liked Jesus’s morals but never believed the story. Why?

He believed the 'why' was strictly his business. So do I.

 

[ding]

So what do you pray for?

Guidance

 

[ding]

You think I am lying about my upbringing and knowledge of the decadence of Catholicism?

I don't care about your upbringing and don't believe your upbringing had anything to do with you not knowing that Thomas Jefferson believed in a moralistic and providential creator.