Do you believe in God and why

[OneMoreFarang]

43 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I'm at a loss to explain that post. Mainly because I fail to understand why you would even feel a need to post it. I also fail to understand why someone that feels that way about a thread even bothers to come on and read it. It's not as though the hand of God came down and forced your finger to click on it.

Ok I will explain it to you.

I look from time to time at the new posts in the pub forum. And this thread is since a long time on top of the list.

I read some of the post but obviously not all of them.

I understand how people thousands of years ago wanted to have an explanation why the sun rises and why some people die and why the rain falls. And at that time religion kind of answered these questions.

Now, since many years, the real answers to these questions are known. Scientific answers exist. People don't have to believe crazy answers anymore because scientific real answers exist. So why should people still believe in these fairytale stories?

Happy New Year.

[Tagged]

2 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Ok I will explain it to you.

I look from time to time at the new posts in the pub forum. And this thread is since a long time on top of the list.

I read some of the post but obviously not all of them.

I understand how people thousands of years ago wanted to have an explanation why the sun rises and why some people die and why the rain falls. And at that time religion kind of answered these questions.

Now, since many years, the real answers to these questions are known. Scientific answers exist. People don't have to believe crazy answers anymore because scientific real answers exist. So why should people still believe in these fairytale stories?

Happy New Year.

Extreme minds needs extreme explanations and solutions to their questions. Simple as that

[thaibeachlovers]

Just now, OneMoreFarang said:

Ok I will explain it to you.

I look from time to time at the new posts in the pub forum. And this thread is since a long time on top of the list.

I read some of the post but obviously not all of them.

I understand how people thousands of years ago wanted to have an explanation why the sun rises and why some people die and why the rain falls. And at that time religion kind of answered these questions.

Now, since many years, the real answers to these questions are known. Scientific answers exist. People don't have to believe crazy answers anymore because scientific real answers exist. So why should people still believe in these fairytale stories?

Happy New Year.

If you are referencing religion and the Bible I'd agree. However, most of the non atheists on here are not talking about religion or the Bible at all. We left that a long time ago in our discussion.

When you question belief in faith, which is a personal thing, you might as well question "love", which in my mind is just an urban myth. No proof exists that "love" is real, or that it's more than a chemical response to pheromones, yet most believe in it, millions of songs have been written about it, thousands of poems over many centuries have extolled it, and a great deal of money has been made off of it.

How about the new religion of climate change which has many adherents. There are the priests that preach climate emergency and the flock demonstrates with their little signs. The priests certainly do well out of it, financially, but their message is no more reliable than the Bible, IMO.

Happy new year to yourself and all on TVF.

[sirineou]

52 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

17 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

Well, the theories must be cross-checked to see if they are plausible, but some ancient ruins seem hardly the work of normal humans in the bronze age.

For all we know, the "Gods" flying with fire chariots described in ancient legends, not only in the Bible, could be aliens, or even travellers from the future.

I'm sticking with aliens.

I am not sure if you are kidding. but there is no reason that these ancient people could not build the things they did.

 The were physically and mentally identical to us. Just as smart as us, in fact smarter because they did not depend on technology as much as we do and had to use their brains more, The incidence of genius occurred at the same rate as today,  perhaps even more because stupid people did not survive long enough to have stupid children. Also they produced that which they were capable of. 

Think about this,you see a Guitar player playing a song that he wrote and you marvel at how easy it is for him how he moves through a the cords so easily. You think he is great.

Of course it is easy for him. when he wrote the song , he used the cords that was easy for him if he got to chord he could not use easily, he would use a different one.

Same with ancient builders, they build what they could, if they could not they build something else, And remember, they had a lot of cheap labor, (Slaves).  

 

[thaibeachlovers]

4 minutes ago, sirineou said:

I am not sure if you are kidding. but there is no reason that these ancient people could not build the things they did.

 The were physically and mentally identical to us. Just as smart as us, in fact smarter because they did not depend on technology as much as we do and had to use their brains more, The incidence of genius occurred at the same rate as today,  perhaps even more because stupid people did not survive long enough to have stupid children. Also they produced that which they were capable of. 

Think about this,you see a Guitar player playing a song that he wrote and you marvel at how easy it is for him how he moves through a the cords so easily. You think he is great.

Of course it is easy for him. when he wrote the song , he used the cords that was easy for him if he got to chord he could not use easily, he would use a different one.

Same with ancient builders, they build what they could, if they could not they build something else, And remember, they had a lot of cheap labor, (Slaves).  

 

I'd like to believe that, but google the walls that were built millenia ago in south America. The joins are so perfect that I can't believe anyone could make them without present day technology, and there is no evidence they had that. Also the giant "drawings" of people that are so large they can only be seen for what they are from high in the sky. Given they could not fly, why would they make such drawings?

I myself went into the Great Pyramid and felt the walls of the chamber. A million slaves could rub the walls with sand for a thousand years and not get such a perfectly smooth finish. If someone can discover a machine that made perfectly smooth stone walls I'll agree it was humans.

[canuckamuck]

17 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

Thank you for your honest answer. I can relate to many things you said, especially about your everyday relationship with God and how it changed your life getting to know him.

 

On the other hand, there are things that are completely extraneous to how I perceive the world, such as the biblical concepts of "sin" and the "devil".

Good and bad, god and the devil/Satan, sin and merit.....they are all dualistic concepts and only make sense in our world of illusion. GOD is all that together and much more, GOD doesn't have an opposite, because there's nothing GOD isn't. 

 

One thing is not clear to me yet...did you experience God first and then make sense of it through Christianity and the bible, or did you experience God through studying the bible?

It is the question of evil where you and I fail to have common ground as well. I don't know how you can have such an elaborate worldview, and not account for the clearly evil attributes to be found in humanity. What is evil for you? Or is there no evil in your philosophy?

[AsianAtHeart]

21 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Now, since many years, the real answers to these questions are known. Scientific answers exist. People don't have to believe crazy answers anymore because scientific real answers exist. So why should people still believe in these fairytale stories?

Happy New Year.

What science are you talking about?  Because if you mean to say that science has proven God does not exist, you must have been in the wrong science class.  The scientific method cannot prove the non-existence of something.

Scientists have far more questions these days than answers.  If you spend much time around actual scientists this will soon become apparent.  Evolution is just one theory pertaining to origins.  It is not lab-testable, and is not provable, so it will remain "theory" for the foreseeable future.  Scientists have the privilege, as does anyone else, of interpreting the evidences they find however they wish--whether rightly or wrongly.  

Here's an interesting case in point: petrified forests.

Scientists have found petrified forests in places like Yellowstone National Park that are layered, with what appears to be stacks of forests on top of each other.  Until 1980, and even to the present, actually, as most scientists are slow to change their interpretations, the most common explanation for this was that the trees had been gradually buried over time, and that new forests had grown in the same place, but above them, which likewise succumbed to the gradual sedimentation that buried them, and so on.  As each layer was buried, it was presumed to have been preserved through natural processes, until the trees themselves had become petrified (mineralized) into the rock strata.  While a few of the trees may have tilted or crossed between layers, much of the layering seems distinct, like separate forests that had grown independently of each other.  The explanation has traditionally been that it required long periods of time between layers, and that each layer represented a different epoch in time--perhaps millions of years.

Fast forward to 1980.

On May 18, 1980, a significant event occurred in a place where scientists had all the tools desirable to observe it: the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State.  The eruption caused massive changes to the surrounding area within seconds, minutes, and hours.  In only hours, days, and weeks, not millions of years, sedimentation in distinct soil layers occurred, and canyons were cut through them.  Spirit Lake, nestled on the north side of the mountain, became a watery grave for tens of thousands of trees which had been cut down almost instantly in the blast.  At first, these trees appeared like a floating mat on the surface of the water.  They had been stripped of most of their branches, and as they rubbed against each other in the water, many lost their bark.  They took on water, and becoming waterlogged, began to sink--the heaviest end first.  This created the appearance of an underwater forest, and was documented by a few brave divers even while the volcano still hissed in the background.  As sedimentation around the bases of these trees filled in, they were buried.  Perhaps a few generations from now, should scientists inspect the site who are ignorant of what took place, some might assume the forest had grown there millions of years ago.  But nothing could be further from the truth!

Every evidence scientists find is simply that: evidence.  It is often not proof of anything, and can lend itself to more than one interpretation.  If you choose to leave God out of your reckoning, and have a bias against the consideration of other interpretations than the one you prefer, it is your liberty to do so.  Others have equal liberty to interpret the evidence for themselves.  

As a biologist, the most reasonable explanation for the evidences I see in nature is that a loving Creator God made all the life forms we see.  I agree that He has instilled in His creation the ability to adapt to the environment, and many animals, and people as well, have done so.  Scientists may refer to this as speciation, the creating of new species, but those are just terms for the loss of genetic information from the genome.  There has never been evidence, much less proof, of a genome receiving a significant addition of genetic information such that an organism evolved in some progressive manner to a completely different kind of organism, such as elephants going into the water to become whales, or vice versa.  While plants do have some ability to withstand polyploidy, it usually kills an animal.  In many cases, polyploidy in plants makes them infertile, and they must after propagate vegetatively--such as the potato which cannot be grown from seed.  Even in the case of polyploidy, the chromosome sets are essentially identical to each other.  It's not as though this suddenly adds new and unique chromosomes to the organism's genome.

 

[OneMoreFarang]

36 minutes ago, AsianAtHeart said:

Evolution is just one theory pertaining to origins.

Please try to understand the word "theory" in science.

It has a different meaning compared to other peoples' use of that word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory

 

And at least I won't try to prove god does not exist. It does not make sense to do that.

Similar to Russell's teapot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

[yodsak]

44 minutes ago, AsianAtHeart said:

Evolution is just one theory pertaining to origins.  It is not lab-testable, and is not provable, so it will remain "theory" for the foreseeable future. 

[Sunmaster]

2 hours ago, canuckamuck said:

It is the question of evil where you and I fail to have common ground as well. I don't know how you can have such an elaborate worldview, and not account for the clearly evil attributes to be found in humanity. What is evil for you? Or is there no evil in your philosophy?

When religious people talk about evil, it always sounds like some external factor that is out to get them when they least expect it. Maybe it's a convenient way not to take responsibility for their own actions..."The devil made me do it!"
But if the devil is supposed to be just a fallen angel, God's employee so to speak....how would he be even close to be a threat to God...be his enemy? The 2 concepts are nowhere near on the same level.

Those who take the bible literally, personify evil the same way they personify God. Then you'll have great stories of battles between good and evil, light and darkness, and man is somehow right in the middle of it all. It makes for great movies, that's for sure.

In reality, light is so much stronger than darkness. You only need one small candle to illuminate a large dark room. One small act of kindness can melt the frozen hearts of millions. You give evil too much credit and fail to see that it has in fact very little power compared to what is Good and True.
Like I said earlier, good and evil are dualistic concepts. God, as I see him, is beyond good and evil, he is the UNITY of all there is.

 

For me, 'evil' is the result of flawed thinking and unfocused intentions that consequently lead to imperfect actions. In this sense, evil is caused by men, not by Satan or anything external to us. It is caused by the choices we make everyday.

Whenever I have to make an important decision, I ask myself:

Does my choice promote life? Does it spread light? Or is it made out of fear, hindering the flow of life energy?

It's not easy to be aware of these choices and the ramifications our actions have, but I think these questions can be a good guideline for anyone, religious or not.

 

I fear no evil other than my own imperfection.

 

 

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by Sunmaster

[canuckamuck]

19 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

When religious people talk about evil, it always sounds like some external factor that is out to get them when they least expect it. But if the devil is supposed to be just a fallen angel, God's employee so to speak....how would he be even close to be a threat to God...be his enemy? The 2 concepts are nowhere near on the same level.

Those who take the bible literally, personify evil the same way they personify God. Then you'll have great stories of battles between good and evil, light and darkness, and man is somehow right in the middle of it all. It makes for great movies, that's for sure.

In reality, light is so much stronger than darkness. You only need one small candle to illuminate a large dark room. One small act of kindness can melt the frozen hearts of millions. You give evil too much credit and fail to see that it has in fact very little power compared to what is Good and True.
Like I said earlier, good and evil are dualistic concepts. God, as I see him, is beyond good and evil, he is the UNITY of all there is.

 

For me, 'evil' is the result of flawed thinking and unfocused intentions that consequently lead to imperfect actions. In this sense, evil is caused by men, not by Satan or anything external to us. It is caused by the choices we make everyday.

Whenever I have to make an important choice, I ask myself:

Does this my choice promote life? Does it spread light? Or is it made out of fear, hindering the flow of life energy?

It's not easy to be aware of these choices and the ramifications our actions have, but I think these questions can be a good guideline for anyone, religious or not.

 

I fear no evil other than my own imperfection.

I see evil different than you.

 

To me you can either be connected to the source of life or you can reject it. Life, love, truth, order, servitude, and light is on the God side.

 

If you choose to reject it, God will allow it, but he will give you time to return as well. The qualities of the rejection of God are Death, hate, lies, chaos, pride and darkness.

 

Evil is the absence of God, and it shows up wherever the qualities of God are not esteemed.

 

You are right that evil can not defeat light, but things die in the absence of light. God is as big as his creation, but those parts of his creation that reject God are allowed. And so, the darkness can be in more places than the light.

[Sunmaster]

10 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

I see evil different than you.

 

To me you can either be connected to the source of life or you can reject it. Life, love, truth, order, servitude, and light is on the God side.

 

If you choose to reject it, God will allow it, but he will give you time to return as well. The qualities of the rejection of God are Death, hate, lies, chaos, pride and darkness.

 

Evil is the absence of God, and it shows up wherever the qualities of God are not esteemed.

 

You are right that evil can not defeat light, but things die in the absence of light. God is as big as his creation, but those parts of his creation that reject God are allowed. And so, the darkness can be in more places than the light.

I've read your comment a few times and to be honest, I can't see much of a difference between our interpretations.
You don't believe in an entity called Satan that is prowling for a prey, ready to jump on you as soon as you let your guard down, do you?

[mauGR1]

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I'm sticking with aliens.

When i was a kid, the consensus was "extremely unlikely", perhaps in this age, it seems "possible".

 

I'm convinced that countless "entities" exist in different worlds, we can experiment just a few of them.

I am convinced that some of those "entities" taught some trick to the humans for them to develop, materially and spiritually.

On the ancient Hindu texts there are detailed tales of (Gods, Aliens..etc) having flying machines, and other technologies.

In Greek mythology, and even in the Bible, strange flying objects are mentioned.

Where there is smoke , there is fire.

[canuckamuck]

Just now, Sunmaster said:

I've read your comment a few times and to be honest, I can't see much of a difference between our interpretations.
You don't believe in an entity called Satan that is prowling for a prey, ready to jump on you as soon as you let your guard down, do you?

My recent thinking has been influenced by a video call The Satan and Demons.

It is short and quite enjoyable it says thing better than me.

 

 

[yodsak]

On 12/31/2019 at 10:28 AM, AsianAtHeart said:

Many skeptics deride the idea of a world-wide flood that covered the tops of all the mountains based on the height of Mount Everest at over 29,000 feet.  If Everest had existed at the time of the Flood, they would indeed have a case.  However, they have not stopped to consider the manner and timing of Everest's origins.

As a scientist and a biologist do you think Everest didn't exist at the time of the flood?

Where are you getting your information?  

The flood was circa 4000 years ago.  Everest was formed about 60 million years ago.

[According to scientific consensus].     

Edited January 1, 2020 by yodsak

[Sunmaster]

11 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

My recent thinking has been influenced by a video call The Satan and Demons.

It is short and quite enjoyable it says thing better than me.

 

 

Ok, I guess we DO have different interpretations of evil then. ????

[canuckamuck]

2 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

Ok, I guess we DO have different interpretations of evil then. ????

Did you watch it though? I am sure you can see connections between your thinking and mine.

The video is giving a detailed explanation of evil as it is portrayed in the Bible.

More of a force than a devil.

Edited January 1, 2020 by canuckamuck

[phuketsub]

I just came across this thread with a semi-hangover on New Years Day. It's nice to see that so many others not only grapple with the same issues, but can express their thoughts on them so well.

 

For me the turning point came when I found out Santa Claus didn't exist, then the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and all the others just fell like a house of cards. But I wasn't allowed to discard the Trump Card (Jesus) from the get-go. The brainwashing was just too strong.

 

This all happened as I was being raised a strict 'you'll burn in hell if you don't confess' Catholic. I was also forced to be an alter boy in the Archdiocese of Boston back in the 70s. Talk about creepy. Perhaps I should just consider myself lucky I was never molested.  But my experience as an altar boy came to a gratefully early end when I passed out on the altar during a mass.

 

My parents (mom was the religious one, dad always just tried to make her happy) said it was because we had to rush to church and skipped breakfast that morning. I felt it was out of sheer boredom. In retrospect maybe there was stress involved. I was deeply nearsighted, but they wouldn't let me wear my glasses on the altar because they said it didn't look good.

 

Altar boys have certain tasks, such as ringing the bells at certain times while the priest is blessing the eucharists. Obviously this was stressful because I couldn't see what was going on and I couldn't catch eye signals from others if I screwed up. Another task was standing next to the priest as he gave out communion in the unlikely event that it should somehow (and God forbid!) fall to the floor. If one of those wafers his the pavement, I was going to burn in hell.

 

Around the same time I was also beginning to confront the priests with my reservations.

 

I was also forced to go to Sunday School, where we were taught by 'laypeople' in small groups. I felt like the texts we were given were an insult to my intelligence, and the fact that nobody would listen to my questions, let alone give them reasonable answers, was deeply discomforting. 

 

One day the priest (one I had done masses with) peeked his head into the classroom as the teacher was going on about the importance of the Eucharist and communion. When I said 'but the Eucharist is obviously just a symbol representing the body of Christ'...he came back with the dried-in-cement Dogma about you having to accept that it is ACTUALLY the body of Christ.

 

So I pointed out that the idea of eating human flesh was clearly revolting and that, as an altar boy, I knew for a fact that all the eucharists were sent to the church from a company in Fall River (a city in Massachusetts) because I inspected the bag they came in. At this point the layteacher got angry at me and interjected. All the other kids line up with her against me. I don't think I ever felt the power of the brainwashing any stronger than that morning.

 

My wife and I run a small English language school down here in Songkhla and every year I get roped into giving a Christmas presentation to all the students, from age 4 up to adults. So I threw together a small powerpoint about my experience.

 

All the kids really just want is to get involved with eating sugar and getting gifts so it quite literally falls on deaf ears, but at least if forced me to go back through my difficult relationship with religion and made this thread especially particularly interesting for me.

 

Anyway, Happy New Year to all in this thread! Now back to work...

[AsianAtHeart]

8 minutes ago, yodsak said:

As a scientist and a biologist do you think Everest existed at the time of the flood?

Where are you getting your information?  

The flood was circa 4000 years ago.  Everest was formed about 60 million years ago.

[According to scientific consensus].     

As a biologist, I'm well aware of the scientific terminology that pervades the field, and along with it, the anomalies that regularly surface in evidence.  For example, snails, living snails, are often found to have a carbon-dated age of thousands of years.  One notable example dated a snail collected live in a lime pit as being 10,000 years old.  While that particular example is not in this research paper, the link below gives evidence to a large number of snail samples whose ages are well off the mark.

http://www.cge.ac.cn/kyxx/fblw/201507/W020150714561565874022.pdf

When you can explain to me why a living snail looks to be thousands of years old, then, perhaps, I will be ready to hear your explanation as to how you can know, without doubt, that those mountains are 60 million years old.

I would remind you that dating the elements, and dating the terrain in which those elements exist, are two different things entirely.  

By the way, have you heard about radiohalos?

 

[canuckamuck]

21 minutes ago, phuketsub said:

I just came across this thread with a semi-hangover on New Years Day. It's nice to see that so many others not only grapple with the same issues, but can express their thoughts on them so well.

 

For me the turning point came when I found out Santa Claus didn't exist, then the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and all the others just fell like a house of cards. But I wasn't allowed to discard the Trump Card (Jesus) from the get-go. The brainwashing was just too strong.

 

This all happened as I was being raised a strict 'you'll burn in hell if you don't confess' Catholic. I was also forced to be an alter boy in the Archdiocese of Boston back in the 70s. Talk about creepy. Perhaps I should just consider myself lucky I was never molested.  But my experience as an altar boy came to a gratefully early end when I passed out on the altar during a mass.

 

My parents (mom was the religious one, dad always just tried to make her happy) said it was because we had to rush to church and skipped breakfast that morning. I felt it was out of sheer boredom. In retrospect maybe there was stress involved. I was deeply nearsighted, but they wouldn't let me wear my glasses on the altar because they said it didn't look good.

 

Altar boys have certain tasks, such as ringing the bells at certain times while the priest is blessing the eucharists. Obviously this was stressful because I couldn't see what was going on and I couldn't catch eye signals from others if I screwed up. Another task was standing next to the priest as he gave out communion in the unlikely event that it should somehow (and God forbid!) fall to the floor. If one of those wafers his the pavement, I was going to burn in hell.

 

Around the same time I was also beginning to confront the priests with my reservations.

 

I was also forced to go to Sunday School, where we were taught by 'laypeople' in small groups. I felt like the texts we were given were an insult to my intelligence, and the fact that nobody would listen to my questions, let alone give them reasonable answers, was deeply discomforting. 

 

One day the priest (one I had done masses with) peeked his head into the classroom as the teacher was going on about the importance of the Eucharist and communion. When I said 'but the Eucharist is obviously just a symbol representing the body of Christ'...he came back with the dried-in-cement Dogma about you having to accept that it is ACTUALLY the body of Christ.

 

So I pointed out that the idea of eating human flesh was clearly revolting and that, as an altar boy, I knew for a fact that all the eucharists were sent to the church from a company in Fall River (a city in Massachusetts) because I inspected the bag they came in. At this point the layteacher got angry at me and interjected. All the other kids line up with her against me. I don't think I ever felt the power of the brainwashing any stronger than that morning.

 

My wife and I run a small English language school down here in Songkhla and every year I get roped into giving a Christmas presentation to all the students, from age 4 up to adults. So I threw together a small powerpoint about my experience.

 

All the kids really just want is to get involved with eating sugar and getting gifts so it quite literally falls on deaf ears, but at least if forced me to go back through my difficult relationship with religion and made this thread especially particularly interesting for me.

 

Anyway, Happy New Year to all in this thread! Now back to work...

Your dispute was more to do with Catholic ceremony and tradition than it had to do with God though. 

The Catholics have created quite a few atheists by these methods.

Edited January 1, 2020 by canuckamuck

[Sunmaster]

41 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Did you watch it though? I am sure you can see connections between your thinking and mine.

The video is giving a detailed explanation of evil as it is portrayed in the Bible.

More of a force than a devil.

Yes, I watched it and I did find some similarities, but only if I take the stories portrayed as allegories for what goes on inside us, not literal explanations of actual creatures and historical facts.

[canuckamuck]

3 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

Yes, I watched it and I did find some similarities, but only if I take the stories portrayed as allegories for what goes on inside us, not literal explanations of actual creatures and historical facts.

 As far as evil is concerned it is wise to keep it allegorical. Because evil is the everything outside of God. 

 

[mauGR1]

3 hours ago, sirineou said:

I am not sure if you are kidding. but there is no reason that these ancient people could not build the things they did.

 The were physically and mentally identical to us. Just as smart as us, in fact smarter because they did not depend on technology as much as we do and had to use their brains more, The incidence of genius occurred at the same rate as today,  perhaps even more because stupid people did not survive long enough to have stupid children. Also they produced that which they were capable of. 

Think about this,you see a Guitar player playing a song that he wrote and you marvel at how easy it is for him how he moves through a the cords so easily. You think he is great.

Of course it is easy for him. when he wrote the song , he used the cords that was easy for him if he got to chord he could not use easily, he would use a different one.

Same with ancient builders, they build what they could, if they could not they build something else, And remember, they had a lot of cheap labor, (Slaves).  

 

 

Those are the Baalbek ruins, i would really like to visit there someday.

The smaller stones are the remains of the Roman temple, dated about 2000 years, the bigger stones are the remains of something completely different, much older, and possibly built before the big flood.

Those ancient humans must have known some strange trick, or somebody was helping them.

Edited January 1, 2020 by mauGR1

[Sunmaster]

34 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

 As far as evil is concerned it is wise to keep it allegorical. Because evil is the everything outside of God. 

 

Sorry, I can't conceive of anything that is outside of God.

Even the darkest corner of the universe or of our own self, are still part of All-There-Is, its light and its love.

Maybe that's where the redemption lies that the bible talks about.  

Even though you are always in the light, you can choose to dim it and live in darkness, like choosing to put layers of clouds over the eternally shining sun.

Edited January 1, 2020 by Sunmaster

[canuckamuck]

4 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

Sorry, I can't conceive of anything that is outside of God.

Even the darkest corner of the universe or of our own self, are still part of All-There-Is, its light and its love.

Maybe that's where the redemption lies that the bible talks about.  

Even though you are always in the light, you can choose to dim it and live in darkness, like choosing to put layers of clouds over the eternally shining sun.

History is full of contradictions to that belief. In this world there are people who torture children and drink their blood. And these occasions are almost always done ceremoniously among occult symbols and rituals.

[phuketsub]

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

Your dispute was more to do with Catholic ceremony and tradition than it had to do with God though. 

The Catholics have created quite a few atheists by these methods.

Yes, though I find it strange that two of my three siblings back home remain really devout -- more devout than ever, perhaps. The third is like my dad, just going along for the ride. Anyway, we were all basically exposed to the same inputs, so it makes me wonder why the outcomes differ so dramatically. The only time I ever step foot in a church nowadays is for weddings and funerals.

 

And that reminds me of another funny story.

 

It was my brother's wedding and we were in a small, very crowded chapel on Cape Cod in the 90s, I had to sit in the front row with the rest of the family and the pew (seating with kneelers) was very tight and I didn't want to block the whole row with my knees and size 14 feet.  My mom was adamant that I should not take communion until I had done confession (another super creepy element of Catholicism that has to be experienced to be understood). But I had learned that my sister had somehow been ordained to give out the communion, and I was also worried about blocking the entire row and standing out...so I got in file and took communion from my sister, who initially thought I was 'back in the light'. 

 

When my mom, who was rather upset, asked me why I had gone to communion without confessing I just replied: "If she can dish it out, I can take it." I still think it is one of the funniest comments I have ever made, but on the day nobody else was laughing...

[mauGR1]

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

Did you watch it though? I am sure you can see connections between your thinking and mine.

The video is giving a detailed explanation of evil as it is portrayed in the Bible.

More of a force than a devil.

Some Escher drawings make you think.

If we consider the physical world, the "bad" is the opposite of the "good", it's hard to imagine one without the other, yet, as humans we have the chance to transcend the physical reality

[Sunmaster]

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

History is full of contradictions to that belief. In this world there are people who torture children and drink their blood. And these occasions are almost always done ceremoniously among occult symbols and rituals.

I just make a logical deduction: if God is the ultimate converging point of all there is, this highest Truth, the Alpha and the Omega, the Creator of men, the universe and everything in between....how then can there be something that is not God?

Like MauGR1 says, there's black, there's white and then there's what you find when you transcend the two.
 

[thaibeachlovers]

4 hours ago, yodsak said:

LOL. Evolution, which I believe in, does not disprove the existence of God. It does not say where the first living organism originated from, or how it came to be alive. That, IMO, is where God comes in.

You can't prove me wrong.

[Skeptic7]

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

History is full of contradictions to that belief. In this world there are people who torture children and drink their blood. And these occasions are almost always done ceremoniously among occult symbols and rituals.

And your "God" either doesn't give a ???? or is incapable of intervening, same as any other imaginary being.