Nature and the fall of man

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you here Faith.But I think I kind of agree with you here. Many people talk about needing to "know" before they act. But many people contradict this hard and fast rule when it comes to many decisions which could affect the outcome of the rest of their lives.For example, a person might be attracted to another, they may even reach out to the other person to express their affection -- but they have no guarantee if their actions are going to produce the desired outcome they are seeking.It seems to me that many do not have the empirical evidence they claim to have when it comes to many decisions in life.

Okay, but that just shifts the problem a bit. I mean it seems to me that at least some of the fundamentalist here assert that the God of the bible has set up standards of absolute good. Yet, for example it was good for Joshua and his army to kill the infants of Jericho. Yet killing infants is supposedly wrong.Well, unless the priests, prophets, or scribes dictate that Jehovah approved it? It seems to me like the fundamentalist assumption always end up somewhere in contradiction.lfen

Rhain, I looked at the first few sentences and didn't read the rest of your post, and will make a point of ignoring you from now on. The simple fact, in response to what I did read, is when Jesus says take no thought, he means don't worry. He does not mean you should not plan or work or deal with money. In fact, he speaks of counting the costs of things elsewhere.So Jesus in telling his disciples not to worry about money and their provision, in no place means we should let the likes of people like you run the government without working to place more godly and responsible folks in leadership.

Brian, quit being absurd. I am holding myself back from what I'd like to say. I will just say that I see almost no intelligent and educated comments in your posts.

Can you give an example of this -- completely outside the usual topics here of course.I would say that anyone who appears to believe for the sake of reassurance simply doesn't really believe, and as soon as some test of belief comes along, something that makes it not so reassuring but hard work or painful to believe, this will be exposed. No Muslim who converts to Christ, for instance, believes for the sake of reassurance, because the immediate consequence is to put his life in jeopardy, at least his membership in his family and every kind of security. He has to REALLY believe in order to face that inevitable reality.

I'm not sure I'm getting YOUR point, Mr. Ex. Depending on what you mean by empirical evidence, when it comes to believing the gospel they have to believe they have enough evidence or their belief isn't going to last.

I'm not sure how many people claim to live entirely by conscious decision. It's very clear to me that consciousness depends on the total organism and most of the critical functions are not directly under the control of conscious, like heart beat, blood pressure, digestion etc.The ego doesn't create itself. The question is where does the ego get its sense of the world? The ego is always part of a system by birth or other factors and participate in one or another of the major or perhaps minor systems of belief. Some egos are largely influenced by the rather recent emerging attempts at rational scientific explanation of the universe while even more are influenced primarily by more traditional systems.I don't regard humans as particularly rational. Rather rationality is a rather recent development in our history. Prior to that and concurrent with it we are animals and it is our biological organism that primarily functions. Sometimes that function is enhanced by rational consciousness and other times it is impaired by it. It is so confusing I have some sympathy with those who choose an absolute belief system that assures the ego that it is contained within a system that works for it and can be understood by it.lfen

Ahh...maybe I was misunderstanding your post then. My apologies.

Do you have an absolute belief system?

You, of course. You told me about how you thought it was all nonsense, but clearly you found value in it, reassurance, because you kept thinking about it.And sure enough, after a little bit of time, you came to believe that it was true, as well. Assurance came first; truth second. So, nobody can ever change their beliefs? If their beliefs ever change, it's because they didn't really believe what they used to believe?How do you discern the difference between the fake beliefs you hold at this point in time and the real beliefs that you'll eventually believe in and never change? And yet, he wouldn't have converted to Christianity if Islam had been reassuring to him, so clearly he's already getting reassurance from Christianity.It's always about reassurance, as the believers on your side constantly remind atheists.

mmm, possibly? but probably not Over my life time I've had more than one, lost count of how many. Of what interest is it to you?

Just curious. How's that for a short post?

I could also be an addiction in a sense. Many people are not assured by doing crack cocaine -- although they may feel a tempoary enhanced mood which manifests as sexual interest, self-confidence, conversational prowess and intensified consciousness. Nonetheless, they seem to hate the fact that they do it and regret their doing it after their "brief high".

First this is not outside the usual topics that are discussed here, it IS the topic that is usually discussed here. You said it's a common phenomenon, so I'd like to hear about the many ways you know about that demonstrate this.As for my own experience I'd never describe it in such terms. I never used the term reassurance or any related term here I'm quite sure. Don't know how you read it that way. I absolutely immediately irrevocably believed in the existence of God, and did a ton of reading to find out who He is and which religion I wanted to follow, and a couple years later I determined that I was a Christian. It was all about truth, not reassurance. I avidly pursued God, a generic God at first, not the Christian God, just God. No notions of salvation at that point at all. Merely smitten with God, the idea of God, wanting to know Him. Not sure that's the same kind of situation I'm talking about. But if you mean having faith attacked by rationalism then I suppose it is the same situation, yes, as genuine faith doesn't yield to that; but I was thinking more of persecution of various sorts. I don't know. It certainly IS reassuring, but he couldn't possibly have the courage to believe it under those circumstance if he weren't first absolutely certain of its truth. I'm not one who does that, but maybe I haven't paid enough attention to that approach.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-03-2006 03:32 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 01-03-2006 03:47 AM