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Author | Topic: Opinions and conclusions about Religion and God. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3954 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
I know I live by grace alone we all do. i just wish more people remembered this and stopped acting like they somehow deserve their grace. for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god. for it is by grace you have been saved and THAT not of yourselves; it is the FREE GIFT of god, not of WORKS lest ANY man boast.
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nator Member (Idle past 2196 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I recently attended my Grandmother's Catholic funeral mass. I was raised Catholic, but hadn't attended a mass for years. It was so wierd. It was an altogether odd feeling to sit there through it; I felt like a complete outsider while simultaneously knowing the entire service by heart because I had been raised in that religion. The stuff that was said; the comforting platitudes and reassurances...I just sat there (as an impartial observer at times) and marveled at people's belief in this stuff. None of it had any meaning for me and I really couldn't understand how it could have meaning to anybody. ...and this is from me, a person who was raised in that religion. Forgive me, I do not wish to offend, but it all just seemed so...absurd. Regarding the supernatural, which includes God and gods, I am what people would probably call an Agnostic or a weak Athiest.
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nator Member (Idle past 2196 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Phat, I Googled "pastor John Aker" and I had zero hits.
Tell me why you believe that story, if you don't mind.
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iano Member (Idle past 1967 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
None of it had any meaning for me and I really couldn't understand how it could have meaning to anybody. I got the same feeling at an RC funeral recently. The cloying, stilted athmosphere, the droning of the priest. I don't kneel when in a Catholic church so my very, very RC boss who was kneeling in the pew behing me was mumbling a rapid decade of the Rosary virtually in my ear: "HAIL Mar..........grace.............thee.........womb Jesus, Holy Ma.......Amen Hail Mar...... Hail MaryEek! Edited by iano, : No reason given.
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nator Member (Idle past 2196 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
He even went so far as allowing himself to be crucified. Its a measure of how serious this gig is. quote: I had a friend who is an attorney, and he told me this story about one of the other lawyers who were working for a summer at the same firm just after passing the bar to see if they wanted to hire any of them. My friend is a secular Jew and was a Religion major at Oberlin College (a very good school) before going to the University of Michigan Law School (also a very good school), and the other guy was a Harvard Law graduate and also a very conservative Christian. They were seated near each other at a dinner, and the subject of religion came up. The other guy asked my friend, whom he knew was Jewish, something about the how Jews viewed the divinity of Jesus. My friend said that in the Jewish faith, Jesus wasn't God. "Just a guy", was how he put it, I believe. So then the Christian lawyer asks, in all seriousness, "But what about the miracles?" This was a Harvard Law graduate! Anyway, I relate this only to illustrate that even someone bright enough to get to this level of education can still be completely moronic (and shockingly uneducated and ignorant) when it comes to world religions, including the religion his own was borne out of.
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nator Member (Idle past 2196 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Kissing Hank's Ass
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1370 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
that's funny on so many different levels.
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nator Member (Idle past 2196 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: ...all those references to God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit... It was all so meaningless and absurd.
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anglagard Member (Idle past 863 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined: |
I am a Pantheist and have been since reading Spinoza at 15. Around the same time I read the Bible cover to cover. Spinoza taught me more about God than the Bible or any church. Here is the lengthy story.
I was brought up in a somewhat devoutly religious Christian family, we attended church nearly every Sunday. At the beginning it was the First Christian Church, later, due to my grandmother's demise and my father's sour attitute toward that church, my family fished around for a bit and finally settled on the Nazarene Church. I was old enough to have clear memories of the Nazarene Church, they are an offshoot of Baptists because they thought the Baptists were too liberal. No dancing, jewelry, lots of hell and little salvation, very fundamentalist. My father, in addition to being Christian and taking up with a fundamentalist sect, was a well read person who believed in learning about science and history in a secular setting. By the age of 10, he begin to discuss philosophy in addition to religion around me, as I was precocious, bratty, and indulged (visualize Bart Simpson). One thing the church could not stand was human evolution, something that fascinated both of us, beginning with Leaky's contribution to the 1965 World Book Annual Science Book. Essentially I got the impression that my father was going through the motions of going to church because he felt it was the moral thing to do rather than the completely intellectually honest thing. He was really big on the idea that the purpose of Christianity was to teach us morality, as he referred to Christianity as the greatest moral influence on mankind. However, I was conflicted because the church taught the primacy of the believer's faith over any secular knowledge. Finally, I revolted and refused to go to church one day, but was forced to mainly by my mother. After that my father, apparently being somewhat embarrassed by the episode, allowed me to ditch church. To this day, my mother blames herself for forcing me to go to church against my will as the reason I became a "heathen." I did go on a lark one last time in 1970 after at least a six month absence. In the meantime I had managed to con my parents into letting me grow my hair long (actually halfway over my ears!) for the compelling reason a seventh grader at the time would have, namely impressing the ladies. Some people at the church made it clear I, and my long hair, were not welcome. While I wanted to ask what they felt about that guy hanging on the cross at the end of the church, I was as usual polite and accomodating when off my turf (unlike my online personality at EvC). I have not attended a church service since except to attend baptisms/christenings, or to get away from drill sargents in basic training. My family consigned themselves to my evident aethism and hippiedom and continued with the Nazarene Church, even after we moved from Fresno to Morro Bay. They got along well with the pastor and he even visited weekly, indeed even loaned me his books on Berkeley, Locke, and Hegel.One of the things he said, in an evident attempt at conversion, was that philosophy was inferior to religion because in philosophy man attempts to seek God, while in religion God seeks man. I considered his argument, then and now, as great support for my position concerning religion. Eventually, there was a falling out between my family and the Nazarenes. The pastor took a lengthy Hawaii vacation which did not sit well with my father as he believed religious people should not be wealthy, or at least wealthier than us. The final straw was when he came back and sermonized there were 100,000 devil worshipers in the Rose Bowl Stadium that very Superbowl Sunday. My sister, who until then was one of the most devout followers of both the church and the Dallas Cowboys made a choice, as did my parents, they became Presbyterians. My father remained a Presbyterian until his death in 1995, my mother became a deacon in the church until last year when the ravages of age began to affect her perception of reality. One thing she believes, is that we are judged by the New Testament (not old). As to my devout sister, she married into the Lutheran Church where she, the pastor, and her coreligionists support the sciences as they either work for or are retired from Los Alamos National Labratory. No conflict between evolution and religion there, blame it on those evil secular graduate degrees in the sciences from world renowned universities, if you must find fault. Now for the meat of this post. I am a Panthiest, primarily Spinoza Panthiest because: God is the totality of the universe, both what can and can not be apprehended by the senses. This does not mean that each person is God, it means that all are part of God. The knowledge of God is the highest good. I believe that God is best known through the works of God instead of the books of people. Therefore the study of nature, either subjectively (humanities) or objectively (science) is the primary path to the knowledge of God. Books are secondary commentary and vastly more subject to error. The Bible is a collection of parables which are not meant to be taken literally. I deny the divinity of Christ, as I consider him a person. Possibly the second most exceptional person in history, but still a person. This is because God is not a person, therefore God does not have children in a human sense. God can not be fully known in an anthropormorphic manner. Reason is the way to know God, passion is secondary and usually contrary to reason. There is no such thing as heaven or hell. There is no personal immortality, however there is impersonal immortality. Morality is inherently subjective. Rituals are meaningless to Pantheism. IMHO there is but one God and Spinoza is the last great prophet (for now). For more about Spinoza see: Spinoza, Benedict De | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy For more about Pantheism in general see:
Pantheism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
I would like to add that according to Pantheism there is more than one path to understanding God. Pantheism is very similar to philosophic Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, and Matayama Bhuddism. However, any attempt to seek God through any religion, as long as it is sincere and it does not interfere with the rights of others to believe according to their understanding is always a step in the right direction. I deeply admire the sincerity, knowledge, and intelligence of most the Christians (and most athiests and a few outside of either description) in this forum and as far as I am concerned that goes double for you Phat. Edited by anglagard, : speling and art
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5875 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
faith, by definition, is blind. Let us reason together... Do you exist? If so, how do you know when you don't know who you are or where here is??? If we knew the answers to those existential questions, we wouldn't have a forum like this, and you and I would not be debating what the truth is... You exist... But that is faith, and it is not blind...
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ReverendDG Member (Idle past 4137 days) Posts: 1119 From: Topeka,kansas Joined: |
You can not compare religous faith to existence they are two different things
If we knew the answers to those existential questions, we wouldn't have a forum like this, and you and I would not be debating what the truth is...
faith is not truth, you can have faith in things that don't exist,children have faith that santa clause will bring them something, something bad or something good - or you can have faith in things that defy the universe and the reality of the majority of people - such as creationism
But that is faith, and it is not blind..
do you even know what faith is? it doesn't seem like you do, try using the definition that everyone else usesfaith is in things unseen, god remains unseen
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Phat Member Posts: 18338 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Bill Bright was a trustworthy source. Google him and see what you get.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1370 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Do you exist? If so, how do you know when you don't know who you are or where here is??? to quote rene descartes, i think: therefore i am. but seriously, stay away from post-modern philosophy classes. i know who i am to a reasonable degree of accuracy (i cannot count my atoms), and i know where i am to a reasonable degree of accuracy (i'm not entirely familiar with my location in the galaxy, but i can find my way around town). "faith" that our observations are correct is not faith.
But that is faith, and it is not blind... i know i mentioned above that i don't like john, but there's some fun stuff in it:
quote: that's the faith i mean.
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iano Member (Idle past 1967 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
...all those references to God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit... It was all so meaningless and absurd. In the setting you were in I'm not surprised. A noteworthy if notorius former prime minister of ours died a couple of days ago and was laid out in an open coffin. The photo of him showed a set of Rosary beads intertwined around his dead fingers. The headline At Peace. I wonder how they know that?
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5875 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
Jhn 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. That is a good point... but not what you think... Thomas was there... we are not! Everything we believe factual or not about Christ is faith...
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