Her beliefs are hers not your's. And the presumption of Jesus/Gods non-existance is yours but the interesting things is that you and Dean Roddey can not disprove that he did exist with any historical information it is only conjecture on your part.

I always enjoy the type of threads that start out with "I'd really like to know..." and later the truth comes out that you don't. A few people tried to gently lay it out and now...


So it seems you just have something to get off your chest, not really trying to "learn" anything as your post seemed to indicate.


It's OK that you choose not to believe it. As previously mentioned, Josephus made mention of Christ's existence, Tacitus and others have. It's not volumes of evidence, but these guys were not "Christians" but secular all the way. Just historians. You won't believe secular historians either, because they don't line up with your belief system. BTW, as previously mentioned again, you can't disprove Christ existed, you can only claim he did not, and that doesn't hold any weight either.


So it is blather when you don't agree, but excellent commentary when you do.


Don't misunderstand me, I'm not mad at you and am not trying to make you mad at me. I just don't get the sincerity of "I want to understand" when you really mean to say, "I need to vent".

Hope you are all better now!! :^)

In order to even consider what God is, we must limit Him severely. For instance, I just said "Him," when it's definitely not a male anything, not a person, not a being, but something beyond our comprehension.... I think all religions are our way of trying to touch and connect with something way beyond "our philosophies," as Shakespeare put it.

Every religion is wrong, because every religion puts God in a box of some sort. Every religion is wrong because people must act out the will of God, and none of us can possibly comprehend it. I think, to bring up a word that we don't seem to have any use for, anyone who says they know what the will of God is, is blaspheming. They are saying that they understand the Unknowable, that they totally get the Thoughts of the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent, the Omniscious. That's a bit of a stretch for any actual human!

Every religion is right, because every religion seeks to connect with that huge something that can and does make us better in ourselves and in our relationships with all humanity. Every religion is right because it creates a framework for people of particular leanings to pursue this thing bigger than themselves...and the different frameworks are needed because people can't always get there the same way. Anyone who SEEKS to know the will of God will be open to seeing and doing the thing that is best for everyone in a situation, not just for the moment or just for themselves.

If Sarah Palin prayed to win and did not include the disclaimer "Thy Will be done, Oh Lord," then her spiritual understanding hasn't developed enough for her to understand that what we want is not always the best thing. To pray for one's desires alone is terribly immature. And you might actually get what you ask for, but you won't even understand that you're getting it ad you might hate it.

For instance, if you pray for patience, you will get it. But you'll get it by running into one thing after another where you have no patience by you get a chance to exercise and develop your patience. This is not the thing we would choose: we'd choose to magically become patient. But since patience can only be developed, our prayer for patience is answered by opportunities to practice.

Just as an experiment to see if prayer works, try the essence of prayer, which does not even need a religion, just needs constant attention and focus. Write on a card "I want patience." Look at that card, and pull it out and read it aloud once every two hours during your work day. In no time, your prayer will be answered: crap will come at you that gives you the opportunity to develop your patience muscles. Try that for two weeks. I think you'll see that the essence of prayer actually works.

Just put on the music I go to sleep to these days and realized this relates.

Iris DeMent, from her CD Infamous Angel. Great voice, great album, great songs.


Let The Mystery Be

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say once you're gone you're gone forever, and some say you're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they're comin' back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Instrumental break.

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory and I ain't saying it ain't a fact.
But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory and I don't like the sound of that.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Holy $%^#! Did I type in the wrong URL. I thought we discussed Home Theater and what nots. Where in the hell did we get off on a tangent and start discussing christianity? I come here to learn and give feedback on audio/video related material, not get persuaded into a religious cult.


CEDIA INSTRUCTOR

I don't think that whether it can be proven he existed historically or not is really all that important. I said I don't have any problem believing that such a person existed, just as did Confucious and Muhammed and so forth. I was just pointing out that the statements that such evidence does exist is not in fact true.

In terms of falsification of the existence of God, it's a fundamental axiom of logic that you cannot prove a negative. If someone says pink elephants exist, that's not disproveable unless you've looked every possible location on the entire planet, because it could just be somewhere you've never looked. All that logic can do is prove positive things. I.e. once you find a single pink elephant, not one can claim that they don't exist, because one's been found.

So the whole argument about the lack of existence of God is in a class of problem that cannot be proven because no matter where we look, he could just be somewhere else. However, OTOH, the complete lack of any positive evidence clearly carries some weight. The things that people put forth as evidence of God's existence are not really evidence for that at all. The fact that you had cancer but it went away is not evidence for God, it's just evidence that sometimes cancer goes away. Sometimes we can make it go away artificially. Sometimes it doesn't. There's no grand plan, just happenstance.

Some could argue that, well that's what you say, I say it does and I don't need proof, I have faith and that's all I need. But, once you go down that road, you get us into the situation we are in now in the world, where a lot of people believe things without proof and the things they believe are not in our best interests. But, you can't say that they aren't correct, because they are basing their decision on the same criteria as you. You can't say that, oh well, sometimes God lets children die because it's part of his plan, we can't try to understand what his plan is, but then claim that when someone blows up a building because God told them to, that this is someone demonstrably not part of his plan.

You see what I'm saying? Once you go off the logic reservation, then you no longer have any firm ground to argue against someone else who is using the exactly same justifications to do things that are not good for you. What's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that. It's impossible to say that God didn't tell those guys to fly planes into buildings. They have every bit as much proof of it as that God told you to adopt a puppy. If there's no human logic to God's plan, and he's happy to kill 200,000 people in a tsunami, then a few thousand in NY is clearly within those parameters.

I just feel a lot more comfortable myself taking the stance that those things that are not proveable should not be assumed to be true. I don't feel that my comfort is more important than the proveable truth. I'd rather live without the assurance that there's some God looking over me, than to give up my right to look at those hijackers, and say you are a bunch of insane people and your rationalization for this action is completely without merit.

And, just on a more general level, I want nothing to do with any God who would require that I believe something that is not proveable. If he's not willing to make his existence unambiguously and proveably known, I want nothing to do with him, because I think any God who did that would be a serious sicko, of the worst sort.

And, once again, I have to say I'm not poking fun at anyone, or trying to belittle anyone. I'm just pointing out what I see as the facts, and some of my own personal opinions. I think that these things can be discussed like adults, and so far it's gone well.

Oh BOY!!!! Where and when can I join this CULT. Cant you talk about religion on sundays. yes. then why duck up a good forum with your bullshite. I swear this is just like a bumper sticker. Leave it ALONE If you want to talk about this shite then do so at an organized slaying of the pure. Quit stuffing religion down peoples throats. Some of us just dont care and your f#ucking kind has to throw it back in our face.

I can't really criticise, because I actually posted on the last page, albeit menial and pointless, but after a quick (real quick) search for faith oriented discussion forums I did find this one.

http://www.religionforums.org/

I remember a couple of years back, when I first joined RC, I came right at the end of what had been a pretty heated debate covering religion. It had gone on for ages and I remember it ending with most of the posters saying they should discuss it over a couple of drinks one day, and not here.

I'm all for OT discussions, but even at the internet forum level, I think that we can see pretty clearly that religion and politics are topics that divide people more than anything. It's cool to say "If you see it in the topic, then don't read it" but I can understand peoples anguish when they come here day after day and it dominates the top of the list. And in addition to this, the tension between people from arguments in the religious or political threads, can carry over in to "on topic" discussions which often results in a hijacked topic and ensuing arguments that were totally unnecessary.

We just managed to get through the political posts, and IMMEDIATELY AFTER, we get religion. The two most sensitive topics possible.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that this has been discussed here before, and the last people that did it, agreed that it should be left out.

Why let history repeat???

Name one time when people learned from history....

I betcha everyone that saw that David started this thread knew it was going to end up the way it has.

Hey this forum is for mindless jibber jabber....take it back to the CI lounge, this thread is WAY too intellectual for these lands :->

I hear Jesus is a socialist.

HiFi Robbie -- Great clip. Very freaky. I don't even know what to say... now I'm REALLY bailing! Whoa.

Dean I want to go over some of your points but at this moment I'm getting ready to go to New Orleans for mine and my brother's birthdays. But there are some very interesting points that I'd like to touch on.

Marc

can't get too much more mindless....lol

:)

Later the truth comes out?

It was blazingly obvious, to anyone operating with anything more than just their brain stem, that I wasn't looking for an answer. "Rhetorical" practically leaps off the screen.

But hey, I'm glad you enjoyed it.