Now it's my turn to say "Oh please".

I did look back over the thread. I don't see anywhere where I had stated negative things in reply to YOUR POSTS.

However, I can see where you yourself may have judged something to be "negative" from you point of view.

For example in my very first post I asked:



That may have sounded 'negative' to you but I am very sincere and curious as to how people who were desperate to change their life for the better may have viewed this in terms of other spiritual beliefs.

That's a valid question. One that I'm sure you yourself could not answer.

Clearly people in other cultures attribute their spiritual inspiration to their graven images of gods and goddesses. Jesus is really not unique in this role.

In fact, I have just finished a course on Greek Mythology and it's amazing how serious the ancient Greeks were concerning Apollo (basically their version of a 'savior') and clearly a "Son of God".

For the Greeks Apollo could indeed intervene in their lives and affairs and turn things around for them as well. In fact, there were many Greek accounts of people who had been powerfully transformed by their belief in Apollo. It's really no different from the modern Christian version of Jesus.

I have no doubt that you were indeed spiritually transformed.

I don't question that at all. I personally have spiritual beliefs myself, so I have no problem with spiritual transformations and spiritual awakenings.

You attribute your spiritual awakening to Jesus. But clearly people in other cultures also have spiritual awakenings and do not attribute their spiritual enlightenment to Jesus or Christianity. Instead, they have a totally different view of spirit and the primal source of all life.

It doesn't need to be turned into a specific form of exclusive religious bigotry.

~~~~~~

Now you may say that this claim that Christianity is a form of exclusive religious bigotry is a "negative view" on my part. However, I respond to that by suggesting that you simply look around and see how this religion is used for precisely that purpose by many people.

It is no secret that all of the Abrahamic religions are based on a concept of a jealous God. They all stem from a religion that begin with "Thou shalt have no other gods before me for I am a jealous God"

So that's built-in to all the Abrahamic religions and is not my negativity, but is indeed the negativity of those doctrines themselves. And it is unfortunately used in a very negative way by many of those religions (especially Christianity) to renounce and degrade everyone who refuses to support the religion as being a person who has rejected or rebelled against the "jealous God".

So this negativity and religious bigotry is built-into this religion from the very first Commandment handed down by Moses.

That's just a fact.

I wish it weren't true. I wish these religions hadn't been based on jealous religious bigotry. But unfortunately my wishes can't change the truth of the matter. They are, and that's truly a shame.

~~~~~

It also amazes me that Apollo was not based on such religious bigotry and jealousy. It's a shame that we didn't keep the Greek religious beliefs. They would have been far less hostile toward "non-believers". The fact that the Greeks were eventually converted to Christianity is a very sad thing indeed, IMHO.

We would have been far better off with Apollo.

Fighting about it?

What's to fight about?

Everyone thinks it's great that you have turned your life around!

If you yourself are 'fighting' for something MORE than that, then that's your war.

And where do you think that comes from?

I'll tell you right now that it comes from the extremely negative and hateful people who use Christianity to spread religious bigotry and hateful ideas in the name of Jesus as "The Christ".

If you are obvious to this then you really need to open your eyes.

If you think for one second that people should jump onto the band wagon of religious bigotry and hatred of others in the name of Jesus Christ just because you attribute your decision to clean up your act to being "saved" by Jesus, then you are indeed quite naive.

There are ways to teach the love that Jesus himself tried to teach. But it's extremely naive to expect people to just suddenly embrace a highly bigoted religious institution just because you quit taking drugs.

I'm quite sure that there are a lot of secular people who have managed to break away from bad habits and destructive lifestyles too. This type of behavior is clearly not dependent solely on the intervention of a demigod.

That's just the facts.

I personally see no value at all in Cowboy's constantly negative interpretations of ancient dogma. His type of proselytizing is precisely the kind of proselytizing that gives Christianity the worst possible face.

He won't even permit anyone to portray a truly loving Jesus. That would be blaspheme against his theme of using Jesus to support religious bigotry.

You mentioned your desire to attend church 6 times in your opening post testimony. So even though you may not have intended it, it certainly comes across in your testimony that it is the church that is the focal point of your belief.

Truly.

It's great that various religious beliefs have helped people turn their lives around. That part is certainly a positive aspect of religion. Although, I can't help but believe that these same people would have turned their lives around even in a secular world. They would have simply recognized that it was indeed their own choice and doing.

But I agree, when these jealous god religions become the fodder for crusades and even 'negative evangelism' that takes the form of attempting to convince people that some jealous god will hate them or condemn them if they fail to cower down to the negative interpretations of ignorant religious fundamentalist, then any "good" that might have come out of these religions is quickly overshadowed by the hatred of religious bigotries.

The Abrhamic religions have turned against themselves because of their foundational jealous god. This forces them to become institutions of religious bigotry.

So now we have Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and the rebel Protestants all hating each other in the name of their jealous gods.

And of course, not only do they hate each other, but they view all other religions and atheism as being their enemies as well.

But they do hate each other far more passionately, and the reason they hate each other so much is because they are each threatening each other with a different interpretation of their jealous God.

~~~~~

I'm glad for those who have been inspired to turn their lives around for the better.

I am not glad that such events are often the source of religious bigotry toward others who do not acknowledge these jealous gods.

But that's YOUR premise. And it is indeed overly-simplified.

The premise that I would offer is far less absolute.

"I believe X is highly plausible" means I believe X is highly plusible.

It does not mean that I believe X is "true".

That is your error.

You are attempting for force the concept of "belief" to be a simplistic ON/OFF state for everyone.

But that's not how everyone views 'belief'.

There are many degrees of "belief"

This is why people like myself and jrbogie say to people like YOU that we "believe" NOTHING.

For the very reason that you have made it clear that you have an unrealistic and overly-simplistic view of what the very term "belief" should mean.

You seem to be treating it like an ON/OFF switch. You either believe something is true, or you don't. PERIOD.

That's an extremely simplistic and narrow-minded approach to the concept of "belief".

This is why it's futile to even try to discuss anything with you. You seem to take everything to extremism and absolutism.

Our notion of "belief" is far more flexible than you allow for.

We think more in terms of possibility, probability, plausibility, etc.

It's only YOU who continually try to force this into a very simple-minded state of either "TRUE" or "FALSE" with nothing inbetween these extremes being considered.

You even CONFRONT people with things like "Do you believe this or not?"

That is an over-simplification.

For all knowledge that I have there are reasons to "believe it" and reasons to be "question it". And this is most likely the case with all human knowledge.

You're trying to force things into a state of absolutism that simply has no place in reality.

You say:


No. It's not that SIMPLE at all. That is a gross over-simplification of reality.

In fact, typically the "X" under consideration is often quite complex and may depend upon many lesser beliefs and or knowledge.

The more complex things become, the less certain belief can be.

To even claim that you believe anything in an absolute sense if probably a misguided notion in and of itself.

If you actually stop and think about it you'll probably end up saying, "Well of course it depends on this, that, and the other things being true too, but I'm assuming those, etc, etc, etc."

In short, almost everything that people claim to actually believe is actually dependent upon a myriad of premises that they are currently just taking for granted when they claim that they actually believe something.

I personally have far more respect for people who understand and acknowledge that the knowledge they possess could potentially be in error, or at the very least does indeed have limitations, uncertainty and domains of applicability.

People who have convinced themselves that they have any sort of absolute undeniable truth do not impress me at all. In fact, I would much prefer to avoid such people.

Having said that, people who have sound reasons for believing in what they believe, and are enthusiastic about sharing the reasons why they believe what they do can be interesting, providing it doesn't turn into a proclamation that they do indeed hold the absolute truth.

In short, I wouldn't take any person too seriously at all who is totally convinced that the knowledge they have is absolutely correct. That's usually the sign of some sort of unreasonable zealot who probably doesn't truly know much at all.

In fact, if they already don't understand the limitations of their own knowledge, chances are that they are lacking in powers of understanding and reason to begin with.

You talk like belief should be an ON/OFF switch, either a person absolutely believes in what they know, or they don't.

That's impractical, and not even done by professional scientists. A professional scientist will usually offer up all of the uncertainties, premises, and assumptions up front.

That is a sign of a truly intelligent person, IMHO.

People who are under the erroneous belief that they hold absolute perfect truth are the people to avoid.

In what way?

Have I not said that it is great that your life has been changed for the better?

What is it that you feel I have said to you that is so negative?

Perhaps it is a misunderstanding on your part?

Or perhaps you were reading some of my posts that were addressed to negative proselytizers of the religion?

You'll have to take those with a grain of salt, because those negative proselytizers have been quite derogatory toward everyone and anyone who refuse to accept their own personal, and often quite negative and bigoted interpretations, of scriptures.

So please don't be going by that.

What have I said to you that you feel has been so negative?

Or are you just used to people simply responding with "Praise Jesus! She's been saved!"

I would never do that, because if you are a nice person worthy of salvation I TRUST that a righteous God would indeed "save" you as a matter of routine. There's really nothing to get excited about.

On the contrary, I would be totally absorbed with the sadness of those whom God did not feel were worthy of being 'saved'.

I most certainly hope that this would be the exception and not the rule.

Although, in all fairness, if we accept the biblical scriptures to be the trustworthy "Word of God", then we have no choice but to recognize that the scriptures have Jesus himself proclaiming that the path to eternal life is straight, and the gate is narrow and FEW will make it into the kingdom of God.

So overall, if we are to trust these words attributed to Jesus to be trustworthy, then there is far more to be sad about than to rejoice over.

Unfortunately.

~~~~~

But the way, if that sounds dismal, allow me to try to cheer things up a bit by offering that I do not believe that the writings of the New Testament can be trusted to be the verbatim word of any God.

Therefore I personally have no reason to feel so glum.

I trust in a God who "saves" everyone without exception. Of course, clearly that has nothing to do with Hebrew scriptures, since their God clearly ends up condemning the vast majority of people and only FEW are saved (assuming that what is written in the scriptures and attributed to Jesus can be trusted to be true as written).

By the way, I'm not a sister. I'm a brother.

If you are claiming that it can't be, then chances are very good that you have absolutely no knowledge at all. Probably everything that you think you 'know' is in error in some fundamental way.

Apparently you're dreaming of an idealized philosophical world that cannot exist in the real world. I'm not sure that should even be posted in philosophy. Although I will grant you that this was indeed Plato's view during the classical age of ancient Greece.

Although, even Plato recognized that his idealized philosophical world would be something removed from this world, and that this world would be merely a shadow of that idealized abstract perfection.

But, in any case, Plato has already done this to death so I see no point in doing it again here, just read Plato if you like that sort of thing. It didn't lead to anything more than a philosophical ideal back in ancient Greece, and it's not going to lead to anything more than that today.

I thought that in God's eyes are all special?

I guess that must be a denominational interpretation.

Exactly!

And I sincerely hope that you don't take offense from my posts and my thoughts and feelings on this topic.

One thing you need to understand is that there do most certainly exist very nasty people who use Christianity as an excuse to spread hatred toward gays, and rejection of scientific knowledge such as the knowledge of evolution, and they preach that creationism should be taught in schools with every bit as much credibility as science.

So there is a lot of political negativity associated with the proselytizing of Christianity, including religious bigotries held out and actually JUDGED against others who have not "confessed" that Jesus is Lord, etc.

So there is a lot of "negative" Christianity out. You need to be aware of this when you jump into a religious forum proclaiming that you have been "saved" but Jesus.

You are (perhaps unknowingly) providing fodder for religious zealots and fundamentalists who use the religion in very negative ways to support religious bigotries and other negative political agendas.

It's an extremely unfortunate situations for the "innocent Christians" who would prefer to share a far different "picture" of Jesus.

So please recognize why there can sometimes be great opposition to these kind of religious claims.



I would hate to see you backing these radical fundies just because of your love of Jesus. That would truly be a sad thing indeed.

Well, perhaps I've already been 'saved' then for the bulk of my life since very early childhood then. I just never attributed it to a specific demigod evidently.

I've never felt a need for 'guidance' as I've never felt 'lost'.

So I already have that, and have always had it.

I don't feel unloved at all. On the contrary I feel quite loved, and I mean that in a very abstract and general sense. I feel 'loved' when I am totally alone. I think if I was the very last person on planet Earth I would still feel 'loved'.

Where that feeling comes from I cannot say, but I've always felt loved my entire life.

So I already have that and have always had it.

Hope? Wouldn't I need to be desperate about something before I could even entertain a concept of 'hope'?

Hope for what? I don't even have a fear of death. So I don't even feel a need to have a 'hope' of life after death. I actually innately feel that I'm immortal and I always have had that innate feeling. So I don't even have any desperation associated with dying.

Joy and light? A better way to live?

Well, like I say, in your case, having been incarcerated and addicted to drugs I can see where you were not in a situation of joy and light and you clearly needed a better way to live.

But I don't see how any of that applies to me. I'm not saying that my life couldn't potentially be better in some ways. I'm sure that better finances wouldn't hurt, but I'm not exactly financially destitute either.

Other than miraculously presenting me with a truly compatible best-friend and loving partner, I'm not sure what else God could do for me in this life. And that's the one thing that I have indeed requested from God for over a half a century. If he finally came through with it at this point in my life I'd really feel far more inclined to ask him what took him so long, rather than proclaiming that a miracle had suddenly occurred.

About the only thing that a God could offer me at this point in my life is indeed paradise in an afterlife. And as far as I'm concerned, that's probably already taken care of. According to the Christian gospel of Jesus it already is taken care of.

Well, if that's true then you should be the first to recognize that a lot of people are probably not sinners.

I personally don't use drugs.

I don't even drink alcohol save for maybe having very small amounts with a meal on very rare or special occasions.

So what exactly was the "miracle" here?

That you quit using drugs?

Is that supposed to be the "miracle" that Jesus offers?

I thought the "miracle" was a gift of everlasting life?

I thought that was supposed to be the "miracle" of being saved?

Well, like I say. I'm very glad to hear that you have changed your life to the better.

But your experience does not impress me personally. I've seen secular people change dramatically via their own choice to do so as well.

Besides, you can't very well give it to "God reaching out to you" because that basically flies in the face of the ideal that you are supposed to be the one who reaches out to God.

So there is a bit of a contradiction in theme there.

In other words, if all we need to do is wait for God to reach out and save us when we need to be saved, then the whole theme of Christianity where it is important for us to chose to accept Jesus as our savior FIRST pretty much dies.

So there are extreme problems with this whole ideology in general.

Just so you might better understand, when I see innocent people praising Jesus as the source of their salvation, what I can't help but notice also is how quick the fundamentalists are prepared to jump on such testimonials in an effort to proclaim that everyone needs to be 'saved' and it's up to THEM to do it!

Surely you see the paradox in the overall Orthodox system?

A testimonial of a person who is "miraculously saved" by a demigod through no "desperation" of their own, and that testimonial being used as fodder by religious fundamentalists who hold out that all people need to be 'saved' and it's up to THEM to make the choice to be saved.

That's an oxymoron right there.

If Jesus "saved" you without you desperately reaching out to "be saved" then clearly he can save anyone without them desperately reaching out to be "saved" either.

It can't be BOTH WAYS simultaneously. It can only be one OR the other.

Either YOU saved yourself by desperately turning to Jesus and asking to BE SAVED, or Jesus miraculously reached out and 'saved' you out of the blue as some sort of miracle.

Can you make up your mind?

Which was it?

That sounds to me like a very personal interpretation of scriptures that themselves do not even have Jesus himself supporting that view.

But it doesn't surprise me that there exists people who pride themselves on speaking for Jesus. Evidently that kind of pride is highly contagious and attractive to many zealots who use Jesus as an excuse to become the "voice of God".

I guess that makes them feel powerful.

Well, not only that, but what do people who do not fall into such desperate situations have to be "saved" from?

Are the people who remain sober and law abiding sent to hell since they never fell from grace far enough to require salvation?

Or are they simply the righteous people that Jesus proclaimed do not need a spiritual doctor?

I guess that all comes down to a matter of personal interpretations of ancient scriptures there. Perhaps Jesus only came for the sinners as he himself had proclaimed?

In that case, it's nice to know that some people are indeed being 'saved'.

That's great!

That's exactly right too. So the analogy doesn't even fit in the first place.

A God who demands unquestioned obedience would not be a 'parent' at all, it would be nothing more than a slave taskmaster.

So the correct analogy for the Biblical God would be a taskmaster, not a parent analogy.

Every time you reduce the God of your religion to having the ineptitude of mortal human parents you do your own religion a huge disservice.

To begin with taking your analogy seriously, the first thing I would do is totally reject the Hebrew Biblical accounts of God if I were going to imagine that God is a responsible parent.

There would be absolutely nothing responsible, or wise, for the creator of humanity to place his message to his children in the hands of the ignorant Hebrews if he truly wanted anyone to listen to what he has to say and give these stories any respect.

This would be analogous to a mortal human parent running out and handing the Taliban the instructions they would like to have told to their children, and then leaving it up to their children to actually believe that this ignorant Taliban were actually entrusted by their parents to teach them good moral values.



The ancient Hebrews were highly male-chauvinistic, and they claim that God supported their male-chauvinistic views and behaviors. They were also judging and stoning other people to death in the name of God. They were also killing heathens in the name of God. In fact, they even crucified Jesus for blaspheme in OBEDIENCE to the directives of this very God.

Then, at that point, the very people to whom this God has originally entrusted the task of teaching his children, rejected Jesus as his son, or as any form of messiah. It was actually other people who became the "Christians" and blatantly violated the original God's supreme commandment that no other gods should be placed before him.

~~~~~

So this would be like the Taliban coming to you and proclaiming that you parents left them with the task of teaching you your moral values, and then later some other people came along and said, "No. That has all changed now and this other guy named Jesus is now sent by your parents to teach you good morals".

Not only would this be utterly confusing and grossly mixed messages, but it would also be highly irresponsible and totally unwise and inept behavior of the parent himself.

So, you're whole analogy of God being a parent who has any serious interest in anyone actually 'listening' to him is truly absurd.

That theme simply cannot be supported in any meaningful way based on the history of the religion that you support as the supposed "Word of God".

So all you've done by suggesting that the God of your religion is like a parent is to reduce your God into a truly inept and untrustworthy parent.

I think the issue you've addressed here would probably be the most central issue to what would inevitably lead to misunderstandings and confusion.

I would disagree with your statement above because I am not an absolutist, as your statement would require. I feel confident that jrbogie would probably feel somewhat similar because of points that he had previously made.

He has stated on several occasions that he does not 'know' anything in that kind of absolute sense, and that he takes everything with a grain of salt, etc.

I feel much the same way. Therefore your assertion that all knowledge claims first require that the claimant believes the claim to be true is far to rigid.

In other words, you are assuming that the person who claims to have 'knowledge' is prepared to stand behind it with a level of belief in it which simply may not exist from there perspective at all.

So you're working from a vantage point that the other people simply aren't even suggesting to be the case.

I've seen you misunderstand this concerning Jeanniebean's position quite often. She has stated time and time again, that the only things she "knows" with absolute certainty is that she exist. And she doesn't even feel a need to "believe" it because it's simply her experience and 'belief' is not even required at all.

Any so-called "knowledge" beyond that, is indeed in question and can never be known with this same kind of conviction.

So in that sense, you aren't even addressing an issue that is anything other than trivial common understanding.

Although I will grant you that there are people out there who seem to think that their 'knowledge' does have some sort of absolute concrete value.

But that only applies to those people, and certainly not to the human psyche in general. So that would fall more into psychology of why some people seem to feel that their opinions and views constitute "absolute undeniable truths".

Those kinds of people certain do exist.

But to try to extrapolate that onto the human condition as a whole would be itself an unjustified 'belief', IMHO.

Like jrbogie, JeannieBean, and people like myself, have quite often pointed out, we recognize that the "knowledge" we have may indeed need to be refined or changed at some point as new information becomes available.

We do not treat "knowledge" as an absolute that is carved in stone.

In fact, in your previous thread on the nature of Truth and whether or not truth is subjective, this is precisely the point that I was making. I was making the very valid point that truth (as defined by humans as a human construct of conception), is indeed recognized and defined in a way that allows for this malleability.

You're argument was that this is a misguided notion of "Truth", and that you need for the concept of truth to be "absolute". But that very idealism misses the point. It also assumes that there can indeed be 'absolute knowledge' which a person can be 100% confident of.

It is this very notion of an idealized absolutism which you continually attempt to support that is being waved off as being an unrealistic and unattainable ideology. It's a philosophies unicorn pipe dream. Perhaps interesting to ponder, but not truly supportable via rigorous logic as you seem to be attempting to construct.



So the bottom line for me is that I simply disagree with your statement above.

Everyone who is claiming to have "knowledge" of things is not claiming to have an unshakable belief in them.

That is a false premise right there. At least with respect to some humans as I have pointed out above.

So I guess this ends my participation in this thread, since I already disagree with your foundational premise.

Anything that is argued upon a premise that I already disagree with would be a moot point for me to continue to discuss.

So at least we found the core of our disagreement on this topic.

I simply don't accept your foundational premise. It most certainly doesn't apply to me personally, and therefore anything you build atop that premise has no applicability or interest for me personally.

That's my view on that.