Over one hundred years this is what as progressed through the propaganda developed to rally support for the colonization of Africa.

One piece of propaganda certainly took hold and it seems obvious that the "White man's burden" is still a dominating force in the call of the evangelical missionaries to Africa.

Bringing Western religious bigotry to theologically colinized third world communities and countries seems to make those who cannot force their religious morals into the laws of modern thinking countries feel like they are accomplishing thier mission after all.

What most of those evangelical missionaries have done should be considered a crime no less worthy of distain than the crimes of Hitler and Stalin, or more currently the Sudanese government & Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for allowing ethnic clensing to continue there.

In my opinion every country should put a ban on religious missionary visa's and it should be a crime for any religious person from one country to go to another for the purpose of spreading their gospel to the political elite of any country.

Do I suggest that missions of mercy be abandoned - absolutely not, but let those who have a religious conviction leave it behind when they choose to put thier merciful altruistic foot forward.

It's only condescending to those who relegate the sceientific view related to 'direct observation'to a religious status.

I'm not sure how the video would appeal to materialists more so than to others. Would you like to expand that idea?

Also at odds in your statement is the 'unenlightened'. If enlightment is shed light on knowledge, then there is no one whose individual knowledge spans the exetent of the universe.

So the video should appeal to any person who hold any kind of knowledge. Sorry, I can't make any more sense of your statement than all of this.

I edited just to editing.

Adding this verse:


We can better understand why Mormons believe they/we are all gods and will have power over others (like the power given to Jesus) in accordance with one’s behavior in this life.
So who is correct? There is only one way to ascertain correctness which comes down to the approval rating of ONE – the individual who believes himself to be correct.

A Word About Self-serving Bias
This human trait is a survival mechanism. It serves us by providing self-righteousness. Without some faith in our own abilities and capabilities, we would not strive for better in any aspect of our life because we would have no faith that we could accomplish anything beyond what our body requires for the continuance of life.

In order to have self-efficacy, it is necessary that we have faith in our capacity to do, to accomplish, and to be accepted in our social network. We depend on our social networks for safety, love, and progress.

Self-serving bias is not of itself a bad thing but it is something we need to be aware of. If we are aware of what this bias is and why it’s necessary, we can also be aware of when it does a disservice to us as individuals and as a collective.

Since the self-serving bias is deeply intertwined with our need to have faith in ourselves, it’s possible that people may instinctively give up their faith in self and put it into the hands of a ‘higher power’. This misplacement of faith is exchanged for a feeling of self-worth that is easy to accomplish.

In exchange for giving away faith in self, the gain is self-worth without risking being wrong or feeling incapable, inadequate, or unaccepted. The fall back position is that “if I believe, I have worth and I will be glorified by my god”.

Giving away one's faith in self creates a lot of problems because once a belief is ‘structured’ and it is believed to be “the one true”, “the only”, “the word of” and so on, the eqo takes over and self-worth & self-efficacy require less than faith in self and more faith in a man-made belief system which ultimately pitts man against man.

There is no one religion, there is no right religion, there is no peaceful religion because the nature of man is to be diverse, that is the way the human species continues which is the reason for progress.

The nature of diversity is that no two men think enough alike to ever hold the same strictly held religiously structured beliefs.

It would be better to have some faith in the words of man and believe there is a universal creator to whom we owe thanks and leave it at. In this way we retain our level of responsibility to build our own self-efficacy and support the same in others.

We would have to make mistakes, admit to them and learn from them, just as we would have to accept that others make mistakes just as we do.

Perhaps faith in self would allow us to have greater faith in others, and ultimately we (the human race) would have less to argue about and more reason to find alliances with those whose cultures and individuality serve us in diversity which can finally be appreciated.

Historically I have not found that accepting ‘religiously structured’ belief systems as a necessary part of individual diversity to be accommodating to peaceful coexistence, which is why I advocate for education and self-determined value systems – in addition to, or extenting from the primary – faith in self.

.............Scriptural Proof for the Holy Trinity of God...........


Here my examination and explanation of Deuteronomy 6:4 – “The Lord our God ” two things, first, lord and god are both capitalized. Since elohim can refer to powers, gods (plural) or god depending upon the modifier used and since lord refers to a person recognized to have authority we can assume that whoever is speaking is granting great power to the god being referred to as lord.

Second, since the speaker is referring to “our” lord as an interchangeable name for the power of authority being recognized, then it makes sense that the speaker was both, talking with people who recognize the same god with the same authority hence, both the lord and god are capitalized.

Next: “our God is One Lord” - I’m not sure which bible completely capitalizes ONE LORD, I have not seen it and it not something that is common in any other language other than modern English and then it is used for emphasis.

If the language is understood, there is no need for such emphasis because it is already made clear that the speaker and the audience are of the understanding that the greatest power and authority is given to only one lord (or master) who is referred to in the name of God.



According to my own research Elohim can refer to gods (plural) a god or an individual or individuals in whom power is assigned or recognized in. Plurality or singular depends on the rest of the sentence – modifiers and the context of the discussion.



The rest of the quote that was meant to explain the one sentence is of little value because it has already been established that the people involved either as speaker or audience believe there is only one god to whom power is granted above all others and that power is referred to as their God.

The sentence does not refer in any way to there being only one god for all people, it refers only to the those who believe there is one supreme god which could infer that this one god is granted power over all other gods. But since it could be either way, then you speak for yourself as one of the audience who believe in the ‘our’ portion of the sentence. Obviously others have assigned and recognize power in other gods.

Just a little support from Wiki below: not that Wiki is the best authority but it has references for further verification. Also it serves as one support (among many) for the fact that there are many faults that occur with multiple translations and interpretation over time.





That is only clear to someone attempting to find support for their belief. Finding support for opinion where does not exist is a common human trait which is referred to as self-serving bias.

Now a questions: If someone loans you a cupcake tin, would you expect it to make only one cupcake?

----AND something I will evaluate later ---- If you wanted to make one really big cupcake how would you put three of the individual ones together after they are baked?????



The belief that the bible is inerrant meaning that every verse can stand on it’s owe without contextual support from the rest of the document is called a fundamentalist belief.

Unfortunately, many people have extended the term fundamentalism to a huge number of believers for one reason – so many believers fall back on that fundamentalist thought only when it serves their purpose (self-serving bias).

Using one verse or one sentence to prove a point only serves to make a person wrong more times than they can be right.



In contrast to the quote above I offer this:



Obviously Jesus did not personally witness to all people in the world at the time nor in the past or future. It is also clear that there is a contradiction between whom Jesus will pray for (in the verses I offer) and whom he prays for in the ones previously offered.

It is as clear to me that this is a contradiction as it is to you that a cupcake tin can be a tin than makes only one cupcake or three than can be made into one after they are already made.

* * *


(by MorningSong) If God the Father and His Son Jesus are not two persons, neither can they be two witnesses. It is clearly seen from the above words of God's Son Jesus that He and the Father are two persons. Together with the Holy Spirit the three are one.



Here we can see that self-serving bias requires blinders such that there can be only one focal point which must obviously be the point that serves the self interest.

If person 1 and person 2 are not individuals in their own right then they cannot witness for each other. This doesn’t work with a (singular) triune god by the following reasoning.

Jesus is or is not God. If Jesus is God then God must have limitations because Jesus could not do what he wanted (with Gods’ power) without approval of God.

Furthermore Jesus could not do what the Holy Spirit can do.
With regards to God, either god is Jesus or God is not. If God is Jesus then God is human.

God cannot be human because Jesus was resurrected and ascended back to God in human form to sit in the glory of God at his side. Side by side they are two individuals in their own right, one is not the other.

This does not preclude people from ‘believing’ that both or all three of the trinity are one person for the simple and creative reasoning of humans which is that humans cannot possibly understand the nature of god.

Therefore one’s belief in the Trinity is based on the unknowable and requires no explanation because it’s a matter of faith alone, neither true or untrue but only a matter of belief.

But in whom does a believer have faith? Does the faith lay in a god or in a multitude of writings, translated and interpreted by men?

In other words, if there were no written words and if oral history was all we had, what exactly would any Christian really believe?

Clearly people would believe only what man has told them and they would believe only what they so chose to believe which in most cases would boil down to a lot of people with a lot of different beliefs and no one person ever knowing which beliefs are more valid than others or even if there are any valid beliefs pertaining to a creator.

So if a man (human) says there is a universal creator whose nature is unknowable – that is the root of your belief and that belief must be taken on faith but the faith lay in the man who conferred the information, not in an unknowable universal creator.

If said creator wanted humans to know it, let’s say by way of spiritual direction, then would it be appropriate that the creator would have conferred that information individually to every human ever born? If that was the case would we all believe the same thing – would we all have the same ethics, culture, and less or no diversity?

What we have instead are a lot of different beliefs stemming from the broad array of diversity in culture and thought which changes as time passes.

The powers invested in any creators, God, gods and goddesses all become anthropomorphic because the nature of what is believed about them must change in order to be understood by people as their cultures change with time. (Proven by the fact the the bible has been 'purposely' modified time and again because some linquistic, somewhere, has determined that a translation was in error. (Praying to a god & praying to our God is different, why did it take hundreds of years for someone to say - oops, translation error???)

When a declaritive statement is made like - "pink unicorns exist" - there is nothing to be skeptical about. What makes you think that any and every statement requires skepticism?

And if one is not skeptical of your statement how does that make him biased against what you've said?

What do you suppose would be required in order to make a scientist interested enough in your 'hypothesis' to entertain the idea of a scientific investigation?

I don't mean to confuse you by asking three question in one post so feel free to answer each one in separate posts if you need to. They are:

1.What makes you think that any and every statement requires skepticism?

2. And if one is not skeptical of your statement how does that make him biased against what you've said?

3. What do you suppose would be required in order to make a scientist interested enough in your 'hypothesis' to entertain the idea of a scientific investigation?



Sorry, I know how much you hate editing but I just wanted to add the following:

The questions I've posed just might give some people a little more insight into how science works.

I’ve just read this entire thread, many pages worth of comic strip quality communication. After all those words what it boils down to are the quotes below. Oh wait, there was one other, a comment by Bushido which I can’t seem to find again so I’ll paraphrase. It was about the hard work that gaining knowledge takes and the humbling effect that occurs when one realizes how much there is to learn versus how little one knows. (I may have taken some liberty in that paraphrase because the idea was one I have often had myself.)




Nicely put and I also like:



I'm taking a moment to write some thoughts about this whole exercise.

There seems to be a kind of duality or maybe it’s a duplicity that exists within most people which causes us to search for commonality with others while declaring at the same time the uncommon experiences that have provided our own unique knowledge of the world. How do we find commonality from the different experiences that yield such unique knowledge of the world?

Interestingly, just as philosophical communcation has provided its own language including, strawmen, red herring, ad hominem, off-hand justification, and logical fallacies, so too science has created a precise way of viewing the world and communicating those observations with its own jargons.

Obviously some enjoy throwing about the language of philosophical debate. Most likely that knowledge took a little work and probably some embarrassing experiences that preceded the work. But the lesson was not carried far enough if there has been no effort in trying to gain knowledge of scientific communication as well.

Ethical communication requires effort, flexibility, and feeling humbled by all there is to learn versus how little one knows.

Why would Jesus say that “My Father is greater than I” ??

If Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God are one, why did Jesus have to “go away” so that the “Helper” (Holy Spirit) would be sent to the people? Isn’t Jesus also the Holy Spirit? Yet Jesus had to send the Holy Spirit.

Something is quite amiss and just as my first post, questioning who Jesus prayed to was ignored, I’m sure there will be no logical answer for the current questions.

Who is Jesus praying to in John 17 ?

Well it certainly made me curious so I went to the web site.

It lists all the colleges from which the data was drawn.

If the majority of a college hosts in-state students, we can get
a picture of the most popular books in that state. For example,
reading "The Great Gatsby" seems to be a must if you intend to be a
student in Illinois.

It's also interesting because the data serves as a icebreaker when
traveling. Check out the most popular books in a state and bring up
the books that you've read which are most likely to have been read by
a person in the state to which you are traveling.

Perhaps that's a redeeming quality that semi makes up for the lack in
the study's validity.

Interesting!

According to those who read and uphold the Old Testament (or other sacred texts from which the Christian Testament evolved) the whole point of Sabbath is that God rested from 6 days of labor.

What did God do before It created the universe and for how long was It so occupied with pre-human history?

Did God ever rest befor that?

Another question that comes to mind: Do humans give God a day of rest or do they expect that God has been and always will be attentative to us and our universe continuously since that last day of rest he took after creating it?

These are questions that make me wonder why humans need a Sabboth day at all?

One more question - Regardless of when you think Sabboth should be, is there anyone here who has NEVER ever made a purchase on the Sabboth?

I only questions that because if you've taken the role of 'consumer' to the market place EVER on that day, have you not considered the fact the you EXPECT to find people working? Do you really think all those people are atheists or pagans?

There are many bibles and many translations of those many bibles. Every time a new translation makes its way into the genre there are new interpretations.

Maybe your particular bible and your particular interpretation do not match up with others - why would you 'in the name of God, presume to determine who and which is right and wrong?

That a rhetorical question by the way, just something more to think about, outside of scripture that is.

Now this is a scenario I'm familiar with and I agree that Santa would like LaBefana and maybe he's just one of the many who continue bring joys to little girls and boys.

I think what might be at issue is considering the definition of behavior. We have behavior which is an objective action. I think what John is trying to say is:

What then is a misbehavior? An action that did not occur?

Now if you want to define 'good-behavior' in detail that would be a specific action taken in a specific situation, then we could define 'mis-behavior' as an action that is different than the one we consider to be good.

Do you see where that's going? Behavior is one thing: Objective action. We either will our behavior or we are driven, by internal processes, to a particular behavior for survival.

Thank you for the clarification. I don't know if we can be positive that we are responsible for how we express our emotions (all the time).

In a previous post John, you pointed out that much of man's behavior is less attributable to will than to survival processes. For example, while it is possible to will away the pain of hunger even to the point of death, I've never heard of someone being able to will away the natural act of defacation.

Similarly, when a human is in a position of immediate danger with only seconds to act, I do believe such a moment is highly emotional. However, I don't believe that our actions at such a time are entirely guided by will. As in the example above, the body does what it needs to in order to relieve itself of 'extra baggage' while immediately switching internal gears chemically.

Obviously I have an issue with your broad statment " that we are responsible for how we express our emotions."

However, I am in agreement with your previous statment suggesting that emotion is subjective and not shared. What is shared are the behaviors we choose to exhibit in order to create and maintain (or lose) relationships of any kind.

They are ALL legends, you believe in one while others have their own. To say that others are wrong is only the opinion of one falible human judging the beliefs of yet another falible human.

What does it matter to you as along as the beliefs result in human behavior that is kind, generous, caring, and includes an acceptance of some form of human dignity and responsibility for all that exists?

Your sacred texts are sacred to you and what you take from them comes from sources unknown and it works the same for everyone.

Perhaps judgement of whose beleifs are right and wrong are not even what the creator intends. Perhaps the intention is to judge a person's characther and behavior and beliefs are of no consequence.

Imagine that and then ask yourself, what guides human behavior and what does it matter if the behavior was intended for a good outcome.

Hi John8659. This is the first time I've had to stop by here for a while so I'm a little late responding to your newness and your posts.



I'm not sure if I agree with the above quote yet becasue I need some claification.

Attraction, what is it that causes a strong attraction with a desire to be physically intimate between two particular individuals, instead of a desire to simply be platonic friends? Are you saying that said attraction is a self-moderated emotion? Or are you saying that our behavioral response to the emotion called attraction is what should be self-moderated?

RainbowTrout, You come up with some of the most interesting articles. I've never heard some of those stories. I find it fascinating to see the evolution of traditions. Thanks for great post.

Respect is a term that is often defined by an individual's culture. In collectivist cultures the term respect may have a different value depending on the hirarchy the culture uses.

In some collectivist cultures the individual 'respects' others before one's self while in individualist cultures, those in which Christianity tends to thrive, we think of self before others and hense we get something called the golden rule.

According to the golden rule we must obviously think of the self first before determining what respect should mean to another.

Personally, I think that'a a little backwards for if we genuinely want to show respect, we would be wiser to ask the others how we might show respect for them before considering our own way as being the best way.

The posts to this point have some interesting perspectives but of all of them, I'd Peter Pan's answer covers the broadest range of people, though I'm not sure it actually covers everyone. Certainly some scientists believe their beliefs are correct, but if they are well educated and 'believe' in a pure scietific approach then their beliefs are more than flexible as scietists welcome information that will prove their ideas wrong.

So my set of 'beliefs' about the commonality of beliefs is listed.

1. Beliefs are developed through direct interaction with our
environment.

2. Our beliefs influence our individual value systems.

3. Given number 2 above, our beliefs also guide our behavior.


4. Beliefs will either be rigid or flexible.