If you think you can exist without God you must believe that you're a God in you own right.

wrong.
what he believes is that God lives within him, not that he is a god.
I'll be damn. I had to speak for another person when i said i don't do that.
Shame on me.

rabbit...you know we don't normally agree (except when you sing songs lol)

i don't really agree with what you said only because i'm not going to put words into your mouth about what you mean. but i will say...you did write beautifully.

people bash non-christian threads just as much as christian threads...it's the nature of the beast in the forum. no one is immune to it. people will make comments or debate in all threads. it's not all one sided.

but for what i is worth...you wrote beautifully...now sing me another song lol

isn't God as a spiritual being is in a sense dead ..isn't life and death just two different types of existence, didn't Jesus die to become a spiritual being ..besides I think "the god is dead" that the original poster is referring to is that the person in the poem evolved beyond the belief

I am seeing the same thing, Lex. Apparently I have meant a lot of things that I have not actually said.
I have been accused of "bashing beliefs" but not one iota of evidence has been produced, despite my repeated requests. If someone felt "bashed", I would have liked to know what it was I said that made them feel that way so that I could apologize.

I wait still. There is no evidence because I challenged no one's beliefs.

As I said elsewhere, if you slap my face and I take issue with that, will you say I am bashing your beliefs?

That is how it feels to me.

Apparently intellignent discourse is not welcome here.

Well if you need to have the hypocrisy that you keep peeking around moved closer so you can see it let's begin with this one.
http://www.justsayhi.com/topic/show/113509
You clearly started this one for the purpose of gathering for the most part an unwitting army of people who unwittingly complied with your "stroke me, I feel inferior" ploy. It was your intention that Rapunzel would see that and realize how nice you are? Low-down back stabbing childish behavior and I personally would have brought it to the attention of the mods after I brought that behavior that I have not seen since high school to your attention. Standby for more. You have many posts to go through. You ask and you shall receive.
Furthermore, Lex was talking to me and our discussion is not to become part of your pity party. I have carried our discussion into e-mail to avoid boring those not involved.

But he was suggesting that people can be separated from God for eternity. That suggests that they must be able to survive without God on their own. That would make them Gods in their own right.

Lex already made his point vividly clear that you were completely wrong in your unfounded accusations against him.

All that's left now is to get you to recognize the error of your accusations.

I guess you want to make your apologies to him in private. No problem there.

And I have. Thanks abra.

Off to work hiker, I will help you locate said comments that you asked to be pointed out this evening. Though you asked publicly I would prefer to point them out to you privately. It is not my intention to hang you on a cross (pun intended), but to simply point out the "double sidedness" of your reasoning.

These are all valid point Funches. I think the poem was indeed about an former Christian finally coming to the realization that the biblical picture of God is wrong. Clearly he was speaking about the biblical picture because he referred to being taught that God died so he could live, as well as being a ‘the crotchety old judge”.

What I think is sad is that so many people seem to be under the impression that either the biblical picture of God is correct, or else there is no God. Like as if the only choice in life from a phiolosophical point of view is either to believe in an extreme doctrine or to just toss up our hands and say, “There is no God”.

I don’t know why people feel that this is the way things are. God doesn’t need to be a crotchety old judge. That’s a sick demented picture of God that men invented to keep the masses under the thumb of the authority of the church. It doesn’t have any basis in reality. In fact, that picture is so full of self-inconsistencies that it can’t possibly be true. Such a God would not only be a demon in its own right, but it would also have to be far dumber than a lot of mortal men. Not to mention far being far less compassionate. Such a God would be as imperfect as a God can possibly be.

I think what the poem actually reveals is not a freedom from God. But rather a freedom from the oppression of egotistical judgmental men who are arrogantly trying to use God’s authority for their own agendas. Escaping from that scenario would indeed be extremely liberating. Christians are all too often trying to lay a guilt trip on people. If they can’t find a specific flaw to point at they start screaming that you can’t possibly be perfect! Get down on your knees and beg God for forgiveness!

Like as if it’s terrible sin to be imperfect.

I found the other point you made about God being dead because God ‘lives’ in the spirit world, which is where people go only after they die, to also be quite interesting. This is another concept that come from the biblical picture. People view God as being complete separate from them. Like as if God could die and they could continue to live. Or (the same thing in reverse), that they could be separated from God and continue to live on their own merit.

The biblical picture of God truly serves to drive a wedge between man and God. That picture makes God out to be separate from man. Men are expected to ‘come to God’, like as if they are somehow separate from God in the first place. Or that they could be cast into hell, which would also be a separate place from God.

This picture of God being an external egotistic judgmental entity has been etched into the minds of so many people that they laugh at the idea that God could actually be the very essence of their spirit. But this is a very legitimate picture of God. In fact, it’s an extremely sensible one that make much better sense than the idea that God is a separate entity.

For a pantheist (a person who believe that God truly is omniscient), the idea of existing without God is totally nonsensical. If God dies then so do they. For them God isn’t some mythical creature living in another world, God is a very real omnipresent life-force that actually sustains their very existence. It would be impossible to be separated from this God and still exist.

It would also be impossible for this God to send anyone to hell without actually going there himself. In the pantheistic view of God, God experiences everything that we do. God is with us always and is completely inseparable from us. If God were to send us to a hell, God would have to come right along with us and experience everything that we experience. In pantheism it is not possible to be separated from God are very nature is to be a manifestation of God.

It’s really a shame that so many people think that the only two choices are either, a highly dogmatic picture of crotchety old judge who is appeased by blood sacrifices and sends people to hell, or atheism.

That’s really an extremely narrow-minded view of life, and of God. It doesn’t give God much credit at all really. There are far better pictures of God than the crotchety old judge.

Just to confirm this -- Star did send me a very cordial and civil e-mail this morning, which I appreciate. I have not yet had a chance to reply as I just got back from the store.

It is not in my nature to hold grudges for more than 5 minutes against anyone who is not my ex-wife or somehow related to her....!

All I'm asking now is that we all try to deal with everyone in a civilized and open-minded manner. I see people arguing here -- and I've done it myself -- who really could get so much more done, if they would simply put the "blame game" and the attacks aside and just present thoughts, ideas, and opinions without lambasting the person behind the "other" thoughts, ideas, and opinions.

The posts I personally enjoy the most here, are the ones where someone explains an idea thoughtfully and thoroughly -- Abra's are a particular favorite -- I don't have to agree with it, but I might learn something. I believe we should be willing to have our beliefs challenged -- but that in no way necessitates or justifies any sort of personal attack....right?

the poem says that athiests are believers in God.

It comes from an athiestic site and speaks to shedding accountibiltiy for one's actions to God by supposing personal responsibility for renouncing eternity for the sake of a short troubled life as some form of noble exchange.

If this is emblematic of atheism and applauded by other believers with unbiblical imaginations of God, then I can understand the applause.

But it smacks of hypocrisy while suggesting that God is not God because one refuses to listen to God.

Apparently, the author believes in free samples and greedily imagines to take all that is possible from this carnal existence and be done with it.

Well, to each their own.

the person in the poem just out grew the need for god ...people choose to follow god clearly because of some form of personal gain ..once someone feels that there is no personal gain or contentment in believeing in god then they may feel that they have outgrown the experience and that it's time to move on with their lives

is it better to play like you believe in a god you have no faith in or claim to be a christian but know you will not follow the teachings ..so in a way the person is showing the respect that the experience of believing in a god may have helped them in that point in time in their life

Actually I think the word God in the poem is a metaphor for 'religion'

The man simply realized that the religion he was taught to believe is a farce, and so in a way his “God” died because it was never real to begin with. He just realized that it was a myth all along.

Like I say, though, it’s a shame that a lot of people actually do equate religion to God. For them, their religion is their God. Take away their dogma and they have nothing left (their God dies).

This is why I’ve always felt it’s better to experience God directly from within. Then they only way your God can die is if you also die.

Otherwise it’s just an external myth.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........

the poem speaks to a relationship with God having been present in the author's life.

Apparently that inclusion is left to the imagination to account for in the artful emotion poured out in prose.

Such are the illusions of art.

The licentiousness of the artist is unquestionable.

The muse affords texture to delusions, short of knowing the artist's intent.

Interpretable it is.


The concensus appears to be that lucidity is in the eye of the beholder.

The wantonness described in the poem does appear to be intact, nonetheless.

I read the poem as written by some one who has freed himself from religious dogma and is now able to find a spirituality free from narrowly defined concepts of a universal conciousness. The athiest having no need for "god", is now able to fully evolve into the spiritual being he was born to be.

atheism only exist because god doesn't

Me too. I agree.

Yes, I agree, I think that's a very good interpretation