lj;

I'm not terribly familiar with Samuel Beckett as I have not read much of his work. But I don't feel too alone or isolated admitting that. As prolific as I imagine Mr. Beckett to be, he has nothing on the miracles and impact of Christ. That is why I find it interesting that during Christ's life there were a number of people who knew less about him than I know about Mr. Beckett. Petronius, Seneca, Appian, Lucian, Tacitus, Damis, Ptolemy, Columella and dozens more never recorded a thing about the miraculous Christ. They were all living near (or not a century past) the time of Christ and yet their writings are dearth of any of the miracles--things that surely would have been spoken of.

My point here is simple: My argument is that the logic for agreeing with Christianity using the Bible as the stool leg that will hold the weight of doubt, is indeed circular. Your response is not a bad one but it jumps a few steps. In your response you wrote:

"Either He is what His scriptures claim him to be, or else there's nothing that remains to support His existence - (outside of an individual creating a God to support and justify personal life choices.)"

I don't agree. That is an all or nothing proposition. But more to the point it actually supports my argument that the Bible needs a circular argument to remain valid. If you bought and read a cook book that had fourteen errors in it you would not conclude that because of the errors the book was worthless, that the author was most likely a bad cook--would you? We might all agree that he is not a great editor but mistakes occur--and it does not diminish the value--or does it?

The issue you've run in to here is that we cannot treat the Bible the same way because the Bible claims to be perfect. One mistake would destroy that claim and while I contend that there are in fact many errors, I don't think that diminishes God in any way. What it does do is diminish the validity of the Christian Dogma, the "I am the way, the truth, the light" exclusivity that the Bible attributes to being owned by Christ. That you pointed out that such is the case with other religions only supports that fact that some of them must, be definition, be wrong. Three monotheistic religions all making exclusive truth claims cannot all be correct.

My argument--that the Bible itself is both the claim and the reason for the claim (as it pertains to truth in Christ) is simplistic but that is only because it does not have to be made more difficult. The various versions of "His Word" are also a real issue when once considers that in the KJV there are entire verses that are omitted from the NIV (e.g., Matthew 18:11 "For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost." That is omitted from the New International Version--as is Acts 8:37, Acts 23:9 and Romans 13:9.

My argument is only that I believe the Bible limits God. I don't believe that tomes handed down through the ages lack inspiration only that inspiration is open to critique based on the times in which the books were written and the human nature of those writing them. Twenty people in a board room cannot pass around the simplest of stories and have it remain unchanged. Imagine then translations, new versions, personal agendas--everything that would have moved and motivated those responsible for recording God's word.

Still, thanks for the reply and for the thoughtfulness of your reply.

-Drew

Just a word to both Drew and Eljay,

I may be wrong, but after reading the conversations between you I can't help but feel that you both seem to be focusing on the story of Jesus. Or questioning the validity of the New Testament.

When I look at the Bible I look at the whole thing. Jesus is totally dependent on the Old Testament. The entire doctrine.

What I see are major logical inconsistencies with the supposed "Master Plan".

As far as I'm concerned the following very simple observation destroys the entire myth in one fell swoop. I could continue to chop away at it. But one feel swoop should be enough. And here it comes,...

The premise is that this biblical God has a Master Plan. From the very beginning of creation he has a Master Plan. The second premise is that Jesus had also always been around. He supposedly stated as much when he said, "Before Abraham was I am".

Well, this flies in the face of the Great Flood.

If it was God's Master Plan (from the very beginning) to send his only begotten Son to be crucified as a blood sacrifice to save mankind because God so loved the world, then why the flood?

Why wouldn't he have just sent Jesus earlier?

What's he doing drowning out all of mankind if his original Master Plan was to have his Son be a sacrificial lamb for the sins of man?

That's makes no sense.

The story is inconsistent. This God apparently doesn't have a Master Plan, he's just experimenting with different things as he goes along. Yet, the whole story of Jesus demands that Jesus said, "Before Abraham was I am".

There's the flaw. And it's no small thing. This is a MAJOR flaw in the story. You don't need to go around having people build arks and drowning out all of humanity if you Master Plan is to have your Son be a sacrificial lamb to save mankind from sin.

As far as I'm concerned that kills the story right there. It's clearly a poorly written myth that evolved over time and people just didn't realize that New Testament of Jesus it was going to be self-inconsistent in the bigger picture. It flies in the face of what went before it.

I personally feel that a God who demands blood sacrifices to forgive sins and then has send his own son to be the sacrificial lamb to appease his desires for blood sacrifices is a seriously demented sadistic idea to swallow in the first place anyone.

What does this God do? He tells men in a commandment that it's wrong to kill, and then later he sends his Son so that when men murder him he can forgive their sins! It doesn't even make any sense. God would be sending mixed messages. He can only forgive us if we sin in major ways!

Why is a supposedly all-wise, all-loving God requesting gruesome blood sacrifices for in the first place? What does that have to do with forgiving men of there sins?

Clearly this whole idea is a ancient superstition. What kind of a God would ask men to kill animals to appease the God of their sins? What kind of a message does that send? All God would be saying, is "Hey look, you can sin all you want, just kill some lambs for me and it'll be ok"

Is that demented or what?

I can't believe that an all-wise, all-loving God would be requesting such morbid things in the first place.

I can't believe that I even bother to post these thoughts. Clearly people who believe this stuff don't stop and think about it even for a nanosecond anyway.

The whole picture is utterly absurd. I'm seriously disillusioned that I'm living on a planet with people who actually still believe these anscient superistions. This is creepy.

Such a God would be weirder than Freddy Scissorshands or whatever his name was.

Abra..until you have FAITH to Believe and also Recieve, your spiritual eyes will remain closed....and you will not be able to see nor believe.
That is fact.

And until that happens, the Word of God (the Bible) is NOT going to make sense.
That is fact.

We Christians could share here with you til the cows come home......but until you yourself are ready to believe and recieve by FAITH, you will not believe.

Abra ,Even if Jesus Himself stood before you right now... you still would not believe ...because you have to Have FAITH to believe.....and UNTIL Faith to believe comes, even Jesus Himself cannot help you to Believe!!!

Cause God allows each man to come to Faith in God, ON HiS OWN!!
That's why free will was given to man.
God is NOT going to FORCE FAITH on you!!


Abra....I have shared all I can....can't do no more.
Therefore I will end it here now.

But I will Pray, Abra..cause I still believe in my heart..that one day you will believe and recieve by Faith , the Lord Jesus Christ... and will one day preach that gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to all.
Amen.

Be Blessed Now, Abra.....

it also says they all laughed at Noah buiding an ark.

The Church of Jesus Christ is an ark that will float in a deluge, too.

But that goes right over most peoples' heads.

"If we only knew" will be the excuse.

Abra,

Perhaps you are correct in that I was focusing on the validity of the NT to the exclusion of other parts of the Bible. I did so in my post only because that was what lj was focusing on as part of his response. In fact, I agree with you that there are many ways in which the logic fails and I have pointed out a number of those examples in other posts. I guess what I was really trying to get at was that one can dispute (on many levels and on many fronts) issues with scripture. But that (at least in my eyes) does not invalidate the idea of a God. Dogma--yes, but not the idea of a God. Still, thanks for the response--good to see you.

-Drew

My thoughts on a "Master plan."

A "master plan" can go wrong. Whether "God" (of the Bible) had a "master plan" we do not know. Where in the Bible does it actually say that this God has a "master plan?"

If he does, it is obvious that it went wrong and needed fixing.

Because of the wills of all men and women being varied, people are allowed to make decisions and these decisions are bound to effect anyone's master plan.

For a Christian to talk about God's "master plan" for the world or their life is for them to give up any responsibility for any of it. (Anything that goes wrong is blamed on the devil.)

If we assume there is some kind of "master plan," such as a general idea of how the game should progress.. it might have been something like this:

"Lets take this evolving planet, and improve the primitive species developing there with our DNA and grow more intelligent bodies to inhabit for our future incarnations."

So, these creator Gods (there are more than one) introduced two entities (Adam and Eve) for the purpose of breeding a race of people that would eventually go out into the world and mate with the current population of Neanderthals and upgrade the human race.

(Of course the idea that Adam and Eve were the first humans on earth is just fantasy. They were the first new and improved alien-human cross breeds.)

So this leaves room for truth in both stories, that humans descended from lemurs (monkeys)and the Adam and Eve story.

BUT THEN ALONG CAME THE NAGA

An alien humanoid, more reptilian than human, (perhaps represented by Lucifer and his fallen angels) entered the garden, seduced Eve and bore a son. (Cain)

The other son was Able, his father was Adam. The offspring that resulted from these two seeds now populate the earth and are all intermixed.

Because of the policy of non-interference nothing was done to correct this mistake. (at least at that time. The god could have killed Cain.)

BUT the constant battle for survival of the fittest continues.

The "chosen people" were the descendants of Adam. That is why they were chosen. One of the creator gods (aliens if you will) took it upon himself to interfere with what was going on with his genetic experiment.

But the reptilians kept busy. They continued to mate with human women and spread their seed.

Hence the flood was an effort to kill these people.

But that didn't work either because many of these people were rescued by their "Gods" (aliens) and taken underground deep enough so the flood did not kill them.

And after the flood, the aliens continued to rape human women.

So the entire earth is populated with humans containing all manner of mixed DNA that it is impossible to separate any of them now.

THE MASTER RACE:

The attempt to create a master (perfect) race of humans is the remnants of the God of Adam and Eve still trying to cull the reptilian alien DNA out of the population. The race desired is the blond haired, blue eyed race of humans. These are the furthest thing from reptilian aliens they can find. They carry similar DNA of the Pleidians a race of tall blond haired blue eyed aliens.


This is not a conclusion, it is simply a guess that loosely fits into the picture of where the "master plan" went wrong.

JB

Of course MorningSong, that exactly how brainwashing works. I could just decide to believe in the Bible in the face of it’s many inconsistencies and pretend that they all somehow make sense. This is what religious people do. I can’t tell you how many clergy have actually confessed to me that they do not know the answers and they simply have FAITH that God knows them.

But that begs the question of why they are believing in it in the first place MorningSong?

It appears that most people are believing in this religion either because they lust for everlasting life, or because they are frightened by the terrible things that might happen to them if they don’t believe it.

The bottom line is that no one can give a reasonable reason to believe in the doctrine. It’s entirely based on FAITH and the only reason to have FAITH is either out of fear or lust. It’s absurd to talk about having faith out of LOVE. It’s impossible to LOVE a God you never met and don’t even really have a clue might be like. That’s just a farce that people tell themselves and proclaim to convince themselves that they are doing it for the right reasons and it really isn’t because either are lusting after eternal life, or fearing eternal damnation.

To ask me to have FAITH in this doctrine is nothing short of asking me to LIE to myself AND to God!

Even if the biblical God does exist I don’t think he would want me to live a LIE. The TRUTH is that I have no choice MorningSong. I CAN’T believe this story without LYING to myself (and therefore also LYING to God).

Its not a choice.

If complete and open honesty isn’t good enough for this God then clearly it isn’t much of a God. The story is incredulous as drastically logically flawed. Not to mention that it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE to me at all that an all-loving, all-wise God would need to see blood sacrifices made to him before he can forgive bad behavior. Why should God need to see a bloody violent act before he can forgive someone?

That makes absolutely NO SENSE to me at all. In fact it’s a seriously sadistic and demented picture. Why would I LOVE a God who thirsts for blood sacrifices???? It sounds like a monster right out of a sci-fi movie.



The very idea that there was world-wide flood doesn’t even fit in with known observations of the real world. We simply don’t see any evidence for such a catastrophic event having ever happened. Moreover had it happed the evidence for it would stick out like a sore thumb in the geological record of the earth. The evidence that it ever happened just isn’t there.

Not to mention the fact that the logistics of pulling off the event are utterly absurd even if magic is involved. Also with a God who can cure cancer it doesn’t even make any sense. Why would God even bother flooding the entire planet and killing all the plants and wildlife when all he would have had to do was give all the sinners heart attacks. After all they were supposedly having sex like crazy, it wouldn’t even have look all that unnatural that way. The idea that God would need to flood the entire planet flies in the face that with God all things are possible. Flooding the entire planet isn’t an all-wise thing for an all-powerful God to do.

Just to believe that the flood ever even happened would be another lie I’d have to tell myself. I can’t honestly believe that God would be that lame. And again, it’s a picture of a God doing horrific things! The Sci-fi monster in action again!

On a completely separate note it would also represent God CONCEDING to Satan that he has won all those souls. There are so many problems with this story that I would really need to become a completely airhead to claim to actually believe that it happened and makes sense.

I can’t do that. It’s not a choice. I’d have to lie to myself and to God to pretend that it actually makes sense to me.

Finally, the flood flies in the face of a supposedly unchanging God who “So loved the world”. If he so loved the world why is he flooding it and killing everyone?

I also have to seriously ask why an all-wise, and all-knowing God didn’t NIP THINGS IN THE BUD???

Why would he have waited until the whole world was corrupt? Is this the same God who was there when the people were building the tower of Babel, and he magically confused their tongues and made them disperse before they got very far with the tower they were building to heaven?

God was able to magically confuse their tongues, and disperse the crowd with no problems in that event. But when it came to the great flood he let thins get out of control to where he had no choice but to kill everyone.

This is a God who’s behavior is inconsistent. A God who’s behavior CHANGES. A picture of an undependable God!



You may have a point, it may not actually say in the Bible that God has a Master Plan. But that is often what religious people claim.

What people claim about this biblical God is that he is All-Wise, All-Knowing, All-Powerful, Unchanging, All-Loving, and Perfect.

Ok, maybe it doesn’t actually say these things in the Bible. Maybe these are just popular misconceptions about the biblical God. Maybe God is no all-wise and he makes mistakes. Maybe God is not all-powerful and he is limited in how he can solve problems (This flies in the face of the very popular saying that “With God all things are possible”) . Maybe the biblical God is not all-loving, and he does change his mind, and his persona, and his ways quite often.

I’m fine with that. In fact, according to the biblical stories I don’t see how the biblical God can be anything but a less than all-wise entity struggling to try to keep a blundered universe in order.

That might make sense.

But then we’d have to own up to the fact that God is not All-Wise, All-Knowing, All-Powerful, Unchanging, All-Loving, and Perfect. We’d have to own up to the fact that he’s barely any smarter than the average Joe on the street! And that’s he’s unpredictable!

Yes we could do that, but with such a flawed story that has no reasonable reason to believe it, should we even WANT TO???

The pantheistic picture of God truly is a picture of a God that is all-wise and truly perfect. Now if we have a choice between two pictures of God. One is a picture of a God who isn’t any smarter than many humans, and the other one where God is infinitely wise, Which picture should we believe might actually reflect the true nature of God?

I don’t see why God would be peeved at me if I pick the most perfect picture I can possible find and believe that picture is the picture of God. Surely God would be pleased that I at least thought he was all-wise, and all-powerful, and all-loving. At least I’m giving him a compliment.

MorningSong and Wouldee want me to go to God with this terrible picture of a blood-thirsty bumbling idiot and say to God, “Here I thought this was a picture of YOU!”

What an insult to God!!!

My response to Morningsong,



It is a scientific fact that if you don't believe something you cannot see it.

Hypnotist's have also demonstrated that if a person can be convinced to believe something is there that is not there, they will indeed see it.

Funches calls it "delusion" others call it "Hallucination." I don't know what it is. Perhaps an apparition.

Belief itself is a powerful thing in the implicate order of this holographic illusion we call reality. All that can be imagined and believed can be brought into our awareness and experienced as reality.



The hypnotized mind can be influenced to believe that anything makes perfect sense. Make a study of hypnotism and you will understand this principle of mind.



I tell people the same thing about aliens.

The truth is, there are some people who cannot be hypnotized.




If I showed you a picture of me with Jesus, or with an alien you would not believe. Even if I brought Jesus or that alien over to your house, you would not believe. You, morningsong would not believe either.



The will is always and has always been free. It is innate in the nature of all that has consciousness and all that exists. No so-called creator god can give or take the will away from any living entity. It is part of all that is, it means life and existence and individuality. The will is the power of thought and self direction. It is not taken or given. It just is.




I will hope you keep that promise. Abra is perfect the way he is and he can't go back to the dark ages anyway. Why should he? He is an enlightened soul and he moves forward, not backward. Be well.



Accept the things you cannot change and have the wisdom to know the difference.



JB

This very notion that the Bible purposely doesn’t make sense until a person believes in it is itself a ludicrous idea. And there are even passages in the Bible that suggest that this idea is true!

What would be anyone’s incentive to believe in something that appears as total nonsense.

Even if the God of the Bible were true this kind of treachery would be a deceitful act in and of itself.

Come Judgment day all a person would need to do is say to God,..

“Well, the book didn’t make any sense!”

Then God would say, “That’s because you didn’t believe in it!”

Then the person would say, “So why should I believe in something that doesn’t make any sense?”

What would God say then?

He’d kind of be backed into a corner wouldn’t he? Not such a wise God after all.

He’d basically have to pardon everyone who didn’t believe in his nonsensical book, because he purposely deceived them by arranging to have it appear to be nonsensical to them.

This whole notion is incredulous in its own right. This is a picture of a seriously deceitful game-playing God.

The story starts out with God who simply wanting people to obey his rules, but then it ends up with a God who makes it impossible for a non-believer to believe that the stories where the rules are supposed to be laid out even makes any sense? What sense does that make? None!

This is a religion that got so far off track from its original purpose that it has to make up all kinds of absurd little deceitful idiosyncrasies just to try to justify its own absurdities.

It’s gone from being a story about a God who wants people to behave, to becoming a story about a very deceitful God who plays hide and seek and makes it extremely difficult for any intelligent rational-thinking person to believe in him.

This whole notion utterly absurd MorningSong. These little absurd notions only paint a picture of a very deceitful God who is more interested in screwing people over than in accepting the righteous.

It basically suggests that decent honest people who simply aren’t prepared to believe that God is deceitful aren’t righteous people themselves!

There’s no logic in that at all. Why would God make it so difficult for sincere honest people to believe in him? What does that have to do with the original purpose of God wanting people to obey his rules?

I don’t believe that the creator of this universe is anywhere near as deceitful as the biblical picture of God demands that he must be.

Rather than believing that God is that screwed up, it’s a whole lot more sensible to just realize that the stories cant be from God. Now there’s an idea that makes perfect sense!

Surely God won’t condemn decent people to hell just for being sensible! Where’s the rule that says “Thou Shalt Not Be Sensible!”.

Most cults seek out people who need the support and forgiveness of others and who will do or believe anything to get it.

Take for example a man who has committed a horrible crime or lived a horrible "evil" life over the most of it.

Christianity believes that this man can be forgiven if he truly repents, and then he is pure as the driven snow and can even become a messenger of God.

To be forgiven for any and all of your crimes or sins and to start with a clean slate is what Christianity offers to people. It gives them a chance to regain their dignity and regain righteousness.

That is why you will find so many Christians who have such terrible pasts. They lead lives that they are not proud of and cannot even forgive themselves for. They have no reasonable excuse for how they have lived their life.

But now they are born again, and have been forgiven. They are saved from their own demons of guilt they have carried with them for their lives. They are loved and forgiven and accepted. It is really like being born again as being reincarnated because they now leave their past behind them and try to forget about it.

With reincarnation you truly do forget about your past and are reborn again. But with Christianity, you do it in this life. You are born again to the new you. You reinvent yourself. You are free from your sins of the past and welcomed with open arms by others like you who have done the same.

I think the attraction of Christianity is more about reinventing your life than about life after death. It is more about being forgiven and being accepted and loved than what happens to your soul after you die.

The reason is because most Christians fear death, and they mourn their loved ones when they die and they wonder if there really is a heaven. They don't really believe in it.

The attraction is all about having the burden of their own guilt and self hate taken away from them. It is all about releasing the responsibility for their past sins and crimes against others and believing that they are forgiven and washed clean and accepted by others again. Its about regaining a feeling of righteousness and goodness and starting out new to live a better life.

It is forgiveness and acceptance they want. I can see why it attracts people.

But even people in AA work on trying to make amends to people they have wronged. I don't know how successful they are.

Being responsible for your own actions is too much of a burdon for some people, they need to be saved from their own self hate and guilt.

If people would just be responsible and forgive themselves and face the consequences for their own actions, there would be no need of a religion that absolves people from their sins.

This is what the new consciousness is all about. Being responsible for yourself.

JB

(((((Abra))))))

Well in that case it was definitely popcorn-flavored pudding that I didn't make!!!

I made you some chocolate pudding to eat while you wait to get to heaven. I heard it takes a while to get there... and by some of the stories I read I think we all actually stay here on earth for a couple thousand years or something while waiting for the angels to stop fighting...