Truly. It would take a pretty sick person to reject love and joy.

In fact, if anyone did choose to do that their sanity would truly come into question.

At what point does mental illness qualify as "Knowing not what they do"

Clearly even the Bible has Jesus telling us with his dying breath that he is against judging people who know not what they do.

So would that make insane people exempt from judgment since they don't have the ability to think clearly? Maybe instead of coming back as a cockroach they'll come back as a mocking bird and just have to eat cockroaches for a living.

This begs the thought that that is why God is called a supernatural entity. He is not natural, for many reasons, one being that He is perfect, the other, that archeologists still haven't found His foreskin.

I have to laugh at Adam & Eve's situation.
They were an example of blaming others for their failings.
So, God asks them, "what have you done?"
Instead of owning up to their own failings,
for instance saying; "Sorry God, I f**ked up".
Eve basically said, "The devil made me do it" ...
Adam basically said, "She made me do it" ..
Seems everything went to hell in a handbasket after that.

But since hell exists only in the minds of the relgious, the non-righteous and wicked non-believers never go to hell.

My humble apologies for making my reply sound so personal, that was not my intention. It was my intention to use your reply in a generalized way becasue so much of what I hear, of other's beliefs, strike me in the same way as your reply did.

Too often we end up attempting to convince each other that our beliefs are wrong, or right. I never try to convince my "face-to-face" friends that their beliefs are wrong -- UNLESS they are attempting to overshadow my rights and freedoms by making what's right for themselves the norm for all.

If that happens I try to change the way they concieve human ethics which includes their right to believe as they wish, but does not give them the right to inflict their personal believe on others via forced behavior.



The logical error is in thinking that what you 'understand' to be the belief of many faithful legions is a belief of one - Congratulations you have created a religion. You have every right to behave in accordance with any set of values your mind has dictated to you or any set of values that has been channelled into your brain, or any set of values given you by another - as long as your behavior is non-invasive on other's rights.

I also don't argue that faith is stupid, that is a point you've made. I argued that faith in religious beliefs does not make sense at a logical level and that is not a slur it's the truth. The truth of that is not a misunderstanding either. Logic dictates that the limitations of religious beliefs are necessary if faith is all that motivates an individual into believing.

Because that is the truth it would make it so much easier if those who have faith in a religious belief would accept the limitations of their beliefs with respect to science just as I have to accept that science is limited to observable behavior of interactive 'physical' elements.

Of course I have to admit I am very saddened by the limitations that some religious beliefs place on a young mind. Such restrictions are not due to some intrinsic fault of religious faith - rather, the limitiation comes from enforcing a belief on a young mind that requires justification of dogmatic regurgitation of an endless stream of various interpretations of something called scripture. But I think that's a tale for another thread.

From what I am given to understand,
hell is not the "place" depicted as a physical place ...
the word itself is derived from mistranslations.
As to "hell in a handbasket",
It would have been more understandable to have said ...
"...everything went downhill after that..."
The ultimate end is death and a grave.
Hell is the "abode of the dead" ... not the living.
It's pretty easy to see it. Cemetaries and crypts.
The only "living" I've ever seen around it, are those
who search for history and those who bury the dead.
Everyone regardless of belief, ends up in the grave.
The big debate is what happens afterwards.
However, there seems to have been some extraordinary circumstances
where a few "ascended" ... and it is that which has my attention.

They never sin either because "sin" is a term completely owned by religious dogma.

Hmmm I thought we where perfect, we where each made special and given the ability to make our own choices, what we become after we are born is pretty much left to us and whoever has control over our lives.

We will only ever be as perfect as we want to be, or as perfect as we see ourselves..My kids are perfect, my freinds are perfect, and I am perfect just as I am, soooooooo did God make a mistake, nah, its just our perception of perfect.

What is perfect, to me something perfect is something that I love just how it is..

So if that's the case to me most things are pretty perfect just how they are, including God

BUT thats just my opinion

"the word itself is derived from mistranslations."

You need not go any further.

The entire frigging scripture is a mistranslation of a few wine-crazed writers' accounts of their delirium tremens and other of their collective hallucinations.

Just trash the Good Book. I wish there were book burnings for that.

as tempting as it would be to "trash" the books,
it's all the more interesting to "investigate"
and discover where a true meaning was intented ...
vs a meaning that some had misunderstood
or outright perverted to steer others to their own
ends.
No doubt people key on the discrepancies ...
but that does not necessarily invalidate it,
but that's what makes a lot of it worth digging deeper into
and really see what's going on "in between the lines".
Anybody can read something and simply take it for face value and
for that, of course it makes the entire concept of the
scripture suspect. However, it is when we begin searching
for truth and in a spirit of truth, that we discover that
the scripture isn't the foundation to be depended upon.
What is to be depended upon, is the spirit within us.
After that, then the scriptures start making some sense.

All right. Assuming anybody bought that what you say here... in your own words.

If discrepancies and factual and theoretical and even logical contradictions and discrepancies are not enough to discredit the bible,

then please tell us what it is in your view that actually can discredit the bible.

Title of the thread is "God and Perfection".

Perhaps imperfection is perfection for it brings creativity to enjoy more variety.

So if a God existed, he wanted to create imperfection to perfect perfection.

For example: It is harsh to see a snake swallow a mouse alive. Doesn't look like perfection to most of us...but perhaps it is perfection for God. To be able to share ourselves even through death for the purpose of another to survive. A perfect combination of sharing ourselves for each other.

I know it is strange what I am saying....but it is one way to see why the world is the way it is.

What we see as perfection is probably only one side of imperfection and what another sees as imperfection is but for another eyes perfection. Therefore both work well together.

Of course buddhism has a great explanation for this, but that is for another thread to start one day. Unfortunately the Buddhist thread is as dead as the big rat I threw in the trash the other day. I think everyone is spending more time meditating then discussing about such issues. lol

Nope that makes perfect sense, as it is often the little imperfections in people that makes you love them, the things that make you laugh and just makes them them.

Without any imperfections then they would just be a very boring perfect person..

Imperfection makes life worth living.

Yep otherwise we would bore everyone to death

So. Without imperfection no one would be alive because we are all bored to death!

yes or the world would be very under populated as we would be sitting around inour perfect little worlds doing our perfect little things with no time for our perfectly imperfect fun that makes our lives interesting..