Olrik <olrik666@yahoo_BACON!_.com> wrote in message news:<ooT0d.494$Qa2.961@weber.videotron.net>...

keith wrote:

Olrik <olrik666@yahoo_BACON!_.com> wrote in message news:<Q5x0d.46607$sz2.891488@wagner.videotron.net>...

keith wrote:

Olrik <olrik666@yahoo_BACON!_.com> wrote in message news:<Pya0d.31422$sz2.520269@wagner.videotron.net>...

keith wrote:

Olrik <olrik666@yahoo_BACON!_.com> wrote in message news:<s2Q%c.83727$fU6.1304686@wagner.videotron.net>...

keith wrote:

(snip)

I'd say: yes we do--all of us (I counter assert to your bald
assertion). From what you write below you seem to think I meant that
we all need God to help keep our spirits high. That's not what I
meant. I meant that we wouldn't even continue to exist without God.

Life sustains itself by natural processes. If you think that all of life
and the whole universe is willed into existence by some sort of diety,
then be my guest. But it simply amounts to a belief.

It *is* a belief (I appreciate your willingness to host me in my
beliefs, BTW:-). But if you are willing to concede that it is
*possible* that what I just said about God is true, then you have to
admit that our being free doesn't imply we have no need of God--you
just believe we have no need of God.

That's pretty much marmelade thinking.

If by "marmelade thinking" you mean I was right, then I agree:-)

LOL. It meant that it did not make a lot of sense to me. "Word salad"
was probably a more appropriate description of your sentence.

If by word salad you mean my comment was brilliant and insightful,
then I agree:-)

Seriously though, let me try to explain my point. I took you to say
that if we are free then we have no need of God. I suggested that we
need God to continue to exist and that this doen't mean we aren't
free. YOU seemed to concede that I was *possibly* right which would
mean that our being free didn't imply we have no need of God--because
if our being free implied we have no need of God then what I suggested
be *impossible*.

It's all very simple : you
believe in a god, I don't. Theists first invented the concept of god or
gods, and the sceptical people said : "Huh?". It's been downhill from
there. ;-)

Show us evidence, then we'll see.

If you really *want* to see evidence, I'll tell you what has convinced
me. But that's not really the issue here. The issue is your claim that
being free *implies* we have no need of God. I offered a possible
scenario where we are free and still have need of God, thus what you
said *isn't* implied.

By saying that we are free (up to a point, of course; we all live in
societies with rules), I mean that there's no point in inventing a god
that gives us freedom and free will when we already have them by our
very own nature.

I agree there's no point in *inventing* a God:-)

I don't see how that addresses my point.

Your point, as I see it : god gives free will, but if you don't believe
in said god, you're punished. For all eternity. Why? (Oh, and BTW, that
god is all merciful, forgiving and love). Nice crappy dogma. No offense.

Hmmm... none taken? :-)

I do believe that God gives us existence and that he made us as free
creatures. If freedom is part of our essential nature, then we
wouldn't exist unless we were free; that possibility is consistent
with my beliefs. But that's not th epoint I was making. My point was
that God administering punishments for our evil decisions doesn't make
us not free.

The problem with your reasonning is that you put your god in everything
(our creation, our freedom, our decisions, etc.). But I don't believe in
any kind of god. And our "evil decisions" are dealt with humans, not "god".

In other words, you don't agree with my religion at all. That's OK but
I don't see how that's relevant to *this* discussion. The claim we are
debating doesn't depend on my religious beliefs being true.

Not only do I not agree with your religion, I also do not agree/believe
in any sort of god. So that makes my point relevant. Take out god from
the human equation and you would not see any difference in our day to
day lives. A lost of civilisations can testify to that.

I'm not sure what you mean by "take God out of the equation". I would
say that if God were not in the equation the equation itself wouldn't
exist.

Where did you get that? YOu seem to me to be spouting political
rhetoric that has nothing to do with the stuff I've actually said.

"Political"? LOL. I object (in a purely rhetorical way, mind you) about
a god who allegedly gives us free will, makes itself utterly invisible
and useless and then condemns those who doubts it to eternal damnation.
Did I get it right? If not, please explain.

1. I wonder if you have any support for the claim that the Bible
teaches anyone will be eternally damned. I have my doubts, but that's
for a different discussion.

Well, I never read the bible. What I hear from the fundies, though, is
that "If you do not accept JC as your personal saviour and lord, you'll
go to hell". And I also know that atheists and other "heretics" were
burned at the stakes through out history.

Indeed they were, much to the shame of the Christian community. I
agree that most conservative Christians teach eternal hell for those
who are not saved, and even if they are right my claim about what
Christianity teaches they are punished *for* is correct. But I do have
my doubts about their reading of the bible.

From what I read, the bible can be interpreted in so many ways as to
make it irrelevant as a teaching tool, and even less so as a moral compass.

I dunno. Love your neighbor as yourself, help your neighbor in need
without concern for whether or not they'll be able to help you later
etc. seem pretty decent moral compasses. They don't remove the need
for exercising judgment, but Christ himself preached against that kind
of legalism anyway.

2. According to the Bible and to even conservative Christian
theology, you are condemned for sin, not for honest theological
mistakes. You seem to think the punishment is for doubting God's
existence; where do you get that? The punishment is for doing wrong
things, things that you know are wrong.

Christians "sins" are nowadays utterly trivial. "Gluttony"? Send a third
of the USA to hell! I'm joking. Enyy, pride, sloth, etc, are just human
traits. These "sins" were used by the clergy to control the population,
to mold people into "acceptable" behaviours.

I don't believe that what's wrong changes from era to era. The human
tendency to indulge our envy, pride, gluttony, sloth has resulted
incredible harm: wars, broken families, holocausts, chattel slavery,
the list goes on and on. I don't see how you can consider any of those
sins trivial.

I see your point. But those foibles are pretty much in our nature. They
can be controlled in some ways through education (peer pressure,
schools, churches, etc). But the causes of most of our problems are
beyond "sins". We are a violent species, prone to disobedience, and we
are very much selfish.

Engineering the perfect being is not possible for now.

Not possible without the help of God, I'd agree:-)

Fine. But that does not concern me, as an atheist, or the believers of
religions without the "hell" contraption.

But if hell really exists, you *ought* to be concerned about whether
or not you are doing what's necessary to avoid it, right?

I know prisons exist (I even saw one once, from the outside!), so I do
my best to avoid them. But "hell" is a religious concept without any

kind, I repeat, without *ANY KIND* of even the beginning of a shred of
evidence. And no, the bible is not evidence.

I would not agree that the Bible is not evidence. I do agree that you
don't consider it evidence.

You can't consider it evidence, because most of it is not corroborated
anywhere else. Sure, a few names and places can be verified, but that's
about it.

So you are saying that no set of evidence can be evidence unless it is
corroborated by other sets of evidence? That would of course take an
infinite amount of evidence!

Of course not. The legal system would collapse if it would take either a
mountain of evidence to convict someone, or if we could convict someone
by a single statement from a witness.

By your logic, any book is true.

I don't see how that follows from what I said. What might follow is
that a universal statement "you ought never believe a book unless you
have evidence the book is true" is a bogus rule. But that doesn't
imply that *all* books can be properly believed that way.

The definition: God is the being who created and sustains the
existence of the universe. I should not that if the universe were not
created nor needed sustaining then there would be no being that *fit*
the definition.

So god is a simple explanation used by theists about how the universe
was created...

No. God is not an explanation, God is a being. You asked for a
definition and I gave one to you.

Walt Disney made a fortune out of our passion to anthropomorphise
animals. Your god "being" is just us, but aggrandized to put us, "mere
humans", to shame. As it is, your god is no more than a king, a judge, a
jury and an executioner. It simply responds to some kind of bizarre need
for people to have some sort of transcendence.

I don't agree with your above assertion (except that Walt Disney made
a lot of money:-)

It was not an assertion. It was an idea, an opinion. And I think it's a
good one, too, as you ignored it. ;-)

How did I ignore it? I said I disagreed with it.

We are a hierarchical species. Who's higher up than the Pope, or the
King? Well, "god", of course! And to who does this god talk to, or elect
as his representative on this Earth? Well, the King! And the Pope!

I think you get my drift.

I think I do. You believe that God doesn't exist, that we see a set of
dots from lower leaders to higher leaders and we improperly extend
those dots to a fictional being we call God. And from your last
sentence it seems you also claim that those leaders use our imaginary
being to keep themselves in power. That's a pretty straightforward
story, but I woulkdn't agree. For one thing, I don't think you need
any Pope or king to go between you and Christ.

I was not talking about "christ", I was talking about "god". You tried
to change the subject from "god" to "christ", which is quite telling.
I'm not interested in third partys here. Either there's a god or not.
Intermediaries are not a concern.

I am sorry I wasn't clear about the theolgical presupposition of my
comments. Christ is not an intermediary between you and God. As a
Christian, I'd say Christ is the 2nd person of the trinitarian God.

You assert the odds against my God existing are very bad. You haven't
supported that assertion and I don't agree with it. If you are serious
about *wanting* evidence for God, I will try to oblige. let me know.

Look. Humans have been at it for thousands of years. We invented
hundreds of gods, we discarded most, kept a few. Whatever.

By "whatever" I take you to be saying you are *not* really interested
in any evidence for God.

By "whatever", I mean that god or gods are a dime a dozen. We are very
good at inventing stuff. Go into any bookstore and find the "Fiction",
"Science-fiction" or "Literature" sections. Have a ball.

I agree that we are very good at creating stories. I'd say your story
about how humans came to believe in God is jus t such a story.

It's not a story. Most people/civilisations/tribes/whatever invented
some forms of god or gods. The god of rain, snow, the forest, the sea,
the land, the sun, the moon, anything. They worshipped anything that
they liked or needed to survive.

What you haven't shown is that those people *invented* their gods,
rather than tried to understand and describe the God they intuitively
knew existed.

So my conclusion is not that there are gods, but that we have a wild
imagination. And in the end, that imagination can help us invent stuff
that is helpful. (I might mention that religion (and the idea of some
sort of afterlife) is helpful in that it can soothes the mind of
people). But the real helpful stuff and real knowledge comes from
science, maths, biology, etc., not to mention religion-free philosophy,
social studies, politics, and a general sense of enlightenment,
attainable mostly by ditching religion and its dogmas.

I would not agree that the religion-free search for truth is better
than seeking to hear God's voice. I submit the horrific brutalities
committed by Stalin, Mao Tse Dung and Pol Pot as evidence against what
seems to be your overconfidence in the power of human thought unaided
by God.

(I'd merge the "Religion" section into fiction, but since it's also
closely related to the "Philosophy" section, I'll let it go). ;-)

Just so you stock good books and are available to help me find them,
where you put them:-)

If any kind of god existed, I'd know by now. Heck, we'd all know. There
would be no questions asked, it would be self-evident. And "Life, the
Universe and Everything(R)" is not evidence of god, it's evidence of
"Life, the Universe and Everything(R)".

So your mind is completely closed on the question; that's your
business.

No, but my mind does not accept tall tales without evidence. If not, I
would accept astrology, telepathy, homeopathy, ghosts, etc.

I don't insist you accept my religious claims unless you think they
are true. I didn't intend to give you that impression. But (I quibble
like this all the time:-) it's not the case that IF you refuse to
*always* reject claims unless theirs evidence THEN you have to accept
every claim. The fact is, yuo *have* to accept some claims without
evidence, otherwise you;d never even be able to start the reasoning
process.

It's all a matter of trust. I do not need concrete, first-hand evidence
from everything, as long as the claim is repeatable and/or corroborated
by third partys. Everything else I reject.

How do you corroborate the idea that it is never acceptable to believe
what you cannot corroborate by third parties or repeat? But I would
also say that I repeat my recognition of God's finger prints in the
universe nearly every day:-)

As for philosophy, psychology, human studies, history, sociology, etc.,
those fields are ripe for interpretations and discussions and are pretty
much in a permanent state of fluctuation. It's like slavery : the idea
was perfectly OK for christians until it was deemed unacceptable by
enlightened people. Then, and only then, did the christians abide.

I would make the quibbling claim that slavery wasn't OK even when
Christians thought it was.

The very word "believe" is loaded. If I say "I believe I'll have pizza
tonight", as opposed to "I think I'll have pizza tonight", I don't see
any real differences. It's just everyday talk. Neither term firmly
establishes that you'll have pizza.

That's true.

But we can even go further. If I say "I trust I'll pizza tonight", it
can interpreted as "He's going somewhere where they serve pizza" or "His
girlfriend promised him pizza".

So "trust" can be seen as being more powerful than a simple belief.

On the other hand, I would say that if you said I *don't* believe I
was ever born you'd be nuts, which means you *do* believe you were
born. The word "believe" gets used in lots of colloquial ways, but one
of the wasy it's used is to mean "to think something is true".
Philosophers sometimes say that "knowledge is justified true belief".
On that construal everything you know to be true you also believe to
be true. I was using the word in that sense.

OK, so you want to appropriate the word "believe" or "belief".

No, I want to use it appropriately. I would claim that "belief" as in
"whatever you think is true" is an acceptable usage of the word.

It seems
important to you that I "believe" in something, anything.

No more important that that there existed a time before you were born
and a tile after--I just think you do believe things. This doesn't
imply you aren't open to th epossibility that you are wrong.

And if I do,
then I left the door wide open to the possibility of believing in some
kind of extraordinary being that will grant me the freedom or free will
to state that said being is non-existent, thus putting me in a situation
where I could spend not one, but many eternities in some "hell". Yes,
many eternities, because, frankly, I think that just one eternity is not
enough of a punishment.

I don't think you're *that* bad:-)

I just wanted to illustrate that words can be used in quite different
contexts.

So, finally!, to answer you objection : No, I do not "believe" in the
big-bang theory, as it is not a religion. It is science. The big-bang is
a very interesting proposition, but it is subject to further research.

I didn't intend to say your belief in the big bang--your thinking that
the big band is true even while recognizing the possibility that it
could be falsified later--was a kind of religious belief. I just
wanted to know if you were one of those who thknk the bing bang is
wrong.

The big-bang is a scientific theory. It is falsifiable. And it may very
well be wrong, or just slightly "mistaken". I repeat, the big-bang
theory is not a belief.

Another theory is that your body would be burned if you swam in a vat
of strong acid. Are you saying you don't believe *that*?

If you want a quick answer as to how our universe came to exist and how
*you* exist, then fell free to call any kind of diety to the rescue.

I'm not sure what your point is here. For me God wasn't any kind of
easy answer to a curiousity I had; I was an atheist for years and I
didn't and don't *worry* about how the universe came into being

It just looks to me that a lot of believers want to know where we came
from, why we're here, and where will we end up.

Actually ending up in the right place is more important to most
believers than merely finding out where, I'd guess.

There's no answers
because the questions are stupid. We're born, we live as we can, and
then we die.

I don't think the questions are stupid. I think they are questions
that anyone with curiousity wonders about. And I think we Christians
have the right answers to some of those questions.

So no, it does not matter where the universe comes from, but we like to
enquire just the same!

Then maybe yuo agree with me that it's not *that* dumb to indulge
those questions? Are we talking past each other a bit?

(snip)

I know enough for this issue. There were many people who called
themselves Christians who failed to love their neighbors as
themselves, and who tried to torture people into confessing Christ in
spite of Christ's specific mandate *not* to coerce non-believers into
belief. They were not following the Gospel, since their actions
directly contradict Jesus' mandate.

Well, I see that you're lucid. That's refreshing.

But we are humans, and it is strictly impossible, due to our animal
nature, and our cultures, to think that everybody on this planet will
fall in line, accept the bible jesus, obey all its "teachings", become
perfect and live in perfect bliss and harmony forever.

Exactly. We Christians use the jargon "all are sinful".

Then you despise our very nature.

How do you get that?

You said "We Christians use the jargon "all are sinful"".

We are not "sinful". We are animals.

How are those not compatible statements? I would agree with both.

We try to survive. And as
"intelligent" as we may think we are, we are quite capable of destroying
ourselves. Now, *that's* intelligence for you!

very capable indeed. I think about how easy it was to convince large
numbers of my countrymen to invade a nation because we were told how
scary they were.

We are *animals*. We may go the Moon,
invent computers, think about life and death, but we cannot escape our
nature. Maybe one day we'll find a "cure" for death, and the very same
day we'll find a way to destroy us all.

There already is a cure for death: Christ:-)

Or Zeus, Neptune, Thor, or any kind of god. There was a time when death
was an acceptable fact of life. Then came the time when people found
that unacceptable, and invented the concept of immortality. And why not?
We have the ability to invent all sorts of impossible stuff, like time
travel, hyperspace speeds, etc. Even Utopias.

I wonder how you get that there was ever a time when people found
dying "acceptable"?

It goes without saying BTW that I don't agree with
you about Zeus et al being a cure for death:-)

If you think that the cure for death is christ, it's fine by me. But why
don't we just kill ourselves right now? It seems, according to your
religion, that the shortest way to paradise is to put a bullet through
our brains as soon as possible, in order to reach god, jesus, the santa
maria, the holy spirit, angels with harps on a cloud and be in a total
blissful, orgasmic happiness for all eternity, or even, if you're good,
many more eternities?

Well, I'm not sure tha suicide would accomplish the goal quicker than
going through the life that God planned for us.

But another reason
might be that we have work to do here.

I can admire your christian utopia, in a bizarre sort of way, but I'm
afraid that's not going to happen. But a good start would be to unify
all christians. Then all theists. Clean your own house. Hey, that could
be a good mission in life for a christian.

Clean my own house? What do you mean? I'm not sure what you
specifically mean, but Christ said something very similar: he said we
should worry about the big log in our own eye before we worry about
the tiny splinter in our brother's eye. Good advice, that.

OK, so you're a christian.

Are you :

a catholic?
a protestant?

I am a protestant. In the list of subsets of protestantism you post
below, I am a "whateverist"--I am a Quaker. But right now I am very
active in my church which is a Lutheran church.

That's nice. But if there was only one god, don't you think all
christians would/should be unified? What the differences are about?
Dogmas? Rituals?

I see no reason to think that disagreement between people about stuff
is unexpected. People disagree about all kinds of things, even matters
of fact. Tat's the human condition.

The fact that you know there's no god but just pretend
to believe in one?

That isn't a fact; it is more likely that *you* know there *is* a God
but pretend their isn't, I might say.

The fact that the bible is so unclear and full of
contradictions that you have no idea what to believe?

Not so. I do have an idea about what to believe.

a baptist?
a presbyterian?
a lutheran?
a lunatic?
a pentecostal?
a charismatic?
a unitarian?
a clavinist?
a whateverist?

Do you kiss snakes, speak in tongues, walk on water?

None of the above. I pray, I read the Bible, I go to my church where I
help with our sound system.

What's you angle? Are you a "pure" christian? If so, how do you define
other christians? Who's right, who's wrong?

I dunno. Obviously I have my opinions about things, and by definition
of "my opinion" I think that the different opinions are mistaken. On
the other hand, I know I am fallible, I make mistakes and all, so I am
not willing to say that my catholic friends, my baptist friends, my
calvinist friends etc. aren't real christians. And I am not willing to
say that my atheist friends are horrible evil people. I know a bunch
of atheists and I have no reason to think that I'm a better person
than they are. All I know is that I'm better than *I* was before I
came to know the Lord.

I can't fault you for that. You do what you have to do to survive.

And, yeah, what about the
five other billions persons in the world? Sinners condemned to hell?
Idiots? Just bodies waiting to be enraptured?

I dunno. To let you know where I'm leaning these days: I think there's
a good case for the view that even though Christ is the only way to
salvation, eventually (either in this world or the next) everyone will
eventually repent, trun toward Christ and be saved.

You lost me. Salvation? Repentance? Christ?

That's quite bizarre. Let's see :

So here's a god/being, thoudands of trillions of billions of millions
years old (well, in fact, it always existed, for all backward eternity.
Correct me if I'm wrong).

That's good enough:-)

It's bored out of its skull.

I wouldn't agree with that.

So it decided to
create some sort of universe, or world, or planet. Then it created a few
creatures, including one that had to worship it in order to live, and to
live eternally, at that. And its favorite word was "Behold!" or
something or other.

I don't think that.

Then, seeing that its creation was going to "hell", so to speak, it
decided to eradicate it. So in its wisdom it kept a few people around.
"See if they can survive a flood. Bwhahahahahaha!"

But the survivors were still disobedient. So it created itself a "son",
sent a representative to rape a woman, then she gave birth to a boy.
Then it wisely lost track of that creation for 30 years, just in time to
have it surf the seas barefooted.

And then it arranged for the "son" to be executed, but not for long! No
sir! It took only three days to get the tractor beam in working order.
And then, zip!, off you go!

Rejoice! Kneel! Burn people!

Funny stuff, but I'd not agree with your spin at all.

see you later
Keith