Islington Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 If God needs to believe things, which God does he believe in? I once had a very long discusion about believing and knowing. Or better, as we realised that we where discussing about this topic we finaly came to an agreement. In German the words are: Glauben und Wissen. Wissen comes from Weisheit, meaning Wisdom Glauben comes from geloben, meaning to promis, to vow So if I say in German: "I know sth." I have learnd about it, if I say: "I believe in sth." I promis you that it is as I say and that I have sworn myself to it. If someone promis me sth. he wants me not to question his statement, if he somehow learned sth. and tells me about it I can try to follow his learning and discuss with him. Where does this take us? I know I am, I know my Gods and and I know I am no longer xtian. The Xtians say: I believe in God, God does not believe in you. Why does God say to them: he does not believe in me? Why does he not teach them I don't? Because he can't! That means he has no control over me, showing he is not omnipotent. Or (to say it the other way around) if he is omnipotent, he does want me to exist. Which means: God knows I exist but says he believes I don't. He lies to his Followers... If he lies about me, does that means, he lied elsewhere? Don't want to think about where this is leading if a xtian would follow this argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 We Don't Exist., God "doesn't believe" in atheists. Since God can't believe there are no gods, I can do one more thing then He can't. Therefore God can not exist. That's usually my reply. We can also sin, which he can't. We can go to Hel, which he can't. We can make a decision by our own free will and he can't stop us. We can use logic, but he can't. We can have morals, but he got no moral platform to stand on or argument to why he should be moral. We can die, but he can't. We were born, which he wasn't. We know true suffering, which he doesn't. We can learn, he can't. We can have regrets, he doesn't. God shrinks the more we see what we have and what we can do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perianwalsh Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 my case is arguable,as i stay in the religion for a short period-although i have a nominal period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbobrob Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 Here's a point that confuses me, and not in that Brother Jeff spoof kind of way: Jesus went to Hell. Therefore God went to Hell. Therefore Hell is not a place where God cannot go. Therefore Hell is not the absence of God. God might of written the Bible, but he sure could have used a fact checker and copy editor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 If God needs to believe things, which God does he believe in? I once had a very long discusion about believing and knowing. Or better, as we realised that we where discussing about this topic we finaly came to an agreement. In German the words are: Glauben und Wissen. Wissen comes from Weisheit, meaning Wisdom Glauben comes from geloben, meaning to promis, to vow So if I say in German: "I know sth." I have learnd about it, if I say: "I believe in sth." I promis you that it is as I say and that I have sworn myself to it. If someone promis me sth. he wants me not to question his statement, if he somehow learned sth. and tells me about it I can try to follow his learning and discuss with him. Where does this take us? I know I am, I know my Gods and and I know I am no longer xtian. The Xtians say: I believe in God, God does not believe in you. Why does God say to them: he does not believe in me? Why does he not teach them I don't? Because he can't! That means he has no control over me, showing he is not omnipotent. Or (to say it the other way around) if he is omnipotent, he does want me to exist. Which means: God knows I exist but says he believes I don't. He lies to his Followers... If he lies about me, does that means, he lied elsewhere? Don't want to think about where this is leading if a xtian would follow this argument. Wow! It must get very interesting at your and Thurisaz's house. If I were a Christian I would try pretty hard to stay out of your way. You're a good person to have on my side, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 Here's a point that confuses me, and not in that Brother Jeff spoof kind of way: Jesus went to Hell. Therefore God went to Hell. Therefore Hell is not a place where God cannot go. Therefore Hell is not the absence of God. Good point. It might be absent of God now, but it sure wasn't if Jesus went there. So the answer I suspect some Christians would give is that Jesus didn't go to Hell, but to Heaven for a few days and then came back. But what kind of friggin "taking on the burden of sin" deal was that? People dying and going to Hell and Jesus take on the same burden go for vacation to Hawaii, walking the beaches drinking pina colada, in a luxury hotel??? It's all so twisted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 Here's a point that confuses me, and not in that Brother Jeff spoof kind of way: Jesus went to Hell. Therefore God went to Hell. Therefore Hell is not a place where God cannot go. Therefore Hell is not the absence of God. God might of written the Bible, but he sure could have used a fact checker and copy editor. Either that, or maybe the fundies need a fact checker. Fact of the matter is, the idea that God dictated the Bible word for word came out of Princeton Theological Seminary less than a century ago from the pen of Benjamin B. Warfield. I may be wrong about the date but the man lived till 1921, so he would have been writing right about a century ago. Read: Sandeen, Ernest R. Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millennialism, 1800-1930. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp 120-121. Briefly stated, he and his predecessors were Calvinists and Calvin taught (according to the Westminster Confession of Faith, says Sandeen) to rely on the Holy Spirit's authority. But that meant to depend on an "inner light," and in the late nineteenth century there were a lot of mystics or enthusiasts around who held beliefs that these Princetonian theologians believed was heretical. So they changed it from "authority of the Holy Spirit" to "authority of the inspired Scripture." Warfield came along later and changed that to "authority of the apostles." He said we can trust the apostles for whatever evidence. This meant we could trust them for archeaology, science, and history. Since they realistically didn't know all this stuff, they got it from God. Suddenly we had a dictated Bible! That idea does not go back further than 1900. It's a NEW idea! We don't have to accept it at all. Fundies are lying to us! So whatever "facts" the fundies are getting out of the bible, they're probably not facts at all. Just one more thing that counts for whatever cause they or their leaders dreamed up. Not that they are going to believe this. They are going to snow you and "prove" that inspiration goes all the way back to the NT because it says so itself. And it does, but I have read some history of hermeneutics. By "inspiration" they did NOT mean what we mean today. I would guess that the idea about hell being the absense of God was dreamed up in the past century because it's not in the bible that I know of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 That's the thing Ruby, Christianity as we know it today is not the same it was 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, or 1500 years ago. It has evolved with society and culture, but Christians don't see that, they think they believe the same things as the first apostles, which I don't think they do. No one really knows what Paul really believed. His letters are not enough to explain everything, and he most likely changed his views too over time, so the early letter might be based on different ideas than the last one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 That's the thing Ruby, Christianity as we know it today is not the same it was 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, or 1500 years ago. It has evolved with society and culture, but Christians don't see that, they think they believe the same things as the first apostles, which I don't think they do. No one really knows what Paul really believed. His letters are not enough to explain everything, and he most likely changed his views too over time, so the early letter might be based on different ideas than the last one! There are ways to get a better idea of what he meant than just from reading his letters. I think a surer way is to look at how Jewish teachers taught their students to read their sacred scriptures in their time. Paul claims he was taught at the feet of one of those teachers. So we know approximately how he was taught to read the "Bible" of his day. That does not prove what he believed about the letters he was writing because he obviously had a major change of mind somewhere along the way. Also, I do not think he believed he was writing sacred scripture. The way his letters got to be canonized might be likened to (maybe I'm stretching analogy too far) letters in the Martyr's Mirror written by Anabaptists 450 years ago. Mennonites today could decide to include them in the Bible. Or Lutherans could decide to include some of Luther's writings in the Bible from the 1500s. Or maybe something from Calvin would merit inclusion. See what I'm getting at? Somebody wrote some letters. Many generations later somebody decided to make those letters into sacred texts. A few thousand years later still others believed God himself wrote those letters word for word. We don't even see reality the same way they did! We don't even read the same way they did! First century Christians saw analogy and figurative speech where fundies today see literal interpretation. If I remember correctly, the Creation story is one such item. Maybe I should go back and reread some of the history of hermeneutic texts. Because fundies not only say the darnedest things, they imagine the darnedest things. It's impossible to imagine first-century thinking if it's not "painted" for you. At least, it was for me. Pretend for a bit that fairies and trolls are real. Now forget that you are pretending. Don't be scared. There's a place for all of us--fairies and humans. Just learn the rules. Then you will be okay. Ask permission of the right folks for entry on their space and they will admit you. Be respectful of them and they will trust you. Be aware that you can hurt them. God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the angels--these were the Christian "fairy folk." But they looked totally different in the first century Palestine than they do in the 21st century Western Society. I am quite sure that if I explained it for them they would accuse me of promoting a false doctrine. Or, maybe you are like Socrates and don't believe in spirits. The world would still look drastically different than it does to us. We can see it from the perspective of space satellite. The best of them could see it only from land-drawn maps covering but a quarter of this one planet, and what could be viewed from that part of the planet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jedah Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 You say nothing to them, because their in denial. They arent saying that you never were christian because they believe it, their saying that because they have an emotional need to say it. The idea that someone could have fully believed and followed the same as them, and then come to the realization that its all BS, scares people. It makes them feel afraid that it really may actually be BS. It stirs doubt in their own mind, and as we all know: Doubt is "a tool of satan". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 One could turn the Marine glurge on it's head and twat them, since if you don't exist you can't have assaulted them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 Gramps Great to see you again! I missed your humor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 It's the whole Marx Brothers vibe! xxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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