JayL Posted January 1, 2012 Author Share Posted January 1, 2012 Happy New Year to all !!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Realist Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 Jay, I want to draw near to God to hear His voice too. Although on occasions, God suddenly spoke to me out of blue, in most cases Gods speaks me while I am meditating on the Bible. But thus far, I can count these supernatural events with my fingers....( I'd say less than 20 times in past 14 years... ) I hope I can make these encounters much more frequent. I want to and hope to live in God's presence. But this is a topic in which I am still a baby. .. I actually had quite a convo with him last night! It was not until I woke up this morning I realised I had been talking to him on the big white telephone! Still New Years Eve has that effect on a few! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Xtech Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! They are. And they are not unique to Christianity, which is something many Christians apparently are not aware of. Have you studied other religions and culture's beliefs, even just a survey? The Universality of the Golden Rule in the World Religions Christianity All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:1 Confucianism Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state. Analects 12:2 Buddhism Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Udana-Varga 5,1 Hinduism This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you. Mahabharata 5,1517 Islam No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Sunnah Judaism What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3id Taoism Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien Zoroastrianism That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5 The Golden Rule predates Christianity, and in fact likely came about as pre-humans evolved in groups and each individual had to live with norms that protected each other and optimized each other's life (protecting and caring for each other, fairness, etc) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agnosticator Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 Jay, I want to draw near to God to hear His voice too. Although on occasions, God suddenly spoke to me out of blue, in most cases Gods speaks me while I am meditating on the Bible. But thus far, I can count these supernatural events with my fingers....( I'd say less than 20 times in past 14 years... ) I hope I can make these encounters much more frequent. I want to and hope to live in God's presence. But this is a topic in which I am still a baby. Mother Nature speaks to me frequently, everyday! I literally live in Her presence and meditate on Her Glorious Countenance, while She speaks to me. I live in Her and She lives within me! Without Her Presence, I could not live. GLORY!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luv2knit Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 UGH! This is why I refuse to have "discussions" with my christian friends, I don't want to get stuck in this futile loop. Wow, this was painful to read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 UGH! This is why I refuse to have "discussions" with my christian friends, I don't want to get stuck in this futile loop. Wow, this was painful to read. That is the real meaning I get from the Lion's Den. Trying all kinds of strategies and methods here convinces me that none of them will work. So it helps me overcome my urge to talk about this stuff with my friends and family. Happy New Year Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 Jay, I want to draw near to God to hear His voice too. ... mental illness comes in all shapes and sizes! I just recently learned that we should never say that to believers because they're emotionally hurt by it. They're just normal people, hearing voices in their heads, believing that some magical Santa Claus in the ultra-dimensional sky hears them and do miracles. The only thing missing is the wand. They're not delusional to believe these things, no, because that hurts them too much to hear... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 Jay, I want to draw near to God to hear His voice too. ... mental illness comes in all shapes and sizes! Oh come on man you are killing me here. We just got through one big mess because someone thought mental illness was being used as an insult. Right. We should not call anyone delusional, crazy, or insane, since all beliefs are true, real and well supported by evidence. All gods are real. All religions are true. Only the amoral raping atheists are delusional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 So it helps me overcome my urge to talk about this stuff with my friends and family. You know, that's a good point. That's why I like to let all my inner turmoil and thoughts come out on this website, just so I can go on in my daily life and not have to discuss with friends or family. That's exactly right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Realist Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 Jay, I want to draw near to God to hear His voice too. ... mental illness comes in all shapes and sizes! I just recently learned that we should never say that to believers because they're emotionally hurt by it. ... ohh that's tough! They come here with the message one will burn in hell forever? I have no problem with ANY emotional hurt I might inflict them with! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 ... ohh that's tough! They come here with the message one will burn in hell forever? I have no problem with ANY emotional hurt I might inflict them with! You evil insensitive person, you. You're going to Hell for having that attitude. Haha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Realist Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 [You evil insensitive person, you. You're going to Hell for having that attitude. Haha! ... at least all my friends will be there!!! ... what I really dislike about the idea though is warm beer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grasshopper Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! Funny how your deity doesn't live up to its own standards. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayL Posted January 3, 2012 Author Share Posted January 3, 2012 I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! They are. And they are not unique to Christianity, which is something many Christians apparently are not aware of. Have you studied other religions and culture's beliefs, even just a survey? The Universality of the Golden Rule in the World Religions Christianity All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:1 Confucianism Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state. Analects 12:2 Buddhism Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Udana-Varga 5,1 Hinduism This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you. Mahabharata 5,1517 Islam No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Sunnah Judaism What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3id Taoism Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien Zoroastrianism That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5 The Golden Rule predates Christianity, and in fact likely came about as pre-humans evolved in groups and each individual had to live with norms that protected each other and optimized each other's life (protecting and caring for each other, fairness, etc) Note that under Islam the Golden Rule and the reciprocity is LIMITED TO FELLOW MUSLIMS (brothers, fellow believers ) ONLY. That is why they can kill 'infidels' and 'idolators' with impunity. One can even read Judaism similarly. Does fellowman mean fellow Jews? Or does it include goyims as well?? But in Islam, it is clear. Their Golden Rule does NOT extend to non muslims. Other religions are fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayL Posted January 3, 2012 Author Share Posted January 3, 2012 I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! Funny how your deity doesn't live up to its own standards. Actually God does Love his enemies. God loves sinners. Jesus died for sinners. In a way, Jesus died to save his enemies. On the cross he prayed for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him to death. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! Funny how your deity doesn't live up to its own standards. Actually God does Love his enemies. God loves sinners. Jesus died for sinners. In a way, Jesus died to save his enemies. On the cross he prayed for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him to death. It would have been easier if God had not made us his enemies in the first place. Or to simply forgive the way modern humans forgive - you know without blood sacrifice. Then there would be no need for all the other drama. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pratt Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 because god loves his enemies so much that there is a hell for non-believers? because god loves his enemies so much that the holy fire consumes the two idiots that tried to cheat the church money? because god loves his enemies so much that it rained fire and brimstone on sodom and whatever shit? because god loves his enemies so much that his angel of death killed all the 1st borns of eygpt? halle-fucking-jah for a fucking loving god. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grasshopper Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! Funny how your deity doesn't live up to its own standards. Actually God does Love his enemies. God loves sinners. Jesus died for sinners. In a way, Jesus died to save his enemies. On the cross he prayed for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him to death. Liar. Jeezus ignored one of the thieves hanging beside him because the feller didn't kiss his ass. Creating sentient life forms and then sending them to hell for eternal torment is the exact opposite of love. A forgiving deity wouldn't have created a hell in the first place. You know that but you've willfully buried any rational thought deep inside you. Your daily life is a series of encounters between what's real and that which exists only in your private fantasy world, leading to internal anguish and external antagonisms as you try to suppress the obvious. What a shitty way to live. And please save the real-christianity-doesn't-teach-hell bullshit. You betray your bibul ignorance by doing so. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayL Posted January 3, 2012 Author Share Posted January 3, 2012 because god loves his enemies so much that there is a hell for non-believers? because god loves his enemies so much that the holy fire consumes the two idiots that tried to cheat the church money? because god loves his enemies so much that it rained fire and brimstone on sodom and whatever shit? because god loves his enemies so much that his angel of death killed all the 1st borns of eygpt? halle-fucking-jah for a fucking loving god. But think about all the enemies ( sinners ) He saved!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayL Posted January 3, 2012 Author Share Posted January 3, 2012 I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! Funny how your deity doesn't live up to its own standards. Actually God does Love his enemies. God loves sinners. Jesus died for sinners. In a way, Jesus died to save his enemies. On the cross he prayed for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him to death. Liar. Jeezus ignored one of the thieves hanging beside him because the feller didn't kiss his ass. Creating sentient life forms and then sending them to hell for eternal torment is the exact opposite of love. A forgiving deity wouldn't have created a hell in the first place. You know that but you've willfully buried any rational thought deep inside you. Your daily life is a series of encounters between what's real and that which exists only in your private fantasy world, leading to internal anguish and external antagonisms as you try to suppress the obvious. What a shitty way to live. And please save the real-christianity-doesn't-teach-hell bullshit. You betray your bibul ignorance by doing so. Hell is nothing but ABSENCE OF GOD. Some people say no to God and there is nothing God can do. He has to respect their choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pratt Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 i felt so sorry for you jayL, that you committed atrocius sins so bad that some innocent blood must be shed for you,,,,, you must be one bloody evil person,,,, i am truly disgusted of you,,, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayL Posted January 3, 2012 Author Share Posted January 3, 2012 i felt so sorry for you jayL, that you committed atrocius sins so bad that some innocent blood must be shed for you,,,,, you must be one bloody evil person,,,, i am truly disgusted of you,,, Nobody is perfect before God. Everyone has made mistakes and has committed sins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pratt Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 before an immoral god, younare a sinner, that your good works are like filthy rags,,, i pity you for having low self esteem and disgusted at you being evil that you should be dead in the place for jesus, but then again, your death is not even good enough for your own astrocius acts of evil,,,, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirelien Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 Nobody is perfect before God. Everyone has made mistakes and has committed sins. Including God himself, according to the Bible! I think that choosing to create the Tree of Life was a bit of a major mistake in itself! As was not keeping the snake/devil under control, given that God, being the ominiscient being that he is (according to the Bible), would have known exactly what it would do! Indeed, don't you think that God's decision to flood the earth is a clear acknowledgment that God made a fairly major cock-up with his creation - since he felt the need to wipe them all out and start again. In fact, even the flood itself is surely a mistake in that it was a complete waste of time! Makind was surely just as wicked after the flood as it was before, since the Bible is clear that the only thing that could save humanity is Jesus' death! So surely God should have known that the flood was a waste of time - or maybe he just likes indiscriminate mass-murder? And finally, don't you think it was a bit of a mistake to have at the start of his holy revelation to mankind, a book so clearly filled with bollocks that no half-intelligent person could even consider taking it seriously. I mocked the necessity of the flood, but we all know (thanks to science) that such an event never happened. Also thanks to science, we know that the world was not created in six days and that human beings never lived to 900 years. The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 is also clear nonsense - why on earth should an all powerful God be intimidated by a tall tower! And what about Genesis 6:1-4, where we are told that God's angels had sex with mortal women and fathered children by them. You never hear sermons on that passage in church! I think it's fairly safe to say therefore that God clearly fails the infallibilty test! All that remains I think is to wish him better luck in a different universe! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted January 3, 2012 Share Posted January 3, 2012 Soaring moral teachings ... failed to change people ( or Israel ) to any great degree. Soaring moral teachings? Oh right, like 'turn the other cheek' and 'forgive those who persecute you' right? I'll pass that on to a friend of mine. She's currently stuck in an abusive relationship with a tyrant of a husband who beats her regularly. Most normal and moral people would say that she should get out of such a relationship immediately and report the guy to the police. However, I'll tell her that according to Jesus, she should carry on 'turning the other cheek' (quite literally) and continue to forgive him for everything, no matter how appallingly he treats her. What else have we got? Well I was always amused by Jesus' promotion of thought crime in Matthew 5:21-30. Yeah, being angry with someone or having lustful feelings towards someone are enough to convict you of murder and adultery respectfully, which are enough to condemn you to the flames of hell for eternity. Yes, I can see why Jesus won so many followers with that teaching! And furthermore, it's always rather amused me that the passage on lust is instantly followed by Jesus teaching that if your right hand should cause you to sin, you should cut it off and throw it away. Surely it is biblical then to cut off the hands of any normal teenage boy on the planet! What other nonsense can we find. Well, how about Luke 14:26, where Jesus says that no-one can follow him unless they hate their own family and even their own life. Again, I can see why this great morality won people over! But I would emphasise more Matthew 5:17-19, where Jesus explicitly endorses all the crap in the Old Testament. You know, the hating of gays, no eating of shellfish, not cutting hair at the side of the head, killing your children if they're disrespectful to you, etc etc etc. Oh and let's not forget the 'eye for an eye' teaching as well. Christians praise Jesus so much for speaking out against this policy of revenge. But they conveniently forget that it was God who supposedly set it up in the first place, through the law of Moses. A law which Jesus firmly endorses, as I mentioned above! The inconsistency and sheer stupidity is hilarious! I was thinking more like, 'Love your enemies. ( i.e. Christian believers should have NO enemies. ) Do good to those who persecute you. Do not pay back evil for evil. Be benevolent to all people. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Love your neighbors as yourself.' These are great moral teachings!! Ummm...now I'm confused Jay! In another thread you wrote... "You along with many people failed to understand the meaning of term 'repent'. It means change in thinking. It is not behavioral." So what you're actually saying is that these are soaring moral teachings provided they stay just as thoughts and you don't act on them, yes? That a Christian who truly repents simply has to keep on thinking about Jesus and his soaring moral teachings, without putting any of them into practice? No changes in lifestyle, morality, ethics or behavior are needed? Therefore, a true Christian doesn't actually have to love his/her enemies by sharing their food with them - all they have to do is to think about Jesus and His great moral teachings? A Christian doesn't actually have to do good to those persecuting them - all they have to do is to think certain thoughts? Ditto paying good back for evil, being benevolent to people, treating others as they want to be treated, loving their neighbors as themselves? Hmmm.... So now we know who the true Christians are. They're the ones who don't love their enemies, who don't do good to those persecuting them, who pay back evil for evil, who aren't benevolent to all, who want others to treat them as special and who don't love their neighbors as themselves. Thanks for opening our eyes to the truth, buddy! BAA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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