"spirits"... human, the Holy Spirit, ghosts and demons: is there such thing as a spirit?

[Brothermario]

To help my family on welfare, by the way.

[midniterider]

6 hours ago, Brothermario said:

alreadyGone, your view of of me is conveniently the opposite of me.

 

 I quit the football team in the 10th grade to work a full time job on the back of a garbage truck from four to midnight. I was the starting halfback in both the Junior Varsity and Senior Squad, and had the sexiest girl in school as my girlfriend, but was practical and ambitious. You read that I had five steady girlfriends when God showed up, and got out of that I was unhappy and no one paid attention to me? Sure you did.

 

What’s happening to you right now is that I have stirred up the demons of pride and self-love you have listened to and served for so many years. And they’re now instigating you to attack me with the worst insults you can muster, no matter how baseless they are. And I’m talking about actual demons, and you know why I claim they exist.

 

At 19, my girlfriend was a 29 year old beauty queen, who paid quite a bit of attention to me. And I sold about 200 ounces of weed a week out of the trunk of my old Mercedes to kids throughout my city, causing a Narc to once say to me, “All I here is Joe Mello.” No. I never lacked attention.

 

From varsity halfback to keyboard warrior. Joe never ceases to impress.

 

 

[Astreja]

21 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

I mean to tell you that he gave meaning to suffering and conquered death. Now post a picture of a young child sitting on a bed at St. Jude Hospital. When I was a Franciscan, I volunteered at the Children’s Hospital in D.C. The work I did there for the children and parents was immeasurable.

 

Meaning is personal and subjective.  You can't get it secondhand.

 

And death is never conquered - only deferred.

[Astreja]

6 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

To help my family on welfare, by the way.

 

That's a laudable, worthwhile goal.  (Doesn't make your religious musings true, though.)

[Brothermario]

midnite, Jesus became the greatest person who ever lived, and only lived 33 years. And he doesn’t impress you. And you even ridicule him. So why would anyone care if you’re impressed?

[midniterider]

3 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

midnite, Jesus became the greatest person who ever lived, and only lived 33 years. And he doesn’t impress you. And you even ridicule him. So why would anyone care if you’re impressed?

 

Jesus can tell me himself...provided he exists. Of course during this whole thread he hasnt said a word. Just you flapping your gums. As usual, a human being has to do the heavy lifting for the supposed almighty. Nothing new here, really. Waits for Jesus to say something. 

 

[Brothermario]

Astreja, if you won’t even acknowledge that Jesus for 2,000 years has given powerful hope to suffering and dying human beings through his innocent death and glorious Resurrection, well ... you’ve got a serious psychological disconnect with reality.

[Brothermario]

Yeah, midnite, people around you probably don’t like being around you, and Jesus is going to give to you a special visit because you’re goading him to?

 

Your brain don’t work too good.

[midniterider]

Jesus, please post something on this thread. Make it glow or something so I know it's you, please. Then Mario will be vindicated and we will all know that you are at least real. 

 

Just a simple post, Jesus. Pretty please?

[alreadyGone]

2 hours ago, midniterider said:

Jesus, please post something on this thread. Make it glow or something so I know it's you, please. Then Mario will be vindicated and we will all know that you are at least real. 

 

Just a simple post, Jesus. Pretty please?

 

[Astreja]

3 hours ago, Brothermario said:

Astreja, if you won’t even acknowledge that Jesus for 2,000 years has given powerful hope to suffering and dying human beings through his innocent death and glorious Resurrection, well ... you’ve got a serious psychological disconnect with reality.

 

There is no credible contemporaneous report from the time that Jesus was supposedly alive.  The first Jesus stories showed up several decades later, and are just variations on other god-man myths from neighbouring cultures.  If there ever was a historical Jesus, I believe that he was an obscure cult leader, an ordinary mortal who died and stayed dead, and that his followers embellished the legend after his death.

 

I  do not believe for one instant that Jesus actually came back to life.  I believe wholeheartedly that if he was a real person who was actually executed by the Romans, they left his body on the cross until it was thoroughly decayed and then dumped it into a mass grave.  The Gospels are notable for the ludicrously unrealistic account of standard Roman procedures in the occupied Levant.

 

(And the little prick wasn't nearly as innocent as you claim.  Just a cursory glance at the Gospels shows Jesus committing acts of vandalism, verbal abuse, and incitement to theft of property.)

 

I leave you with a quote that sums up nicely how I feel about hope:

 

Quote

Hope is the denial of reality.  It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it. - Raistlin Majere, Dragons of Autumn Twilight

 

[Brothermario]

Astreja, Hope is the sister of her big brother Faith, who are children of their mother Love and father Truth.

 

Skeptics have volunteered themselves to live in an orphanage.

[midniterider]

Jesus, please post something on this thread. Make it glow or something so I know it's you, please. Then Mario will be vindicated and we will all know that you are at least real. 

 

Just a simple post, Jesus. Pretty please?

[Brothermario]

As I said, our time together is drawing to a close.

 

As with all such groups of anti-religious bigots I have visited in the past, you have failed to understand the absurdity of the single talking point you all share—“Show me the only evidence I will accept for the only God I will accept.”

We rise above our mundane experiences when we reach upward to pull ourselves up, not to pull everything else down.

 

The God you don’t believe in doesn’t exist anyway.

 

The God you don’t know does.

 

[Astreja]

1 minute ago, Brothermario said:

As I said, our time together is drawing to a close.

 

Good fucking riddance to you, then.

 

Quote

“Show me the only evidence I will accept for the only God I will accept a god, any god, or even a non-supernatural being with god-like powers.”

 

FTFY.

[Brothermario]

If your thinking was actually brilliant and you were actually confident in your position, nothing I could say would bother you.

 

For the record, I haven’t experienced a single emotion from anything any of you has written.

 

There are no agitated demons, or any demons, controlling me.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

11 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

The God you don’t know does.

Just not in any way you can demonstrate. 

[TABA]

18 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

As with all such groups of anti-religious bigots I have visited in the past, you have failed to understand the absurdity of the single talking point you all share—“Show me the only evidence I will accept for the only God I will accept.”

Does it seem possible to you that people can sincerely find god-claims to be incredible?  Does lacking belief in a god make us bigots automatically?    I take your belief in a god to be sincere.  Maybe you should extend the same courtesy to those who believe otherwise. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

21 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

As I said, our time together is drawing to a close.

Most believers do tuck tail and run once they realize we are not so easily persuaded.  It's been a long time since we've had a good apologist with any kind of staying power.  I had higher hopes for you.

[Brothermario]

Redneck, draw a face, and then three more. You will discover that they all look similar.

 

Look at the paintings of every great master, and you will discover that all their faces are similar, too.

 

Now look at every face in the world, and you will discover them all to be very different.

 

How is this not a demonstration of an infinite power present in DNA?

 

Even astrophysicist Neil Tyson says that Dark Energy superseding physical laws is a possible proof of God.

 

Your judgment of what a demonstration of God’s existence would be is what exactly? Who are you? Aristotle demonstrated why God must exist. And so have I, many times and in many ways.

 

And I told you who I am.

 

Who are you?

[TheRedneckProfessor]

6 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

Aristotle demonstrated why God must exist.

And Epicurus demonstrated why your god can not exist.

 

8 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

And so have I, many times and in many ways.

Perhaps to your own satisfaction (which is, ultimately, all that matters).  But you have not demonstrated it to anyone else's satisfaction.  That is the measure of your failure in reasoning. 

[Astreja]

9 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

Redneck, draw a face, and then three more. You will discover that they all look similar.

 

Look at the paintings of every great master, and you will discover that all their faces are similar, too.

 

Now look at every face in the world, and you will discover them all to be very different.

 

 

Mario, do you even do art?  Your understanding of it is execrable.  I haven't formally studied art appreciation since the 1970s, but I did actually study it. You need to get out more.  May I suggest the Art Institute of Chicago (wonderful, wonderful modern collection!) or in fact any reputable museum with collections from different periods?

 

[Astreja]

22 minutes ago, TABA said:

Does it seem possible to you that people can sincerely find god-claims to be incredible?  Does lacking belief in a god make us bigots automatically?    I take your belief in a god to be sincere.  Maybe you should extend the same courtesy to those who believe otherwise. 

 

I'm wondering if Mario actually knows what it feels like to not believe in gods.  I suspect that he was raised in a family that was at least nominally religious, and that the foundation of belief was instilled in him when he was very, very young.

 

If he's incapable of understanding unbelief, then he'll keep shooting blanks when he tries to discuss religion with people who don't believe.

[Brothermario]

Tabs, I’m confronting the flippant bigotry here, not the well-meaning poster such as yourself.

 

Faith in God always entails some doubt. And there are wonderful people who don’t intellectually think about God at all, but still live in his spirit of goodness, wisdom, and love.

 

But there is another point I would like to make to you, and one that you probably will not be able to accept.

 

The stories you have heard about human beings experiencing God are not all stories about their “faith”. No. Jesus said, “We speak about what we have seen and heard.” And he made it a point to praise people who “believed without seeing.”

 

I haven’t had “faith” in God’s existence in 45 years. For I was given something to see and hear that gave to me “knowledge” of God’s existence, and even God’s personality.

 

As the greatest reality in creation is the human personality, so is the greatest reality in God his personality.

 

I do not have just “faith” in this.

 

And my story has been told before by others.

[Brothermario]

Redneck, the Epicurean Paradox fails to take into account God as a personality, but only God as a perfect creator who can only create perfect things.

 

As we will things to happen, allow things to happen, and simply watch things happen, so does God, for to know us, his image, is to know him.

 

Aristotle used pure reason, beginning with his “Physics” and continuing his progression of thoughts his “Metaphysics”. A must read for anyone with any hope of becoming an actual good thinker.

 

I’m not one to take a lot of time waxing philosophical with others. Leaving Aristotle, it’s all downhill, and needlessly tedious. And I have a Philosophy degree, to boot.