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

[Brothermario]

Weezer, we are speaking different languages.

 

The Bible is simply a very good written account of very important things.

 

Calling it the Word of God is a human invention.

 

I love to read the Gospel of John, not the other Gospels. And what does John tell you God’s Word is? “Made flesh,” right? You are God’s Word. Jesus was God’s greatest Word.

 

Aquinas said that God is always acting, pure action with no span of time between a thought and action. So God’s Word is an action. And the height of creation for him is the human being, his greatest Word.

 

You got trapped in Christian language and never freed yourself to talk to God himself.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

1 hour ago, Brothermario said:

 

And I write screenplays, short stories, and such with my Graduate degree in professional writing.

36 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

 

 and painted my first house 54 years ago and am still painting big houses and now large factories. 

 

 

You do both of these things?  Please explain.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

34 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

The relevance of my point, Redneck, is a very simple one, which I made many posts ago, actually.

 

In the second century, a guy named Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

 

How can we become fully alive if all we do all day long is enjoy an easy life?

 

I’m 68 and look 50 because I ran half marathons for 15 years while bodybuilding, and painted my first house 54 years ago and am still painting big houses and now large factories. An easy life would have aged me. A selfish life drinking and smoking would have aged me even more.

 

In the same manner, the death of my brother when I was 16 and growing up in poverty made me a far better person than if I had never suffered such a loss or had to overcome such poverty.

 

God is glorified in his children who live their life with gratitude and achieve greatness with their own efforts.

 

My children and grandchildren will be the first to tell you that Papa has inspired them to do great things.

 

And I glory in them every day.

This is a great rationalization for first world problems like saving up to buy a car instead of having daddy hand you the keys.  But what about 10-year-old girls who are trafficked into sexual slavery while your god does nothing to prevent evil?  What is their suffering meant to achieve?  How is their struggle meant to make them better people?  Bring them closer to a God who can't even be bothered to stop the brutality and horror that is forced upon them on a daily basis?  It's easy from your vantage point, and mine, to talk about becoming better men through suffering and struggle, as if we know the profound depths of what those words mean.  But the fact is that there is suffering and there is suffering.

 

And god does nothing...

[Brothermario]

Redneck, do you really think that human beings being saved from really awful things is more important than human beings being absolutely free to become the persons they themselves create?

 

When a skeptic is convinced that our life on Earth is all there is, what be said after that to justify all the injustices we experience?

 

The existence of the God of Christianity, who Jesus spoke for in the Sermon on the Mount, and who gives to us justice and glory in eternity, is the only God that answers your cries for justice.

 

But, as a skeptic, you are crying for a life without needing justice.

 

And blaming God, if he existed, because God could snap his fingers and create such a life.

 

When my sweet old cat Zora started dying after living almost 20 years, I was furious with God for the whole two weeks she took to die. I kept asking him, “This is the best you could do?” And when she die I looked up and yelled, “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do!”

 

When I was 16, I looked out a 5th floor window in Boston Children’s Hospital while my 10 year old brother was in a coma dying from leukemia, and I contemplated jumping out of the window just to get before God and punch him in the face.

 

Today, the tears still come, because love never dies. And it is this very love that explains everything, and that tells me I will surely see them again.

[Astreja]

1 hour ago, midniterider said:

 

He's also three time Heavyweight Boxing champ of the world, a concert pianist and television chef. 

Yes, but can he make... balloon animals?  

[Astreja]

1 hour ago, Brothermario said:

You got trapped in Christian language and never freed yourself to talk to God himself.

 

Uh... what part of "EX-Christian" do you not understand?  What makes you think that people on this site didn't try as hard as they possibly could to have an experience like yours?

 

(I exclude myself from that group, BTW - I have an inability to develop religious faith that has been part of my psychological and neurological profile since early childhood.)

[TheRedneckProfessor]

2 hours ago, Brothermario said:

Redneck, do you really think that human beings being saved from really awful things is more important than human beings being absolutely free to become the persons they themselves create?

How is the 10-year-old sex slave free to become the person she creates?

 

2 hours ago, Brothermario said:

The existence of the God of Christianity, who Jesus spoke for in the Sermon on the Mount, and who gives to us justice and glory in eternity, is the only God that answers your cries for justice.

And who answers the 10-year-old sex slave's cry for justice?  Obviously not god or jesus.  And her cry is my cry.

 

2 hours ago, Brothermario said:

But, as a skeptic, you are crying for a life without needing justice.

This is the exact opposite of the point I am trying to make.  I would have thought an advanced degree in writing might have yielded better reading comprehension. 

 

2 hours ago, Brothermario said:

Today, the tears still come, because love never dies. And it is this very love that explains everything, and that tells me I will surely see them again.

For humans, perhaps.  But the fact that your god is able to prevent evil, but not willing to demonstrates that he is not loving.

[Astreja]

2 hours ago, Brothermario said:

Redneck, no one knows accurately the story of The Buddha.

 

I told the story from what I know historically about him and what I know about the spirit of God.

 

When telling a story about the Buddha, how could you possibly leave out the sights Siddhartha saw outside his palace prior to his departure, his experimentation with various contemplative traditions (and rejection of extreme methods), his meditation that enabled him to realize the Four Noble Truths and construct the Eightfold Path, and, um, his return to the palace for a visit after his enlightenment?  Not only did he see his son again - that son, Rahula, became one of his disciples.

 

If this is the best you can do with one of the foundational tales from an extremely well-known 2500-year-old tradition, don't expect anyone here to take you seriously.

[Brothermario]

No, Redneck, it’s not the opposite.

 

You keep asking why God has created such an awful world of sex slaves when he has the power to create a world without sex slaves. In other words, a world without the need for a future justice.

 

You’re not even trying to understand that free will is our greatest gift, so great that the evil use of free will to rape young girls doesn’t rise above our having free will.

 

God does not leave out justice for anyone.

 

A skeptic has everything ass backwards.

 

A rapist loses far more in the end than the person he rapes.

[Brothermario]

Astreja used his Google Machine.

 

Now that’s a boring story.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Are you a college educated writer Who paints buildings?  Please explain.

[Brothermario]

Weezer, I get up most mornings and put on my work clothes and go to work, and I read and write when I feel like it.

 

Go to Coverfly and read one of my screenplays “The Harpooner” if you want.

 

COVID gave me time to start rewriting to put some stuff out there again.

 

Rewriting is everything. The “Sixth Sense” took the 5th rewrite before the writer realized that the Bruce Willis character should be dead.

[Astreja]

10 minutes ago, Brothermario said:

Astreja used his Google Machine.

 

Now that’s a boring story.

 

I hereby declare for the record that you have been found guilty of bearing false witness against me.  I was a practicing Buddhist for over ten years.  I told that story from memory.

 

May you lose your god forever.

[midniterider]

7 minutes ago, Weezer said:

Are you a college educated writer Who paints buildings?  Please explain.

 

Yes, and he also climbed Mt Everest, swam the English Channel and won the Indy 500. All in the same week. Just ask his wife, Morgan Fairchild, she'll tell ya. 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

HA!  Like thumbelina, we may not get an answer.

[Astreja]

9 minutes ago, Weezer said:

Are you a college educated writer Who paints buildings?  Please explain.

 

Hey, I do a lot of stuff too -- just not all at the same time.  Kind of hard to make mascarpone cheese while sanding drywall, reading a psychology e-book, fitting a clarinet reed on a mouthpiece, and cutting linings for some non-medical masks --

 

-- Oh, wait; the masks were yesterday evening.  NVM.

 

Seriously, Mario, we all do stuff.  Who are you trying to impress?

[◊ Weezer ◊]

4 minutes ago, Weezer said:

HA!  Like thumbelina, we may not get an answer.

Oops.  Somehow i missed your reply.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Mario, I have some more questions.  How can I have an enlightening experience like you did?  Or did God pick you for the experience?  If so, why do you think he picked you?

[TheRedneckProfessor]

1 hour ago, Brothermario said:

You’re not even trying to understand that free will is our greatest gift, so great that the evil use of free will to rape young girls doesn’t rise above our having free will.

Yes, yes... free will.  But what about the 10-year-old girl's free will?  Isn't it being violated every bit as brutally as her body is?  Or, do you think they volunteer to be forcibly raped?  Refusing to violate our free will doesn't absolve god of the evil he could prevent; it simply places god always on the side of the evildoers.  Because the little girl's free will is being violated regardless, and as a direct result of god's refusal to act.  The free will of 6.5 million people were violated just to save god the effort of violating one man's free will.  And we're supposed to worship that?  And call it good?  And call it loving?

 

It is true that God's ways are not our ways.  Because if I saw a 10-year-old girl being raped, I would do everything in my power to stop it.  So would you.  Because we are beings of conscience and morality.  But god does nothing and still expects us to believe he is good and loving.  Are things good because god does them; or does god do things because they're good?  It doesn't take a degree in philosophy to figure it out: Allowing little girls to be raped is not good no matter who does it.

 

So, if your god exists, then your god is not loving.  I blame him for nothing; because I don't think he exists.  But you... who are you to worship such a diabolical fiend?  What kind of person must you be to fall at the feet of such a menacing demon and call him "good"?  

[Brothermario]

Weezer, let’s start with the greatest story. Jesus wasn’t just born to anyone, but to a young Jewish girl from the line of David who grew up with the Old Testament and among persecuted people waiting for their Messiah.

 

Our human history and culture is significant to who we are, both among ourselves and with God.

 

 I was born Portuguese, with ancestors very devoted to Christianity, and especially Mary. The name I took in the monastery was Mario, in her honor (and in 1979, before Nintendo).

 

I know that my great aunt was a beautiful woman, like a saint. And I have memories of being with her when I was very young.

 

I believe that my ancestry gave to me from birth a close relationship to God, for I have very early memories of experiences of God.

 

Though I was never religious, the very thought of God always affected me, and I have always simply talked to him.

 

Each of us is unique. Some of us are uniquely close to God. But God will not hide himself from any of us who are good and true in seeking him.

 

I’ve never met such a skeptic.

 

Have you?

[Brothermario]

Redneck, you probably could only make a good omelette. Yet you are angrily telling me that you could create a better reality than the one the goodness, wisdom, and love of God created.

 

You can’t.

 

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else doing anything else.

 

The moment after I close my eyes in death they will open again and I will see my brother, my mother, and all those I loved and who loved me, even my many animals. And then I will be with God and become like God, forever.

 

It is our separation from our love ones and God now that makes our eternity the Heaven it is.

 

I do not simply believe this. God revealed it to me.

 

There is a book, “My Other Self”, by Clarence Enzler. In this book there is a chapter, “A Foretaste of Heaven”. In this chapter, Enzler says that God gives to some people a moment in Heaven as a special gift. I read this chapter on the way home from painting a water tower in Groton, Connecticut, 40 minutes after I was on the water tower and experienced something that left me distraught and confused, but had no memory of. When my hand touched the book in the glove compartment, and I opened it up to the bookmark, the memory of being on the water tower and having this experience came back to me. And as I read along in the chapter, I was recalling everything that I had just experienced 40 minutes before.

 

I also experienced on that day that God is not restricted by time, just we are. And that is another reason he allows suffering. He sees its end.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Have a good day (or evening) everyone!  I am out of here.  I hope Mario doesn't get hurt when he crashes.

[Astreja]

2 hours ago, Brothermario said:

I was born Portuguese, with ancestors very devoted to Christianity, and especially Mary. The name I took in the monastery was Mario, in her honor (and in 1979, before Nintendo).

 

You said a page ago that there was "very little religion" in your life.  I'm questioning the veracity of your claim.  This is what "very little religion" looks like from my perspective:

 

I, on the other hand, was born Canadian to parents who only attended church on rare occasions (a wedding, a christening, one Easter service ).  They told me literally nothing about Christianity in my early years, and at no time did they ever insinuate that any of it was true.  I read the Bible that was in my parents' bookcase solely because I was a precocious reader who was always looking for new books.  I've never been able to see the Bible as anything more than a collection of ancient stories from an alien culture.  I do not expect this situation to change.

 

Like it or not, there is a huge cultural divide between us.  Your testimony will not bridge that gap, and flinging lies and insults won't make the situation any better.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

5 hours ago, Brothermario said:

I also experienced on that day that God is not restricted by time, just we are. And that is another reason he allows suffering. He sees its end

Why would the 10-year-old sex slave trust god to do anything for her tomorrow when he obviously won't do anything for her today?

[TheRedneckProfessor]

6 hours ago, Brothermario said:

Redneck, you probably could only make a good omelette. Yet you are angrily telling me that you could create a better reality than the one the goodness, wisdom, and love of God created.

 

You can’t.

This is false and a deliberate misrepresentation.  I do not, have not, and will never claim that I could create a better reality than what we have presently.  My claim is, has been, and will continue to be that if god is able to prevent evil, but not willing, then god is not all-loving.  Quit strawmanning and stick to the point.