I'm a Christian and recently looked at the Wesboro website to see exactly what they preach/teach. It was frightening! They seem to have missed the message of spreading the Gospel of Jesus.
How about a respectful religious vs non-religious discussion?
- Thread starter TrickyDickie
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I feel God talks to me through the Bible. Some folks do have visions and dreams from God. My mother was one, but she didn't harp on them. She was pretty quiet about her visions and dreams. I learned of them through talking with her.
I also don't like the 'prosperity doctrine'. After all, Jesus said we will alway have the poor with us.
They will backpedal onto metaphorical grounds if you pin then down on the literal meaning of their claim. It turns out that how they "talk to God" or how "God speaks to them" manifests in no different way than how others find spirituality in trees, rocks, sex, or the mundane daily rigors of life. They just interpret things differently than normal people, sometimes to gain an illusory authority over others. No one has an exclusive and everyone has the same equal access to their spirituality.
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Regardless of whether or not I believe, all I know is that right now, there are dozens of wonderful people praying, hoping, and sending good thoughts to a very important person in my life, and they're doing it with every fiber of their beings, and I can't thank them enough for caring so much. ❤
Prayer is an interesting concept..
Supposedly God is all knowing and all seeing knowing the past, the present, and the future, and if you take that literally as some do that means that all possible outcomes have been foreseen, so that means there is no free will and everything is predestined.
That's also a very interesting and complicated concept. But getting back to prayer if everything is known and foreseen doesn't prayer try to change the outcome?
Supposedly God is all knowing and all seeing knowing the past, the present, and the future, and if you take that literally as some do that means that all possible outcomes have been foreseen, so that means there is no free will and everything is predestined.
That's also a very interesting and complicated concept. But getting back to prayer if everything is known and foreseen doesn't prayer try to change the outcome?
Someone posted some philosophy a few months that discussed a fact of God that I had never considered before.
"Omni-Benevolence"
God is incapable of doing bad things.
Which means that God can't answer "bad" prayers, and was already going to go about taking the actions requested of him from "good" prayers, which means that all prayer is either impertinent or redundant.
"Omni-Benevolence"
God is incapable of doing bad things.
Which means that God can't answer "bad" prayers, and was already going to go about taking the actions requested of him from "good" prayers, which means that all prayer is either impertinent or redundant.
That depends what you see prayer as.
Some religious people approach prayer from the perspective of simply asking God for them to become accepting of His will.
Others may ask for favors, but then tack "Thy will be done" on the end. In fairness, many of these get the idea of humility before God, and if they ask for anything at all then it's not much or just something basic, like food on the table or that nothing bad befall their loved ones. However, I've no doubt that others will smugly rest assured that, if they get what they want, no matter how grandiose, then they'll see it as God's will; whereas on the other hand, if they don't, then it's simply that a higher purpose has intervened.
In all of those cases, I'd have to say, "Not really."
Incapable of doing bad things but allows them to happen when it can be stopped. That's interesting.
Match omnipotence vs. omnibenevolence. 
If God has to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent to be God, and he is not strong enough to do bad things, then he is not God.
Which is just another version of "Can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?"
If God has to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent to be God, and he is not strong enough to do bad things, then he is not God.
Which is just another version of "Can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?"
Can God get so stoned, he's like whoa, heavy?Match omnipotence vs. omnibenevolence.
If God has to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent to be God, and he is not strong enough to do bad things, then he is not God.
Which is just another version of "Can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?"
The whole prayer thing needs a major makeover. Like what is this "praying without ceasing" deal Paul told people to do. Why does God need us to keep stroking him like that before he does what we want?
Trying to appease the personifications of forces of nature that are both beyond our control and dangerous, so that they won't hurt us so badly, is an ancient practice.
Match omnipotence vs. omnibenevolence.
If God has to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent to be God, and he is not strong enough to do bad things, then he is not God.
Which is just another version of "Can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?"
Ah................
Call me an apologist, I don't care. I grew up in a VERY Catholic family, a Conservative one. I didn't throw out the baby (the values) with the bathwater (the religion). Values like "our strength lies in the community," "Have empathy and compassion for all people, especially your enemies," "Speak the truth, search for it," "Strive to fulfill your potential," "Dream of a better world; you are not your current circumstances," "be humble and kind," "have an innate respect for ALL human life, especially those you do not understand," "take care of the fringes of your society--the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled, the elderly, the young, the hated, the ridiculed, the bullied"--just a few, made their way into my secular life. They are re-written in secular language, adapted to my search for truth, my convictions, and level of intelligence.
To deny the impact of religion on morality, both good and bad, is to live outside of the truth. It was Thomas Jefferson, who refers to a divine power in the "Declaration of Independence," and the ideas of divine and natural laws, that led to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. never losing hope, as he sat in a Birmingham, Alabama jail. Yes, I can point to Galileo, but I leave that to my fellow nonbelievers, because you are better informed than I.
To deny that art and politics have been shaped by believing in a deity, something higher than oneself, is to deny the facts surrounding man. This is a motivation--to see inherent worth in our lives because God loves us, to want to devote a piece of art to God, as a show of our appreciation of his creations, and worship him. I know, I know, apologist. But the truth is, the Sistine Chapel is a work of art inspired by religion, the Greek Columns of Washington, D.C. was a reference to the birthplace of Democracy--Greece. Both of those sentences are true, whether you like it or not.
That said, I want to share some of my favorite art in the religious sphere--namely, music. Why music? It connects most fully, as an art form, with my emotions.
The truth is, the whole world is yours to enjoy. I can listen to these songs, and be inspired, as an agnostic, because they were created by man, in deference to something larger than themselves, they talk about peace and hope and service and dreams, and I can replace God with Love or Zeus in the song, and still enjoy it, although not with the same fervor, or conviction, as a believer.
To deny the impact of religion on morality, both good and bad, is to live outside of the truth. It was Thomas Jefferson, who refers to a divine power in the "Declaration of Independence," and the ideas of divine and natural laws, that led to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. never losing hope, as he sat in a Birmingham, Alabama jail. Yes, I can point to Galileo, but I leave that to my fellow nonbelievers, because you are better informed than I.
To deny that art and politics have been shaped by believing in a deity, something higher than oneself, is to deny the facts surrounding man. This is a motivation--to see inherent worth in our lives because God loves us, to want to devote a piece of art to God, as a show of our appreciation of his creations, and worship him. I know, I know, apologist. But the truth is, the Sistine Chapel is a work of art inspired by religion, the Greek Columns of Washington, D.C. was a reference to the birthplace of Democracy--Greece. Both of those sentences are true, whether you like it or not.
That said, I want to share some of my favorite art in the religious sphere--namely, music. Why music? It connects most fully, as an art form, with my emotions.
The truth is, the whole world is yours to enjoy. I can listen to these songs, and be inspired, as an agnostic, because they were created by man, in deference to something larger than themselves, they talk about peace and hope and service and dreams, and I can replace God with Love or Zeus in the song, and still enjoy it, although not with the same fervor, or conviction, as a believer.
Douchebag to God: "Dude, do you even lift?"
Are you all really interested in a 'respectful' discussion of these things? If not it seems the title of the thread should be changed to 'what I find dumb about religion', something that I have no problem with but then you hardly need my permission for that. Just asking...not challenging.
The thread was started by a crazy person.
He was talking about sending atheists to Hell.
Compared to the beginning, this is warm and fuzzy.
He was talking about sending atheists to Hell.
Compared to the beginning, this is warm and fuzzy.
This thread? I thought this one was a spin off of that one.
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