There is a God, or There is no god the next generation
POSTED BY: citizen
UPDATED: Friday, August 25, 2006 02:57
VIEWED: 14701
PAGE 6 of 11
Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
if the #1 commandment according to Jesus(God manifest) was "love your neighbor as yourself. for love does no harm", how can you truly claim their actions to be Christian? is not the saying "actions speak louder than words?"
Just a nitpick
Second, not first. Give a quick re-read to Matthew. This is one of the stories that I thought was pretty cool.Okay, back to lurking on this thread. My childhood fundie took over for a second.
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Citizen-- it appears as though you can trace Christianity closer to its source then any other religion; by that i mean the number and accuracy of translations, dating closer to the time the events took place, and when they were recorded and began circulating.
Most the NT was written within Jesus' lifetime with little dispute, but even liberal scholars hold to within a century. relatively speaking, this is closer than any of the other beleifs i know of. Jesus picked up from the Jews, so was a fullfillment of their scriptures and recordings; and i would argue that the Qurans message is not consistant with the Bibles in that it denies Jesus' deity. since it was written centuries afterwards, they have no proof do deny the ressurection, so the contradictions cant be justified. and we have third party corroboration:
"Further support for the Bible comes from the fact that events of the New Testament are supported by writings outside the Bible. Corroboration is available from at least 17 non-Christian sources from antiquity. (Examples: Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Epictetus, Lucian, Aristides, Josephus, etc.)" http://faithfacts.gospelcom.net/quest_bible_true.html
Buddha was just a man, and his message was indoctrined over a few centuries after his death, and this knowledge is based on later sources apparently; if im not mistaken. im not even denying his message, because there are universal truths..but he was only a man. Jesus' calim was God manifest! atleast with the NT, we have thousands of copies of manuscripts, in different languages, which go all the way back to within a century of Jesus' lifetime, including unbiased corroboration.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
if the #1 commandment according to Jesus(God manifest) was "love your neighbor as yourself. for love does no harm", how can you truly claim their actions to be Christian? is not the saying "actions speak louder than words?"
Just a nitpick
Okay, back to lurking on this thread. My childhood fundie took over for a second.
ill agree, Jesus says "the greatest commandment is love God above all others, and love your neighbor as yourself" but my arguement would be that they are the same thing, if loving God infinitly leads to all encompassing love
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Antimason:
Actually I thought that the NT was mostly written after Jesus' death. The point I was trying to make is that all religions are backed up by eye witness accounts, we either believe they are all true, or that they all have the same weight, or we demand more than just eye witness accounts.
Whatever the truth is either way it is unreasonable to assume that eye witness accounts dictated by words on paper across millennia can hold the same weight on a scientific standard as theories like the Big Bang or evolution. Even the Catholic Church agrees, they've adopted the Big Bang as Gods method of creation.
Yes there's third party corroboration to the Bible, this is hardly surprising since the bible is at least partially an historic document, but it hardly means ergo everything in the Bible is correct.
Point is we can’t just play favourites with the eye witness accounts here.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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HK
Non-human intelligence is not paranormal. In fact it's amazingly normal. Humans are not the most intelligent animal on the earth, and on occassion they become very run of the mill. On the beach where I vacation there's a beautiful sculpture of an egret, oit of an oyster bed, which was at least allegedly made by the egrets who live there, and I see no reason to doubt it. There are countless examples in nature or representitive art, communication etc. If all ants talk to other ants, eventually what ants do on one side of the world will resemble those the other side.
I don't buy into this eeire supernatural influence, I just think we're not alone, on this earth, there's animals and bugs and stuff here. You add their brain masses together and it way outweighs ours.
Here's a sobering tidbit. Humans are getting dumberm and have been for the last 40,000 years, at their last smart peak. It was about the same height as their previous smart peak, closer to a million years ago. Dogs have been on the brain decline a little longer, 100-150,000 years. At the moment when dogs and humans created their relationship, humans were near a low, and dogs were at a high, and brain-bodyweight indicates that at the time, about 100,000 years ago, dogs were smarter than people. Kinda makes one think, I'm not sure what, but I found it interesting.
Of course, in sci-fi land, one can consider a future in which humans have descended to their nadir, which is about cat-level of intelligence, and some other species is ruling the earth, say. meerkats. The top meerkat scholars will review the remains of our civilization and argue that it is not possible that the cat-brained humans built this world, as the looney professor mongoose suggests, but that instead, manhatten was built by an early evolution of meerkat, who was larger, and somewhat human-looking.
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Quote:What, are you saying I was being defensive?
Originally posted by citizen:
I thought that's what I did when I said "it almost seems like"?
Okay, so perhaps I was being a little defensive. Somehow you and I got off on a wrong foot and I was by this point in our discussion anticipating that you would misunderstand. Okay, so, no "perhaps"--I was being defensive.Quote:I think I'm making a plea for a healthy self respect. Yes, go get a teacher, go talk to a specialist in those areas you are inexpert, but always stay true to your intuition and check in with yourself regularly to see if this teacher you've found is still the right one.
I see your sentiment, but not everyone can be a monk, and surely an individual like a monk or a priest who devotes their life to the understanding of these matters will have something to teach those of us who don't have the time or even the inclination to devote that sort of time to those pursuits? Would they not be able to help us, could they not have gained some insight that we may not be able to gain simply because they devote their entire life to these issues where as we do not?
You know, people throughout the world will often put a chest or table in the entry way to their homes. They'll hang a mirror above it and put a vase of cut flowers on it to welcome visitors. Now they don't know that they've created an altar such as people made 1500 years ago throughout Europe to honor the Goddess, but it seems right to them. Having studied human spiritual practice from a bazillion angles I've come to understand that all sorts of ostensibly nonspiritual people have an excellent intuitive grasp of the spiritual. In some ways, all you need to be a spiritual person is to be open-minded, physically healthy (or healing) and know how to have fun. If everyone had these three areas covered the world would be in much better shape.
Quote:Well then we get into semantics, 'cause I wouldn't call Buddhism a religion like the Abrahamic threesome. If it is a religion, it's a lot closer to the various aboriginal spiritualities on the planet. People who don't know anything about such spiritualities make all kinds of bizarre assumptions about them if you call them "religions." I've seen it time and time again, so I don't call Native American Shamanism or Buddhism or Witchcraft religions. In my experience, these are closer to what I would call disciplines or practices, perhaps metaphysics or plain aboriginal sciences.
Well the three Abrahamic religions trace their routes back to the cult of a Canaanite war god, so it's hardly surprising to me that they all share a certain darkness. But they aren't the only religions in the world, Buddhism is a religion for instance, I'm not sure we can condemn religion on the example of the Abrahamic.
Would you prefer me to say I don't find dogmatic and exclusionary religions healthy in the least?
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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I don't have anything to add. I just want to say it was great reading such an interesting discussion.
Thank you.
Rue
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Actually, I do have comments about the whole teaching /learning thing. As was convincingly outlined to me, no one ever really 'teaches' another. The pupil has to recreate the words into a meaningful thought. The words are the experience, the lesson - knowledge - is generated internally. Knowledge just can't be drummed into you. (Well, it can, but it takes a lot of time, repetition, and control over the person's total experience.)
So I agree with the concept that you already have to be looking for knowledge. Then anyone who says that which you find valuable will be your teacher.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:Dreamtrove, whatcha sayin' that I don't already know?
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
HK
Non-human intelligence is not paranormal. In fact it's amazingly normal. Humans are not the most intelligent animal on the earth, and on occassion they become very run of the mill.
The trouble is, folks like you and me don't get to say what's "paranormal" and what's "normal." A lot of what you and I take for granted the world at large thinks is plain crazy. I hate to be the one to tell ya, but you and I are paranormal. Have you seen any of these crop circles, the ones from the last few years?
Pretty breath-taking.
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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Quote:No it's quite normal.
Originally posted by Dreamtrove:
Non-human intelligence is not paranormal.
Quote:Okay this is where we part company. What species, pray tell, is? There must be many, many species about that are more intelligent than Humans if Humans are merely run of the mill. It also leads to a rather interesting question of how our weakling little race survived, given that we are weaker and less physically imposing than creatures somewhat smaller than us and our only real advantage is our intelligence. If we're merely run of the mill mentally and our physical attributes are decidedly below par then obviously the Human race must have been made extinct long ago...
Humans are not the most intelligent animal on the earth, and on occassion they become very run of the mill.
Quote:Uhuh and Fionn mac Cumhail really did build the giants causeway.
On the beach where I vacation there's a beautiful sculpture of an egret, oit of an oyster bed, which was at least allegedly made by the egrets who live there, and I see no reason to doubt it.
Quote:Well you're going to have to run the representative art by me one more time, but communication is no great feat. In fact it's required for social creatures, and all animals do it to some degree or another irregardless of intelligence. Snakes aren't the brightest of animals but you can sure tell when they are upset because they communicate that through body posture and other threat warnings. But a Monkey pointing at some food is hardly the same thing as the complete works of Shakespeare.
There are countless examples in nature or representitive art, communication etc.
Quote:Instinct DT, they're all Ants and they all have the same instincts which dictates how they act. You'd have something if the same species of Ant in different geographical locations but similar environments behaved in radically different ways, because this would be indicative of non-instinctual culture.
If all ants talk to other ants, eventually what ants do on one side of the world will resemble those the other side.
I’ll say it right here, Ants communicate, they say “Friend” or they say “Foe” they say “Food follow” and “Get food” what they don’t do is pass on complex thoughts and concepts through artificial language.
Quote:Erm if you add all the manure in the world together then it'll outweigh our collective brain masses, all that proves is that there's an awful lot of bullshit in the world.
You add their brain masses together and it way outweighs ours.
Quote:Yeah okay, Dogs domesticated people.
Dogs have been on the brain decline a little longer, 100-150,000 years. At the moment when dogs and humans created their relationship, humans were near a low, and dogs were at a high, and brain-bodyweight indicates that at the time, about 100,000 years ago, dogs were smarter than people.
You'd really need to pull something out a little more convincing than your say so before I believe that the real power behind the throne walks on four legs and eats its own crap. George Bush not withstanding.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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