I had no choice to be born. If I had then I would have certainly refused, or at least chosen a mother who was kind enough to abort me. Religions tell me that I have no choice but to go to hell because I laugh at their gods that create devils so they can chase them around to be good and thus righteous. And if there is a heaven then religions also tell me I have no choice but to go there, because if religions have anything to do with this “heaven,” then it has to be a worse hell than even I can imagine. I also have no choice but to live in this ever-increasing material (unspiritual) cesspool we call life. And on numerous occasions I should have died, because I wanted to but bad, but OBVIOUSLY that was not a choice either. So what is all this utter garbage about “free-will” when literally everything that happens to me, us, has never ever had anything to do with this thought, word, we call “choice” let alone the thought “free.” And to realize this is to be the unfathomable Peace that personifies Krishna, Buddha and Jesus; an unfathomable Peace, thoughtless-Silence or dreamless-sleep, that is even the more unfathomable JOY, Bliss, Samadhi, Nirvana, that is Heaven it-SELF. And just like we have the "wisdom" to call this no-choice our free-will we also have the same wisdom to call the Awakening to this Heaven it-SELF death. -- Eternally NOW
Ahh, that's sooooo wrong ....you could choose suicide. Thus, you have a choice! You also have the choice of committing crimes ...you might have to go to jail afterward, but you still have that choice. Genep, cry-babies and whiners seldom elicit much sympathy. Perhaps you should try some other tact? Do you know what "tact" is? Baron Max
"Through early morning fog I see, visions of the things to be, the pains that are withheld for me. I realize and I can see... that suicide is painless. It brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please."
And you have just demostrated the free will to reject the notion of free will. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
When you are told you have free will and then told if you do reject this image of god you will be sent to eternal hell...that is NOT free will...it is a threat. Same scenario as if someone holds a gun to your head and says..hey buddy..you have free will...either turn over your wallet or die!
Well falling for nonsence in the first place, was your choice and mistake. You shouldn't just take someone's word for what they assume. They didn't present any evidence that this was true, yet you chose to believe it, cause some authorative figure claimed it was so, you had a choice to question their assertions, and their authority, but yet you chose instead to believe the crap that was fed to you. As others have demonstrated to you, you also have the choice to end it. NO one can make you live in the cesspool of life, if you hate it so, you would have ended your pathetic life already! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You haven't tried hard enough, a gun to your head would had suffice, jumping from a very tall building would have done the trick, the problem is that you have had no balls to go through with it, you have made a choice to live, not to end it. Thus get off your ass and quit whining, make the choice to live a better life, or end it! The garbage is what you have chosen to accept, the garbage that was fed to you is what is frustrated you, and confused the hell out of you, statiscally more theist comit suitside then any atheists, statiscally more theist comit crimes then any atheists, and that's just a case of numbers. Free choice is there, and any atheist you meet is a testament to that! This is also the Bull Shit that is directly the driving force driving you to contemplate suitside. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
A threat can only be of any affect if it is believed. The threat of being cast into the eternal lake of fire has no effect on a true atheist. Only one who believes in God and the eternal Lake of Fire can be affected by the knowledge of such a reality. See belief must be in place before the knowledge can have any effect at all. So your so-called threat is not a threat at all. The people who believe are the ones who seek to be right with God and have no reason to fear the Lake of Fire. And those who don't believe in God or the Lake of Fire laugh it off as some weird mythology. You argument falls to the ground. All Praise The Ancient Of Days
No my argument is this: If a person who feels he /she is compelled to believe in a certain vision of God or else they will be eternally punished...this a belief based on fear ,not embracing the vision of God because they feel it is right! So it would seem there are so many followers of christianity,islam and judaism who believe in their god due to FEAR of the punishment if they don't . Btw...I am not an atheist...I believe in God..I just don't believe in any man made Gods such as Jahweh or Allah. But I will defend an atheists right to not believe in God...the last thing I will do is try and convert them..they have to find their own path in life. So ..my argument rises to the top ! *LOL*
nova your putting the cart before the horse, Or the trailer before the car, if you want a modern equivalent. Belief in the fact Must come before any real affect of the fact can come to bear. You do not believe in the eternal Lake of Fire. So therefore how can it ever be a threat to you? Only when you believe in it can it ever be considered a threat. I believe in the eternal Lake of Fire but in no way do i fear it or see it as a threat to me because i am saved. It’s just a fact to me that only motivates me to seek to give the opportunity to others of accepting the Messiah Jesus as their Savoir also. So as a believer i have no fear therefore it is not a threat. And to you and the atheists who do not believe in it no fear can be provoked because without belief it has as much affect as me telling you that a giant pack of killer tomatoes is going to invade New York and drown its inhabitants in tomato paste. All Praise The Ancient Of Days
Whilst you did not choose to be born, now you are, you do have the choice to choose freedom or enslavement. Enslavement is not what some atheists would have you believe, worshipping God, since whatever you may profess to others, you always have the choice inside to believe or not. Enslavement is what you have already identified. To try and keep up with materialism and be part of the great human 'rat-race'. That is really enslavement. And the harder you try to succeed in this race. the more you become enslaved and the faster you must try to run. It's a bit like a gym treadmill which everytime you run faster, speeds up even more. The way to get off this is simply to hand your life over to Christ. If you think so little of it currently, what have you got to lose? Note ypu give to Christ personally not to any religion or religious organisation. You can choose (or not choose) such later. In the christian view, the devil is already defeated, he only has the limited power to make you miserable that you allow him. Jesus Christ has already beaten him. He is the loser not us! Giving your life to Christ makes you free. You can be free from carryng the guilt around of the past. You can enjoy real life which is about using things to help people not using people to get things. It really is a good life despite what is said in this forum by so many. Just ask yourself whether the angry scoffers and mockers here sound as if they have got it all 'sussed' and are really happy and then go somewhere where christian love is in action and see what the people contributing to that have got and make your choice. Come and join us in a full life and be happy. The Kingdom of God is not some celestial version of a library with miserable old people telling you to shut up, it's a noisy happy place with people having a big party. If you don't believe this, respond to this message and I'll quote you the relevant scriptures. People can and do literally dance for joy in churches down here on earth (well they do in the one I go to!!) Do not be confused between looking for your own inner peace and actually finding the peace of God. The Buddha searched his whole life and never found the inner personal peace he searched for so what chance have you got? Be a discoverer of the real peace which comes from God and not a searcher of any human version which is a only a chasing of shadows and ultimately as unfulfilling as materialism. kind regards, Gordon.
Yes, but does not the bible teach that all non believers(non believers of Yahweh) will be cast into the lake of fire? In any case I guess we could argue on this forever. I don't fear the eternal lake of fire because I believe it was just nonsense created by men to keep people from straying from the religion in question.
Prove it. Wow! That sure showed me. Yeah, American Christians in particular are creepy. I'd really rather be in that eternal lake of fire you nutjobs keep prattling on about if it means I don't be have to stuck in an environment with evangelicals lurching all over the place. I much more respect the noble nature of the way Muslims worship.
Yea! I like to see christ pay Genep's rent, car note, electric bill, food and clothing. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That's right! Enslavement is to follow some mindless belief, that drove Genep to his present predicament. He has lost value of his choices, and life. Well if christ doesn't pay Genep's rent he could loose his dweling, the electric bill will shut off, he would starve, go homeless, etc.. No! it makes a complete incopendent jackass out of you, and sorry to say Genep is a good example! He argues against free will, he has no sense of value, and basically claims he has no choices. This is uterly laughable, what peace with god? He has attempted and found only frustration, lack of choices, desperation, depresion, lack of commitments, loss of value of his free will, and who knows what is going on with this individual, on a failed attempt to find peace with god. Perhaps what he needs is a bit of rational critical thinking, then give up the bs mysticism and move on with life! Godless
Yes. But if you don't believe that then it cannot be a threat. No the argument is over. See what i mean. You have no fear of the threat because you do not believe it. So therefore to you and people of like mind, it cannot be a threat. All Praise The Ancient Of Days
Yes, but it is still an IMPLIED threat. This is how so many fundamentalist christians try and convert people. Even if the people being preached to do not believe initially, they may start believing because they fear the punishment if they don't believe. I suppose it depends on how gullible the person is. I have lost track of all the people I've met who were brought up in churches or families with this type of mindset.Many of them later thru logic and their own research were able to break free and follow their own spiritual paths.
What a clever, clever premise. I am not threatened by a gun to my head unless I know and believe in what guns can do or what they are. But if I believe and know what guns can do then I am a believer. Fantastic. So, God is a loving God to those that already adhere to his rule because His threats don’t apply to them (they are the chosen, special ones) but it does apply to the ones that deny Him. But they should not be threatened because they do not believe. Incredible. The reasoning here is excellent. Okay. Let’s see it from another perspective. I cannot feel threatened by an imaginary gun – a gun that is unseen and insinuated but never revealed but only to and by the chosen few by a book and by ‘select’ authority figures – unless I first believe that the gun is real. So, the others verbal testimony should not be threatening, as an intent, unless I first accept his testimony as fact. His motive is irrelevant and the fact that it isn’t the gun, itself that threatens, because it is nowhere to be seen but always used as a future or past reference point, but that it is the person speaking the threats that threaten should be ignored. But the gun does not threaten me. The idiot believing that the imaginary gun threatens me by using an imaginary gun against me. His stupidity becomes a reality for the very fact that he believes it to be true and he is part of a huge, retarded group that had avoided reason and logic to begin with. They then think of themselves as the guns hand, which pulls the trigger. Their words are His words. Their decrees are His. Just like a fundamental Muslim’s belief in his God becomes a real threat when he acts on it, as if it were true, and uses it against me. Here we see how a belief can manifest itself as a reality, even though it isn’t real at all. A schizophrenic hears voices in his head. The voices are his own subconscious and not someone else. The voice (himself) tells him to kill all those that do not believe in the voice. The unsuspecting doubter tells him that the voice is his own. The schizophrenic tells the unbeliever that he will die. The unbeliever feels threatened. The schizophrenic tells him that he should not fear him, unless he believes that the voice is real, in which case he escapes the threat by believing in it. But if he dos not believe in it it should be ignored unless he wants to prove that the voice is real by feeling threatened by it. Fascinating. If I believe in U.F.O’s then any light in the sky, which I cannot explain, becomes a threat or evidence for what I already believe. I then act and live as if the lights are not natural phenomena with simpler explanations but as if they are extraordinary phenomena with more complicated explanations. All Praise The Modern Of Days It is this type of reasoning that makes such minds a joy to listen to and read. I think this is my last of this kind of reading. All hail Jesus Christ, compassionate avenger of weakness! What we need now is more quotes from the Bible. That’ll just prove everything.
Maybe you know more about present day evangelism than I do but in respect of all the people I know who have become christians (and that's now a pretty large number) there are all sorts of reasons behind the conversion but I know of not one single one who has done so because of fear of hell or damnation or anything like it. Yes there are people preaching like that. I see them on street corners and in buses and other places in the Uk but they are I would say totally ineffective. They are at best totally misguided. At worst I am not sure! No one and no power can take away the passport to eternal life that everyone of us has a right too, because of Jesus Christ. It's there for the taking. All you have to do is to reach out and grab it and you get to enjoy life down here more too (that does not necessarily mean it's an easier life but many people with easier lives are much more miserable than many with harder lives). You can of course refuse the offer but that is your choice and you are the one who has made it happen - no one else! Let's take an analogy. If I offer you a £50 note or a $50 bill and you refuse to take it, is the fact that you have not got the £50 or $50 your fault or mine? So if God offers you eternal life and you refuse it, has He condemned you or have you condemned yourself to whatever the consequences may be? As for God supplying the necessary material things to live. O yes He does! He won't be sending you a 'Mercedes Benz' as per Janis Joplin but he certainly does supply things material as well as spiritual. I can recount numerous instances where money has arrived at just the right time and in just the right amount. All of these can of course be coincidences but sometimes that stretches probability just a little too far (and I lecture in statistics). As J. John says, 'If you pray lots of coincidences happen. If you stop praying strangely they stop.' This is my experience also. All of the atheists here can choose not to believe what I have written and scoff and mock -that is your free choice in western societies. This does not appear to have made all of you happy though. Many of you seem very angry and uptight and you seem to want to blame God or christians or both for that as well as all else. But do not blame the God you do not believe in (nor even those who do believe in Him) for your own decisions and their consequences. That is simply not logical. regards, Gordon.
Wrong. Decisions are only made based upon your nature, (the way you are because of a billion different experiences). You don't have a "choice" in what you do anymore than you have a "choice" as to whether your taste buds like lamb or not. Mark Twain's 'What is man' might give you a better understanding.
Actually, I do believe in God,but not in the way Christians do. My belief in God is based on the ancient Egyptian spiritual system. I don't think of God as he,nor she. I believe these personifications of God that apply in Islam,christianity and Judaism were simply made up visions of God created by the same men who created these religions. Mainly for the purpose of controlling people and keeping them from straying away. I don't have any problems with people of other faiths, but I do have problems with people who try to push their faith as the "only true way to God" and many christians are very zealous at this so that's why they bring a lot of the criticism of their faith back upon themselves. And yes, many of the christians I have met here in Canada were brought up in enviroments were the "eternal hellfire " was preached and follow their faith because they fear if they don't they are going guess where..that's right the good old lake of fire. Anyways Gordon if your belief system works for you and allows you to lead a happier life, that's fine, I'm all for that.
