Tell me, what turns you off at the church.

Why not? Certainly I've seen presidents become slaves to their own mistakes. I've seen people continue lying because of their first lie. You two are no different.

Ok Mrs. Universe. Then by you winning the argument that would mean that I also won because we cannot be speaking about distinct enties. In either case I won. However for someone to win, there has to be someone who looses. Therefore this talk about winning anything in your theology is illogical.

Love only goes so far.... Besides how can I really love you? I will just look at the stars Mrs. Universe.

Slavery is the abstance of freewill. Something that you do not believe exists anyways because you do not believe in the presense of the soul. Therefore Mrs. Universe, you are a slave even if the soul and God do not exist.

 

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Free will is an illusion

Okinrus... God knows everything, right. well explain this.

I'm playing in a football game and god is watching. He knows who will win but of course i don't. The game is the Blues vs the Reds. I play for the Blues. The Blues are winning but a touchdown at halftime and My team and i are getting fired-up for the second half hoping to win the game. But god (all knowing) knows that the Reds will win the game. God knows that late in the fourth quarter i will miss a crucial tackle that will give the Reds an advantage that they will use to put the game out of reach. What could i have done to change this? I may think (the illusion) that i could have made that tackle but in reality, if i made that tackle then god would have been wrong about us losing the game. The outcome of the game was known (therefore decided by god) before i set foot on the field. I was destined to lose that game not because of anything i did or didn't do, but because god already knows what will happen and i am powerless to change what god knows...

WE ARE SLAVES TO GOD"S KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE.

 

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Okinrus... God knows everything, right. well explain this.

I'm not sure why you think that you can argue against me using a theological system that I do not believe in. Now God of course knows some future events. He might know what he is going to do if certain conditions are met. Or he might allow Satan to tempt someone past their abilities in order to humble them and so perfect them. It is a logical fallacy to conclude from these two facts that God knows already if we are going to go to hell or not. I might add, that defeats the whole purpose of judgement day and the seperation of the goats from the lambs. They've already been seperated.

 

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What do you mean a theological system you don't believe in?

Look at what your writing!
"Now of course God know SOME future events" Some? All knowing remember

"He MIGHT know what his is going to do"

In another post you said that you dont believe in predestination but it sure sounds like you do here! Please tell me how God can be all-knowing but not KNOW who will burn in a fiery hell and who will dine with him in heaven....I mean how else will he know how many places to set at the great table?

 

My definition of all-knowing is different than yours. Mine is what the authors of the bible meant. 144,000 = 12*12 * 1000 has a symbolic meaning.

 

okinrus:

First, I have no theology. I'm an athiest.
Second - what the fuck are you on? How does my argument about death have anything to do with anything?

Not according to Webster's definition, not according to mine. Slavery is a state of partial or complete subjugation, not absence of free will.

 

I would have thought "forced servitude."

 

Depends. You can argue that one could be a voluntary slave. Depends on whether you lay emphasis on force or subjugation, or both.

 

Everyone has a theology. Your's just happens to be the abstance of God which happens to be debated under theology.

If you are really one with the universe, then I am also one with the universe. What exactly can you win by taking away from the universe?

And the definition of subjugation is to subdue. And the defintion of subdue is " to bring under control especially by an exertion of the will". Slavery is not always complete abstance of free will.

 

Re: Question ...

Ok, I am not God, and I am not as wise as I wish I was, but I do know that God has his ways of working out prayer. No one could know all those answers. How God deals with prayer is his own business, but I can answer a bit of it. As for the wording of our prayers, it doesn't really make a difference. God knows what is in our hearts. When we turn to him with those things and lay them at his feet, how smoth the words come is not an issue. It's what's in our hearts that count. And no, all negative prayers don't go to Satan an positive to God. People pray to God and people pray to satan. Your prayers go to who you address them to. That is why it is always a good idea to begin a prayer with "Heavenly Father" or some other reference to God.
Ok here is where things get tricky. The Holy Spirit guides our prayers. When we pray in ernest it is the Holy Spirit within us telling us what to pray for. So yeah this is similar to God telling you what to pray to God for. It's hard to understand, but we aren't supposed to understand all the ways of God. (If we could I wouldn't trust it) God doesn't have to deal with conflicting prayers, because all the honest heart-felt prayers are not conflicting because they are guided by the Holy Spirit. I do believe however that the rightousness of a person does effect our prayers. All throught the Bible people were healing and raising people from the dead and causing and ending droughts all with prayer. I believe all of that stuff is still possible today, but I know that I am not strong enough in faith to heal or bring a drought. The length of prayer is also importand. There are many stories in the Bible where people prayed and fasted for days or weeks on end before their prayers were andswered. God wanted to see how determened they were and how convinced they were that he would eventually answered. If they had stopped praying to soon there prayers may have never been answered. So I hope I have given some answers that suit you. Again I am not wise or knowledgable, I just try to listen to God for answers.

Love for all,

Mystee

 

Thanks for the reply. If you get a chance, check out the Prayer Wars article
that the quote I posted was taken from. Interesting reading - lots of food
for thought imo.

Peas and hominy,
EvilPoet

 

my, aren't we egotistical!
so even your counrty doesn't deserve your service? your family, your community? your friends?
what, are we to serve you?

 

i've only been to church once and it was enough to last me a life time. after being talked into going with an enthusiastic "friend", me being mainly curisous to see what could get someone in such a state of enthusiasm and curisosity about what a lot of my friends did and accepted every sunday morning and a wednesday week-night, i accepted his invitation to go to some special speaker all the way from australia. i thought it couldn't hurt, especially when most people asked me if i was religious then were surprised when they found out i wasn't. i thought to myself that i might find a group of people that i could relate to- you know, the person that christian people always talk about being yet always falling dismally short of being themselves. so i went to this night and came away dreadfully more aware of the type of people out there that i never knew existed. the night was an induction night- a bring the unwitting friend then convert them night where the peer pressure is so amazing, so great, that i was forced, not quite literally but almost that i was taken up the front by my "friend" to be converted. luckily i wasn't singularly up there by myself but to this day i have never forgiven my friend for taking me into a situation i had no idea about even though he probably had my best interests at hand. that is a great turn off for me. i had gone through a similar incidence of deceitfullness with religious people before this one but was to naive to believe that it wouldn't happen again. that turns me off at churchs- so much so that you would find it a hard time persuading me back into one of those places. such behaviour is disgusting, especially when those people who are taking advantage of younger people (which i was) was appealing to the "cool", in group mentality. i was free of any angst against religion until it invaded my mind and tried to microwave it so it fell into a religious school of thought. someone referred to viruses early in this thread and i think this type of religious action is exactly that.

 

I totally relate to your experience.....It's the twisted version of chrisitianity that is being taught these days that is compelling people to lie to others and deciet others to drag a convertion. Afterall, they are taught and convinced that a person as an individual is worth nothing, born in sin, ect.... regardless of their own striving and acheivement and their own believe in god as the creator, and that once one join the majical church and accept Jesus Christ, which really beats me, how do one accept Jesus Christ if he/she already acknowledge them as a prophet of god?, then you go to heaven, all others are loosers unsaved fuel of the fire souls.

The church is in the business of playing god and judging who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.....Same crap that the catholic church did centuries ago as they sold heaven passes to those that joined the churches and contributed money.

 

the god meme

"Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many times by independent 'mutation'. In any case, it is very old indeed. How does it replicate itself? By the spoken and written word, aided by great music and great art. Why does it have such high survival value? Remember that 'survival value' here does not mean value for a gene in a gene pool, but value for a meme in a meme pool. The question really means: What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The 'everlasting arms' hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture."

Source: the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins

 

You obviously need to go back and look at your history. The Church sold indulgences which are only for the temporal punishment of sin. The forgiveness of sin is different than just an indulgence. Muslims also have something like this. Good deeds canceling out bad deeds. So the buying an indulgence was considered charity. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm

 

You obviously need to go back and look at your history.

Forgive me but the history of christianity and how it evolves is too ugly to look at, forgive my limited knowledge, it's just too darn uneventful.

The Church sold indulgences which are only for the temporal punishment of sin. The forgiveness of sin is different than just an indulgence.

I don't get a word you're saying. The church sold heaven passes, they were golden keys, that was 500 years back. Poor people were not admitted to heaven or welcomed by the church.

Muslims also have something like this. Good deeds canceling out bad deeds.

That's for god to decide, we are told that we are a scale that must tip a certain way for salvation, but only god knows the code to the scale, it aint your darn bathroom scale for the simple minded pastor to judge or like the church is teaching.

So the buying an indulgence was considered charity. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm

beautifull, can you sell me a couple of indulgences, should I think about cheating on my husband or drinking alcohol, I'll be covered....How absurd.

 

The Church never sold heaven passes. They specifically sold indulgences which turned out to be a mistake. The idea of selling indulgences was that it would be viewed like charity, but they were abused. So forexample if you steal 100 dollars from somewhere, then you must do two things. You must repent to God and be devoted never to sin again and you must return the money. Also the indulgence was only for temporal punishment in purgatory so as to be helpful you would be going to heaven anyways. I'm not sure where your referance to the golden keys are? Yes, Peter was given the keys of heaven. These are not physical keys though.

This is ridiculus. Besides there are other ways to get an indulgence such as prayer, fasting etc.

 

Flores, I am in total concordance with you.
The Christian church has been so pathetic over the past centuries, especially the Catholics. it is full of useless rituals and stupid rules designed for the spiritually lazy. but hey we are not to judge these people. religion is the most primitive, rudimentary type of spirituality, it is not that effective anymore. besides it's not only the fundamentalist Christians who are getting it wrong but a bunch of other people with different faiths.

voltaire's conclusion:
religion has been the best way of controling the people... up to now.

 

Well thank you Voltair. Care to explain why ritual is useless?