Humor me!Atheist/Agnostic,what would you do if the Rapture really happened and YOU were left behind?

Originally posted by OldThinker
nope...more to it than that....even the devil KNOWS there is a God...

I guess according to your mythology he would have to considering your God made him too.


If God made everything, you could say everything could only be made out of God, right?

reply to post by bsbray11


Well here's something you would be interested in.
www.usbible.com...
100 satanic questions.

reply to post by OldThinker

Now how many cold ones did you have?

Actually I don't drink at all but if the Rapture and Jesus and all that turned out to be real, I might have to start

Originally posted by Romantic_Rebel
Well here's something you would be interested in.
www.usbible.com...
100 satanic questions.

A lot of those are similar if not identical to hard questions I have been asking myself ever since I was probably 7 or 8 years old.

I guess God's Devil has been tormenting me from ever since I was able to question anything.

Damn it God! Why can't I just put all these questions aside and blindly believe in you like the Muslims and Fred Phelps do!

reply to post by bsbray11


Well in Judaism Satan is an Angel and his job is to temp. Basically he's not evil he is only doing to job God gave him. In Christianity he is an adversary. Somehow he got free will with a bunch of other angels and then were kicked out of Heaven. Yep. I can't make sense of it. I guess you need followers and creating an enemy does that. Look at U.S. and how we used Communist and Muslims as enemy's to our advantage.

reply to post by OldThinker


Awesome video, OT, thank you for sharing that.

"The Passion of the Christ" was an amazingly powerful movie, and Lockridge's raging is a perfect compliment to the visual display.

Hey OldThinker, you didn't abandon your own thread did you?

I was asking a serious question. But knowing your heavily sarcastic rhetoric, I doubt I'll get a straight answer.

This is a philosophical question!

Originally posted by bsbray11
If God made everything, you could say everything could only be made out of God, right?

I mean, it seems logical enough to me.

Originally posted by adjensen
Again, you are missing the point, and I'm sorry that I insulted you by pointing it out.

If the Christians are gone, taken up by some sort of Rapture, IT MEANS THAT THEY ARE RIGHT. Which means that you will suffer seven years of "hell on Earth", concluded by a war to end all wars, followed by judgement by Christ, followed by eternal damnation. What part of that sounds like it's a good trade for not having to listen to evangelicals preach at you?

Y'all keep insisting you have a point. You think you have an air-tight logical case and that everyone else has to march lock step into your trap. It is a good trade because what's true for an evangelical Christian is not true for me. I suspect we create our own reality. If the rapture is "true" and all the God-loving/fearing Christians disappear, abandon their cars (bumper sticker), etc., then they will be gone. I don't think anything is going to happen to me. I don't believe that crap. I don't believe that an all-loving God would subsequently destroy the Earth, including a billion or so no-believeing Chinese, 1.5 Billion or so Muslims, and several billion other people that don't give a rat's patootie about God, Jesus, and the whole bunch of them. To actually believe that in order to experience eternal life you absolutely must--all 6 billion of us--accept the Lord jesus Christ as our own personal savior or it's no dice, Charlie, is absolutely and completely absurd narcissim at best.

You're wanting me to jump to your "logical conclusion," right? Well, here it is. If the rapture really were true and true for all 6 billion of us, even those who have never heard of any of this and those who live by traditions and beliefs far far older than Christianity, then I would rather choose oblivion than live in such a tyrannical universe as depicted by the Christians. "Heaven" sounds like "Hell" to me, a dictatorship run by God and Jesus, served by lobotomized sycophants with no free will at all, and I don't want any part of it.

I do hope when they abandon their cars that they will keep the keys in the ignition. I could use an upgrade.

Originally posted by schuyler
I suspect we create our own reality. If the rapture is "true" and all the God-loving/fearing Christians disappear, abandon their cars (bumper sticker), etc., then they will be gone. I don't think anything is going to happen to me. I don't believe that crap.

Fair enough. Can you elaborate on that "we create our own reality" part for me? I had a discussion with someone else who felt that way (in her case, we all create our own afterlife,) but once we got to a certain point, it kind of fell apart because of the number of branches.

If the Christians all disappear, but nothing else Rapture-wise, religion-wise goes on, where do you think they'll all go? Are you a proponent of affirmations and the multiple universe theory that backs it? That if you want the Christians to go away hard enough, you'll find yourself in a universe where they do go away without any of the rest of the bad stuff?

I do hope when they abandon their cars that they will keep the keys in the ignition. I could use an upgrade.

lol, you will be quite welcome to mine! But, as I said before, I don't believe that the Rapture is going to happen, either.

Originally posted by adjensen
Fair enough. Can you elaborate on that "we create our own reality" part for me? I had a discussion with someone else who felt that way (in her case, we all create our own afterlife,) but once we got to a certain point, it kind of fell apart because of the number of branches.

If the Christians all disappear, but nothing else Rapture-wise, religion-wise goes on, where do you think they'll all go? Are you a proponent of affirmations and the multiple universe theory that backs it? That if you want the Christians to go away hard enough, you'll find yourself in a universe where they do go away without any of the rest of the bad stuff?

First, to preface everything I ever say, "I don't know for sure what reality is like, but I think this may be worth discussing...."

Steven Hawking's new book, "The Grand Design" discusses this very topic. I just got it in uncorrected proofs and haven't had a chance to read it yet except the introduction, but Feyneman's Many-World theory appears to be where he is going with it. I personally have never been able to grasp that many splits. Maybe, but it's beyond me. What I suspect is that when a Christian believer dies, he goes to [insert name of next step up here) a location where he will be met by fellow Christians and his beliefs affirmed. So in terms of creating their own reality, they will gravitate toward people and places they believe exist already. I suspect it will take further growth and understanding for them to eventually figure out that God and Allah are the same guy (just to start with an obvious one) and that though Christianity has some basic ideas more or less correct, they have a lot more incorrect and the Universe is "queerer than we can suppose." -JBS Haldane.

I first came across the idea of 'creating your own reality' via the Seth books years ago. Seth (whoever he really is) claimed that we physically create everything we see. He was certainly not unique as that idea is commonly found in Eastern traditions. I think those books used that idea as a metaphor for taking responsibility for your own life, but taking it a little further, Hawking seems to be saying that we "create our own reality" in the sense that reality is filtered through our own senses and is therefore a product of what our mind makes of this sensory input and that other interpretations may be just as valid. That falls right in line with the idea in quantum mechanics that observing a situation changes it.

My current working theory is that we are in a sense avatars in a 'Second Life' adventure game here on Earth that seems very real. I know that's a far cry from dissing Christian rapture folks for being intolerant. But I do think it is possible, though perhaps not likely, that people who strongly believe that could potentially experience it and still leave the rest of the world alone, (leaving me their car keys) much like the Heaven's Gate believers took their stand and 'left the earth' to be with their cosmic buddy behind the Hale-Bopp comet, leaving us on Earth to bury them.

Originally posted by bsbray11

If God made everything, you could say everything could only be made out of God, right?

Yeah, makes sense to me too...

I hadn't forget you/the thread...its just I been busy/work/traveling/honey-do list....

OT

Originally posted by adjensen
reply to post by OldThinker

 

Awesome video, OT, thank you for sharing that.

"The Passion of the Christ" was an amazingly powerful movie, and Lockridge's raging is a perfect compliment to the visual display.

Yeah, I made it my sig...love it!

OT

reply to post by schuyler


Very interesting. I asked about affirmations, because a number of years ago, I was a fairly vocal proponent of it, with evidence (I figured) -- I'm not a gambler, but I could walk into a casino and leave five minutes later with a good bit of money. Did it a number of times, mostly to show myself and others that it was real. As a Christian, I figured that it worked in with the whole "ask and ye shall receive" line, as a person with a dangerously vague sense of physics, I figured that the multiple universe thing accounted for (though, as you said, the scale seemed unwieldy), and as a Methodist, I figured I'd just not tell the Pastor that I'd been gambling, lol.

On the afterlife bit, the question that came up in the other discussion, and I'll raise here, as well, is what level of granularity constitutes a separate reality? My wife was Catholic, I am Protestant. Catholic views of the afterlife are different than Protestant views, so when she died, did she go someplace that I can't? Taken to an extreme, if you and I shared 100% identical views of heaven, except that in mine Hot Pockets exist, but you find Hot Pockets unacceptable, so would we need to be in two different heavens? If so, wouldn't the afterlife consist of us all in our own little paradise, isolated from everyone else?

As to the shaping our own reality bit on this side of that veil, I can tell you from a personal standpoint that this is NOT the reality that I would have ever wanted, or would ever wish on anyone else. The death of my wife has been a crushing thing for me, both mentally and physically, and if I had the slightest amount of control over what happens in this reality, she'd be back at my side instantly. I can accept, on some level, that grieving is a learning experience, and something that has built up my character, but even this long after the fact, I fail to see much of an upside to what I've been through.

Ultimately, I think that there is something to affirmations, and perhaps a bit of "we control our reality," but I have a tough time seeing it as much more than a vague influence, if for no other reason than this (all of this, not just me and my situation) isn't remotely close to what I would create, were I in charge.

But it's challenging to think about, thank you for bringing me back to the subject!

Originally posted by schuyler
.....

Y'all keep insisting you have a point. You think you have an air-tight logical case and that everyone else has to march lock step into your trap. It is a good trade because what's true for an evangelical Christian is not true for me. ....

hi friend..please walk me thru the subjectivity of truth....I'm all ears....

when is 2 and 2 anything other than 4 or 22?

OT

Originally posted by adjensen
....Ultimately, I think that there is something to affirmations, and perhaps a bit of "we control our reality," ....!

yep yep!

"as a person thinks , so is he/she"

"from the heart, the mouth speaks"

"power of life and death are in the............tongue"

Shall i go on?

OT

a, ever you ever considered the sound we make when we breath? try it, k?

Originally posted by OldThinker

Originally posted by bsbray11
If God made everything, you could say everything could only be made out of God, right?

Yeah, makes sense to me too...

It's crazy to think about it, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a lot of truth to the old Christian teachings. The church just corrupted it something awful because they're power hungry just like anybody else.

I think the trinity was originally a part of this teaching: on one hand you have the idea of 1 god, yet on the other hand he's divided into 3 aspects too. And really if everything is made out of God then you could say he's divided into an INFINITE number of aspects.

Well, "he" is a poor word choice I think. More like "it," or something...

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
reply to post by OldThinker

 

Now how many cold ones did you have?

Actually I don't drink at all but if the Rapture and Jesus and all that turned out to be real, I might have to start

TS, that was funny...reallly,,,thank you!

Beer or wine?

reply to post by OldThinker


You guys need to go back to water. Nothing beats good purified H2O. Make you feel like you clean your entire body inside and out.

reply to post by bsbray11


yep, good points....

Trinity?

I struggled with the concept for years...

A mentor of mine sealed it for me tho...

this is what she said...

"you're a parent, right?"

"you're child, too...right?"

"you're an employee, too?"

I coundn't argue....me, one person...yet three distinct personalities...and .....three different ways of...and here's her point....three different ways of RELATING....


f-ing blew me away...

OT

PS: I'm impressed the way you think...it is honored to have u on THE team

Originally posted by Romantic_Rebel
reply to post by OldThinker

 

You guys need to go back to water. Nothing beats good purified H2O. Make you feel like you clean your entire body inside and out.

H2O "R and R", huh?

Now wasn't that the compound JC turned into ....????

just kidin....