To Those Struggling with their Non-Faith:

Originally posted by Itisnowagain

God provides everything. God does not just give chocolate flavour, God gives all flavours. You get to see all there is not just what you consider good. Man ate from the tree of knowledge so he can know the words good and bad. But life is not good or bad - it just is.
Would you like it if the cinema only showed happy movies? Would you like it if life was not diverse?

It is you who denies what is provided - it is you who cannot love. Love what is present - it is a gift after all.

So for how long are you going to provide excuses for your god for doing nothing?
Why would god tell us that prayer works, when it does not.
Don't tell me prayer does work, because I can provide evidence it does not!

Do you believe in talking snakes too?

If you don't dance like a chicken while playing a kazoo God won't love you. Don't ask me how I know. Just know that he won't love you.

Originally posted by EnochWasRight
reply to post by Toadmund

 

We don't choose God. It's the opposite. He prepares us for faith or we have none.

John 6

65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”

66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

70 Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” 71 (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)

We then see the same idea in John 2:

23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. 25 He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.

It's not so much us knowing God. It's God knowing us. But why? I think it is tied to Jesus words about baptism. He said, "You must be born again." In other words, he already knows us at this point 6000 years later. Is this it then? Can we not come to God now?

How many thieves were on the cross and how many made it off into paradise? There were two and only one repented. This is the purpose of our baptism into the waters of life. Did the Thief on the cross do ANYTHING to earn his salvation? No, he simply saw the truth. He was the first person into paradise based on his faith alone.

What made him believe?

Isaiah 53:12 says; "Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors."

The He here is Christ. Again, why did the one thief receive salvation?

Like 23

40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

He believed and asked him. Simple. He was sincere and humble. He recognized his own sin and knew he was justly sentenced. Christ, on the other hand, was suffering for us unjustly. He made this choice willingly. Fear is humbled deference for the authority of God. It's another name for respect. Love respects others over self. This is the key to love. God gives and receives. So should we. The thief takes. The thief in question turned from the sin, even at the last minute.

OK, well, if you haven't noticed, I don't think many people in this thread are going to buy into your message, as well-meaning as it is. I for one cannot ever just believe that the Bible is the unerrant word of god, especially since the original text was revised at The Council of Nicea, among other incidents where the the actual text was edited. It went through many translations before it even made it to English, and the King James Version was an even further revision. We're going to believe ( or not believe ) what we feel is right for us, and you're going to hold onto your faith no matter what. Good luck and peace to you....

Toadmund- We all have a path to travel on this Earth- for many people going to a place of worship (no matter what their religion) will help them develop morally and spiritually, and they will learn important lessons from their service leader and from those around them. If they find they have outgrown that milieu, they will move on. It is not for us to judge those who are still ensconced in a religious tradition. I do have a problem with your use of the term "religious rednecks". Do you know who rednecks are? These are the people who grow your food and do other kinds of manual labor. If you want to grow spiritually you should really learn to drop the judgments about your fellow man. You are not better than they are just because you no longer believe in religion or God.

Sal

reply to post by SallieSunshine

Me mocking religious rednecks, who labels themselves as that?
They don't label themselves as rednecks, other people do, with the exception of one person on here, and it did not bother him in the least.
According to your definition, I'm a redneck (sans religion).
I think they can take it, and I don't think of rednecks as farmers either, I think of them as the idiots that tormented Wyatt and Billy in the Easy Riders movie. That excludes a lot of decent pseudo-rednecks out there.
Nice try to discredit me!

Why would me using the term religious rednecks bother you so much, what would happen if someone started telling redneck jokes in your presence?
Are you going to get in their face and denounce them?

I've never been religious personally, but beliefs I once held could be termed "spiritual" and I have studied many religions, and the history of mysticism in general. I struggle with the concept of mortality, and the apparent lack of any inherent meaning or purpose to my existence, life, thoughts, and emotions.

Stark, frank reality, as revealed by science and observation, and scientific theories consistent therewith, reveal reality to be quite nihilistic. People disagree with that, and that is their prerogative, but that is my impression. According to the most current research that we have to draw upon when attempting to describe reality and our place in it, everything we experience that we attribute meaning or importance to may in fact be inherently meaningless.

One possible interpretation of reality based purely upon science and scientific theory is this:

Emotions are electrochemical interactions in the brain. Thoughts and choices are just emergent behaviors. Matter isn't matter as we traditionally conceive of it. We are stuck like flies in fly paper, in what is termed a membrane. All matter is simply disturbance and complexity in said membrane, which at the fundamental level is just quantum "foam." The universe may exist as an undefined expanse of dimensional interplay and movement, without purpose or origin necessarily.

Love, friendship, family, and everything else we value are inherently meaningless beyond evolutionary necessity, which in turn is simply a result of natural selection. Natural selection is not a magical force, but simply "how things shake out." You can witness a analogous form of natural selection by dumping a bag of differently weighted and buoyant stones into water. Some will rise to the top, others will not. They are not alive or animate, but they undergo natural selection. Biological life as we know it, replete with the aforementioned emergent behaviors and interactions that give us the illusion of consciousness, free will, and our lives having "meaning," originated with natural selection amid similarly inanimate substances long ago. We are "just how things shook out."

Any attempts to assign greater meaning to our existence than this, such as by acknowledging and embracing scientific knowledge but then also going beyond it to say that somehow being altruistic (including philosophies such as Humanism, which frequently attest atheism and science) is innately good or preferable for any reason other than "it feels good because humans' survival benefited from the development of empathy," are the cognitive mind using dissonance to reestablish the illusion of purpose and importance. There is no "greater good" because life has no meaning other than that which we attribute to it in an attempt to avoid the realization of nihilism and existential terror, as any life form without these defense mechanisms would experience. And any thoughts of "doing good" or being a "good person" are irrational unless viewed simply as the result of the biological mind's attempts to justify and preserve its importance, and perpetuate itself or its offspring.

All life forms of sufficient complexity have a survival instinct, because this is beneficial to their species' perpetuation, the pursuit of which only evolved through natural selection by being the most fit to survive. In short, nothing matters, and when your life ends, your consciousness and the emergent behaviors arising from the interactions of the brain that give rise to it, will also end. You will cease to exist, period.

Note that the above is not what I firmly believe necessarily. However, it is one possible interpretation of reality. And it is one not inconsistent with the available facts. So that being the case, I think it's easy to fathom why people have all kinds of techniques, tendencies, methods, and beliefs to provide their existences meaning and structure. Whether that means some form of spirituality, imaginary friends, a personal philosophy, a pet project, a lifelong goal, or organized religion, people have a profound, and probably evolutionarily inherent, need - not just want, but need - to give their lives meaning, or to feel that their lives have been given meaning by someone or something else.

I do believe that many in organized religion prey upon this need to manipulate and to influence. Others, having been on both sides of the fence, I believe genuinely believe in their religious convictions. Others are simply following their natures.

While not religious, I often say I believe in human love. But what is love? According to science, it's a specific distribution of thoughts, electrical activity, and neurotransmitters. It has no inherent meaning, other than its evolutionary function. And yet I am compelled, logical or no, to transcend that definition. Because that is my nature and to do otherwise results in pain. If you care about anything and believe it matters beyond your brain's need to think so, you have faith in my opinion, whether you choose to term it such or not.

Peace.

reply to post by AceWombat04


If I could give you 5 stars I would have.
Sometimes I hate to think that way, but I also believe it to be mostly true.
We are animated meat, with meat dreams and meat ambitions and meat desires.

We can't prove 100% all that is true, but what evolutionary advantage would there be to have an afterlife?
None, cause once your dead, your dead.

At least watch the first 45 seconds of this, comedic genius!

Your dead as well as the physical part of you is anyway, and being dead cuts you out of the evolutionary game, like right quick! So what use is an afterlife to animated meat?
But, science has shown that superstitions, empathy, etc. do have an evolutionary component, it gives warmth and comfort. But in todays world, those things are either less important, or at least shown to be raw human behaviour.
The end of the age of superstition will start humans on a different course where peoples lives will be much more valued as the realisation that that may be the only life and conscienceness they will ever have.
You know why?
Because once they are dead, they are DEAD!!!

(of course my beliefs can go any way as evidence provides)

reply to post by Toadmund


Why, thank-you. And thanks for the laugh, too lol. I like that, as well as George Carlin's thought along similar lines.

While I largely agree, for me, it results in a slightly different personal decision as a coping mechanism. Which I could drone on about for another short novel of a post (which I don't want to do lol) or I could simply say boils down, essentially, to: since I'm quite possibly going to simply cease to exist after my physical death, there's very little risk in believing literally whatever I (or you) want provided I don't harm anyone else and it brings me comfort.

Hence the belief in unconditional love, etc. At least that way maybe I can ease a fellow meat machine's existential hell while I'm here. (My evolutionarily evolved empathy can't stand seeing people suffer.) And if something exists beyond this (I'm agnostic, but skeptical) and I get to take anything from this existence into that one... love would be the one thing I would hope to carry with me, if it could somehow remain as an ontological entity somehow without a physical brain (being very agnostically speculative here mind you lol.) It's the only thing that, even if only as a chemical in my brain, feels "real" to me. I've lost faith in everything else I ever believed in. That's all I have left, and I need something to not just become a nihilistic, cynical, depressive, non-functional mess (I have been there before.) And, it's the basic component of being able to have things like families; my love for my parents, etc.

So... love it is. Which is why I respect everyone's beliefs because at the end of the proverbial day that is our lives, it's quite possible none of it matters whatsoever anyway. Which begs the question... why care if people delude themselves? Just a different manifestation of the ego's need to establish meaning and purpose? Because if someone, for example, has a child and cares about them and believes that matters... in the seemingly probable objective reality, that too is merely faith in something largely illusory, other than that it gets experienced subjectively by the brain. So I don't feel particularly bothered by people's personal beliefs. That's for others to figure out. Me... I will just try to be a loving, empathetic humanist and not worry about what happens at the end, or what others think happens. It will be what it will be (or not be.) And either way, I expect I'll be alright. Either because I exist... or because I don't, and thus don't care lol.

Peace.

reply to post by AceWombat04


Heh, sometimes I should take your philosophy and tone myself down a little, sometimes I feel I am a bit rude to some people and their beliefs. I am aware of that, and I wish to work on changing that.

I don't want to argue with people, but sometimes a good debate can get to that point, and it's kinda fun as long as you don't hurt feelings, which sometimes I think I do..
But a person is not always aware all the time how others perceive them so it's a learning process, so as long as you are aware of yourself you can always improve how you deal with other people.

But you always want to share your beliefs, or non-beliefs, whatever, and there is always somebody who challenges you.
That's fun, and I am up for the challenge.

Originally posted by Toadmund

Originally posted by Itisnowagain

God provides everything. God does not just give chocolate flavour, God gives all flavours. You get to see all there is not just what you consider good. Man ate from the tree of knowledge so he can know the words good and bad. But life is not good or bad - it just is.
Would you like it if the cinema only showed happy movies? Would you like it if life was not diverse?

It is you who denies what is provided - it is you who cannot love. Love what is present - it is a gift after all.

So for how long are you going to provide excuses for your god for doing nothing?
Why would god tell us that prayer works, when it does not.
Don't tell me prayer does work, because I can provide evidence it does not!

Do you believe in talking snakes too?

When did God tell you that prayer works? When did I tell you that Prayer works?

Originally posted by Toadmund
No thanks, do you pass out bibles and preach on street corners trying to convert people?
Well, that is what you are trying to do here.
I don't wish to sound rude, but when my non-beliefs are disrespected by someone shovelling their beliefs down my throat, I start sounding rude. It's a normal human response.
I don't mean to, I am just laying out my thoughts and emotions..

Originally posted by Toadmund
That's where I am at, trying to get to the truth.

ORLY...

When I hear someone say they are "trying to get to the truth"...

I usually ASSUME they are serious.

At SOME future point in your life, you will realize that you ALREADY found the truth...

And you are going to WISH that you had believed it.

One more clue: the truth will ALWAYS be hidden, covered-up, and lied about.

Because of RELIGION, most are unable to recognize truth.

reply to post by Murgatroid


Tell us your story of lacking faith.
Even if temporarily.
Certainly that is why you are participating on this thread, right?

If I want the truth, It''ll be on my own time and my decision, don't threaten me with damnation, that is rude and preachy.
And that is your belief, your FAITH, not mine.

Tell us about your doubts, that's what I want to hear from you, otherwise you are here to preach.

Respect my own beliefs, or lack of, and I will try to respect yours.

reply to post by AceWombat04


Been reading a little Nietzsche..?

At least..., similar to Nietzsche, you realize that nihilism must be overcome with a strong morality, established by yourself, in order to create a growth oriented perspective...

Your interpretation and acceptance of unconditional Love as your "Wille zur Macht", could very likely save you from a personal "Der letzte Mensch" of spirit, in the end...

Nihilism bases much of it's interpretation on the science of mankind, but makes no mention of the incompleteness of that science...

I can attest to you, from personal experience, that science has a lot more to learn about our reality, and other beings, (and their advanced science), within it...

Just because we are not allowed to see what is beyond the playroom door, does not mean there is nothing there...

In the future of mind over matter and non-linear temporality, be careful what you consider a truth, (non-existence), for your will, if strong, could very well make it a reality...

And,yes, Love is a good choice...an important one...
For it is a constructive and unifying force, as apposed to Hate, which destroys...

Originally posted by Toadmund
Sounds almost like a cult (it is) that you are afraid to leave or un-believe, and when you do, you think of the un-repairable heating problem down in hell and that if I am wrong, even if I can't believe it, that's where I will go, yes, forever, unlimited zero's on an infinate time span, no forgiveness, no mercy.
Shunned by god.

I struggled and tried to believe in god and now I realised what I have often thought, but ignored my true feelings, that I am just kidding myself, just like when I used to believe in Santa Clause and the Easter bunny, and yes, you too Tooth Fairy.
It was the hell part that really bugged me, why should I be afraid to question this religious non-truth?
I wish that I was NEVER introduced to religion, it's brainwash, it's a cult that punishes those who un-convert or don't believe, a CULT people.

I am glad there are people and resources out there for when I question my own non-faith. When I fall from the path to not-god, I can always count on a wealth of reason from the internet.

At what point are you on the road to non-faith?

Hi there

I grew up in a land without religion, East Germany, and always thought that was a good thing because I (as I became old enough to do so and the wall came down and we had a variety of information just flooding into our land) was able to face every possible explanation of life and the maning of it and spirit and it's place in our life with a more open mind.
I read a lot (and still do) but never found any religion that seemed like the one true and real one for me.

Having said that though I always and already as a child felt like there was something, like a higher power, something good, something that created this world and me and that always was and always will be there and that I could talk to when I wanted to. I found it a lot in nature and the peace it gives me. I have no name for it, if course habitually you wanna call it "God", but I never mean the Christian God or any other when I do. And I don't mean a person-like creature who judges all your right and wrongs or punishes you, no, I just mean like the collection of all souls, spirit, the high energy power that created this world before the first human ever set foot on it, the power that is all good and created everything so it is a cycle (like the seasons and the fact that trees grow new blossoms every year etc.).

I mean, if one just for a moment thinks about the incredibility of a planet rotating every day and just floating in perfect alignment to all the other planets ... that is a proven and by everyone accepted fact and for me never really receives enough regard, because I think if something like that is possible, how can there really be a boundary for anything else at all including real magic and a higher power?


Emarie

reply to post by Emarie

I mean, if one just for a moment thinks about the incredibility of a planet rotating every day and just floating in perfect alignment to all the other planets ... that is a proven and by everyone accepted fact and for me never really receives enough regard, because I think if something like that is possible, how can there really be a boundary for anything else at all including real magic and a higher power?

You say this for the same reason people created gods for volcanoes and storms - it's because they just didn't know the natural logic of such things. You see something miraculous in rotating planets. I see a whole lot of plain old gravity. Yes, I am quite impressed with it, but not in awe of it.

Originally posted by watchitburn
I was forced to go to church when I was a kid.

But I'm pretty sure it was just because my folks wanted us out of their hair for a few hours on the weekend. Once we were old enough to decide whether or not we continued going, we all dropped that nonsense like a bad habit.

According to your avatar and name, it doesn't appear to have had a positive impact on you nor fostered an optimistic orientation..

reply to post by NewAgeMan


I appreciate your concern, but your attempted analysis of me is pointless.
All you know about me is what I've sold you.

I am actually a very polite and helpful person.
I just don't require a book or another human to tell me how to do the right thing for the right reason.