The Bible --- Too liberal For Some - Page 7

Why not?

Well guys given " Free choice " and all there is a certain line of thinking that follows : If the Devil and Demons are real we let them in. If God and Angels are real we let them influence us.
According to the Bible God gave us free will to do good or evil. So real or not in essence we are the Demons or the Angels. This is Heaven or Hell. It's what we make of it because we have free will. If I were God that's exactly how I'd go about it as well.

Your logic is dizzying...

Because you have had a large number of opportunities to display logical questioning in this thread and, while it's been fun - and I mean no offense here - it is clear that you are not comfortable entering into certain areas of questioning and analyzing in a logical manner.

I mean your answers to questions have been solid enough but they have not shown that you have actually done the questioning of your position in order to arrive at it.

It's more like you're an expert on Japan and have read every book there is about the culture and everything but haven't actually been there.

That's two different kinds of knowing.... neither is better than the other and both have their uses. But you can't get the experience of one from only doing the other if you catch my drift. That's all I'm saying...

Being as you don't know what I have done or not in my life, you don't know what my experiences are. Since you only know what I have told you, you cannot base your reasoning on the above logic.

Actually it is the most perceptive thing said yet in this thread.

In fact, if you take it one wee step more then it follows that we are the Gods and Demons (or at least partake of their nature to a far greater degree than people usually understand by being created in 'God's Image'), then it is the only possible answer to the 'free will' problem in Christianity.

Because whatever you want to believe - and this is where 'faith' is a great help I suppose - the logical facts are that an omnipotent 'good' God starting with a tabula rasa cannot end up creating a 'mistake'.

Therefore creation must be exactly as He wants it.

Talk of 'demons' and 'devils' are just a fudge to try to sidestep this but it just doesn't work. In fact it's a morass of insanity.

And that is the last thing that any degree of 'enlightenment' should be.

Of course we are talking about religion as a human construct - which is clearly what the sort of thing we are discussing is and why it has these human, all too human, problems and inconsistencies.

You don't need to have seen every camel in the world to recognize an individual camel when you see one.

Sorry for the vestibular problems!

Agree or not I think you caught my drift though.

Never get involved in a battle of wits with a Sicilian when death is on the line!!!!

But you can't get the experience of one from only doing the other if you catch my drift. That's all I'm saying...

Hypothetically :


If God is real then how would God ever hope to create a seperate entity ( us ) that was capable of growing out of a " morass of insanity " on it's own? Order from chaos. You could whip it up magically of course but then it wouldn't really be a seperate entity. The whole point of free will I would guess.

Believe in God or not it's a good philosophical blueprint for moral growth for the human race. Hopefully in time humans learn a few things. We still have a long ways to go however.

Yes....this is a good example actually of what I meant.

That response would be different if you were someone who had questioned your position from a logical perspective to the degree that they could be proved wrong...

The question of the possible existence of a higher power needs to be separated from known religions imo.

Basically they were attempts to address the questions and they succeeded in the main - for their time.

However thousands of years have passed and we need to evolve new mechanisms. We haven't yet and are relying on these outdated frameworks.

That's the problem, not religion per se.

So since I do not respond the way you anticipate my response should be and I do not follow the rules you have setup in your mind I cannot have been or done what I claim? What is to be gained by going through an argument in the way you intend to proceed? Is there going to be a change in perception of my position? Are any going to be changed in their way of thinking? Is any position going to be advanced? Or is it just argument for the sake of argument? I posit it is the latter and since there is nothing to be gained, outside of possible bragging rights or feeling better about oneself, respectfully decline. If this can somehow advance anything that will last outside of this forum, let me know.

You're talking about shifting the blame for things from ourselves to God or the Devil " The Devil made me do it "

I would tend to agree however there are still people in the world who can only absorb this material in that format. I'd rather they get it than not.

After all people have been inventing religions to outline or explain existence for a long time before we had science or other tools. I was just talking to a friend ( who's rather religious ) about this the other day. Religion, science, art, and philosophy. They're kind of like the old story about the blind men trying to discribe an elephant : " It's long and thin like a snake ". The thing a lot of people miss is they're all talking about the same thing and in their own way they all are inaccurate/incomplete and they are all ( in their own way ) at the same time correct.

ah! now I see....

Religion is mans attempt to control God. God does not want religion, he wants relationship.
Even in the Old Testament God tried at first to make it a personal relationship, and the people shied away.
http://niv.scripturetext.com/exodus/19.htm

Then it was brought down to brass tacks.
http://bible.cc/john/13-34.htm

And to finish the thought in that passage:
34A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

http://niv.scripturetext.com/1_corinthians/13.htm
A description of what true love looks like.

The greatest commandment is to love.
http://bible.cc/matthew/22-38.htm

The Greatest Commandment
34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?
37Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.b 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.c 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.


But if you want to wrap things up around religion. Go for it.

Sometimes the need for a specific sect of religion or religion itself get's in the way of the message contained within.

The book itself should never be more important than the contents.

(You changed your post above after I quoted it, but my reply still applies.)


Nearly always actually... People are very concerned about following the rules and doing what they are supposed to do, but they don't want to actually do what is requested. Live it out, always.

To quote another Keith Green song:

To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice

To obey is better than sacrifice,
I don't need your money, I want your life.
And I hear you say that I'm coming back soon,
But you act like I'll never return.
Well you speak of grace and my love so sweet,
How you thrive on milk, but reject my meat,
And I can't help weeping of how it will be,
If you keep on ignoring my words.
Well you pray to prosper and succeed,
But your flesh is something I just can't feed.
To obey is better than sacrifice.
I want more than Sunday and Wednesday nights,
Cause if you can't come to me every day,
Then don't bother coming at all.
Lah, lah,lah….
To obey is better than sacrifice.
I want hearts of fire, not your prayers of ice.
And I'm coming quickly, to give back to you,
According to what you have done,
According to what you have done,
According to what you have done.

Exactly, God created this world and the life in it the way He wanted it to be. Angels, demons (inlcuding the devil and his servants) other beings and humans are all part of it, there is no mistake in it.

Nightcrawler

This existence is made up of opposites in everything. How can you have good without evil? How can you aspire to something greater without something lesser to compare it to? No. There's no mistake.

Good argument. A lot of religious people (and I'm a religious person myself) follow the rules of religion but they don't live the message hidden inside of it.
But religions should only serve as a support-framework to develop the spiritual balance needed to understand and fulfill the inner meaning.

Unfortunately most people are content with the surface, those will also receive their reward if they mean it truthfully, but they will never experience...

Nightcrawler

[QUOTE=NoahJ;1501779]So since I do not respond the way you anticipate my response should be and I do not follow the rules you have setup in your mind I cannot have been or done what I claim?

Flat Earther: "so because I do not follow this 'geography' you have set up in your mind I am wrong? Why are you so closed-minded and stuck to this thing you call science? This makes me wrong?"

Sane Rationalist: "yes"


Again - you have to ask the question.

If as you claim you had already proceeded this way then you would know the answer already no?

You would be able to say"What is to gain is X" and then go on to opine as to whether or not X is worthless. But we have not got to X yet...

This is an even better example of what I am talking about.


Of course not...yet you claim that you are open to logical analysis and the possibility you might be wrong which would suggest that it is possible. It's a disconnect.


You'd have to ask others following the thread. You do not have to gain anything from it for someone else to...


That is an Even better example. Someone who had the mindset you claim for analytic assessment and the possibility that they might be wrong could never make such a statement. Imo.

You are speaking from an Islamic perspective. Islam does not suffer from the same inherent contradictions re Free Will that Christianity does and the two are not comparable in those terms.

From a Qur'anic view of course there is no mistake that is consistent with the religious framework. In Christianity there is no such coherence and the religious perspective on this is contradictory.

There is no mistake in reality. The mistake occurs when people divide things into 'good' and 'bad'. The greater and the lesser are actually the same thing.

I would have thought this essential in Christ's teaching; the first shall be last and the last shall be first etc...

Yes two sides of the same coin. Or Yin and Yang to borrow from another branch of philosophy.

Do unto others...
That's all you need.

I disagree, sure there is no mistake in reality and all created things, including the devil, were created in purpose and is not a mistake, but that does not mean that good and evil are the same thing, in fact life is all about finding the difference between good and evil, truth and lie...

Just to illustrate things: I don't think that you don't see a difference between someone running into a burning house and rescuing a child from the fire risking the own life, or someone kidnapping children, keeping them locked away in some cellar, raping and torturing them and eventually murdering them.

Nightcrawler

I would ask you then that if God is the only thing that really exists - and this is clearly an established fundamental concept in Islam - then how can something exist which is in opposition to God?

Clearly this would be shirq - to postulate something that has powers that can confound God's. As such this is not a permissible idea in Islam.

The person may do the things you outline in your example. But that does not mean that something called 'evil' exists.

I give you a counter-example: things progress on this planet as they are going and eventually one group of lunatics murders millions of people with a nuclear bomb. Then another group retaliates in like fashion and kills millions more...so it goes on and through a series of the usual lunatic actions the whole planet is blasted to Kingdom Come.

Does it matter? Is it significant? No.

Not in the framework of the billions of years of the Solar System. And beyond that the much, much larger scale of the Universe...and beyond that....God...

On even a material level of the galaxy it is a nano second of a nano second.

It is nothing.

Best not to talk about 'good' and 'bad' and 'evil' in those terms and those are the terms...think how much more elongated they would be from God's pov.

Yes essentially. But you also need to understand " Why " so the point hits home.

Why?
It's done fine by me.

I'm glad you get it. However I'll repeat " so the point hits home ". It's all about the comparitive reference we were talking about. How can you only look at one side of the coin and understand the whole?

because alot of unintended bad things can happen by people blindly believing and acting out that they are doing good.

Ok. That also! Yes. Some people do get it terribly wrong. It's not : " Do unto others before they do unto you ( Iraq anyone ? ) ".

Everything that God created exists "really". The idea that only God exists and that therefore everything is part of God is a human interpretation, imho a wrong interpretation (but you don't believe in wrong or right anyhow, don't you?).

Just because the beings God created exist really and can do evil doesn't mean that it is shirk.

Shirk would it be to view the created beings as dieties, to pray to them, thinking they can do anything in favour of you.


Indeed, beings that are evil can not confound God, they have no power beyond the power God gave beings, as they are merely created beings totally dependent on God to exist.
And yet as long as God supports their existence they exist really and they really can do evil things, but just as sure they will pay for it in the afterlife.




Of course it does, evil it is to hear God's voice, to understand His message, to know good and to purposely and consciencely to decide to act against it, to seek the destruction of God's creation in every way possible, be it through stealing, lieing, raping, murdering.



That's the mistake you make, God's pov is not from outside the universe, it is both from outside and inside from within every atom, small or big, everything matters. Life and death itself don't matter that much from God's pov, since He created everything and He will recreate everything anyhow, ie. nothing gets lost, energy gets preserved... what matters is the spirit, the intention, the will, the faith and what fruits they bear.

Nightcrawler

You know this is a hell of a lot more fun than talking about contrary Obama this and contrary Obama that ( and if Bush was a good man as president ) but I have Sunday things to be about so I'll have to come back to this later.

Yeah, but it's all about me, isn't it?
Why would I accept others telling me what's right, good for me, others, when I do, act on "Do unto others..." in my life.
Why should I care about the whole, I'm alright is all I care about, unless someone fucks with me.

Then a Tea Party is called for.

I didn't know you were a conservative wingnut!

Sorry couldn't help it!

Just experimenting.

I don't believe that there is more than one existence in the Universe. Things need labels for humans to function but that's as far as it goes...they are not necessary and beyond a certain point they are wrong.

Example: a labrador is a dog. A collie is a dog. they are different on that level. But on the level of dogs they are the same. Both dogs.

Different to cats. But on the level of animals cats and dogs are the same - both animals. But different to rocks. But on the level of 'created things' both the same...and on and on.

In the end at the top of the ladder there is only one group of things. This is what I would call God; the totality.


Actually it would mean that in the Islamic sense.

From Wikl:


Belief in an objective evil that is separate from God is clearly denying the unity of creation (as above) and is also ascribing power to something other than God. shirkis in no way restricted to just worship in the conventional sense...worship is an extension as in the sense a Satanist might worship Satan.



That just destroyed your argument. Nothing has power other than God...the ascribing power to something is what shirk essentially is. Ditto with ascribing 'evil' powers to Satan.


God himself directs these actions according to the Qur'an:


Sura 14:4.