3 to be 4

[grogan2767]

Do you believe that an 11 year old Muslim girl in Yemen goes to Hell if she dies because she believed what her parents taught her all her life? (BTW - statistically ppl believe what their parents teach them all over the world about this religion stuff. Missionary work doesn't accomplish ****. The few that convert are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Do you believe that some horrible, ghastly murderer could rape, torture, and murder an little 9 year old girl, then receive Christ in jail go heaven AND, the little murdered girl icould be Hell because she had not received CHrist, even though she never hurt a fly? (By the way, "age of reason" is unbiblical bull ****)

Do you think Noahs Ark actually happened in history?

Do you believe that Adam and Eve is a literal historical account?

Do you belive that the story of Job actually happened?

Do you beleive that the Tower of Bable Story is REALLY how language got dispersed. .... Really? Seriously, really?......

Do you really love this God, who though you think you are "saved", believes you deserve to be tormented forever and that YOU should suffer forever?

There, there are some more questions for you to ignore.

Come out of the cult. You actually know it is not true. Don't fear Hell. Fear of Hell, is the ONLY thing that keeps you in this stupid cult.

http://www.ex-christian.net/

 

[3 to be 4]

I dont owe you the answers because you are not really asking questions.

go ask a pastor.

 

[grogan2767]

I asked you several questions. Youa re just being stupid. I was a Christian 20 years. These ******* questions are huge to me you jerk! If you are a CHristian show some compassion and try to explain to this lost sheep how this God could be like this? Try!!! You are suppoosed to be his ambassador!

http://www.ex-christian.net/

I dont owe you the answers because you are not really asking questions.

go ask a pastor.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Grogan, seeing the heartbreak of life and death and trying to square it with the usual questions of anthropomorphic notions of the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of God, creates this personal struggle for anyone who values life and humanity -- to say nothing of innocent life, especially that of children. I've talked to pious believers who write off the Holocaust as necessary for Israel to come into being, for example -- my first question is, how about that 1,000,000 children that had to die? What did they do?

I can't give you an answer, and I don't think a pastor or a rabbi can either. Anyone who believes has to wrestle with it, and sometimes it's just not possible to put both facts in one mind. This is one reason I accept my "conversation" with God as a necessary myth, and the personified God I discuss with as a representation, the "best I can do". It may be that at the heart of it, prayer is for man, not for God. In Jewish mysticism, the many names of God are considered to be manifestations of something called the Ein Sof, the ineffable, the infinite. Although the origin of "ein sof" is unclear, it seems to be a combination of the Yiddish/German for "one," and the root of "sofia," or "wisdom." Regardless, the principal is a good one. If I can describe God, tell of His attributes, be certain of what I have expounded, etcetera, I'm almost certainly lying. In other words, it's the nature of the infinite to be experienced rather than known mind-to-mind.

What's this got to do with theodicy, the problem of evil happening to good people? Only that God's rewarding the just and punishing the wicked is a fine medieval and ancient principal, but does not hold up to statistical analysis (from the old-school point of view.) Throwing in the condemned soul of an unbaptised little girl is just upping the ante; the same problem pertains.

I try to answer, and it leads to more questions. You'll answer your questions, and you'll question more, too. It's the nature of the mystic, the curious mind, and of the unbeliever, but not of the dogmatist.

To the mystic, you can't get outside of God, though you're an athiest. In the narrower view of very orthodox belief systems, you cannot get in no matter how you try.

Wonder what God thinks

PFnV

 

[grogan2767]

Why can't you just admit that the world (and life) is one big haphazrd series of events? Birth defects? Disease? Suffering? Holocaust? Abduction? Rape and torture of children? At least Christians can blame it on sin and the fall of man (though this is stupid). How can you explain it with your type of belief in a God? What good at all to any of us is your God? ANd, by the way, who the heck is He/She? It is not Yaweh, Jehova, or ************?

Grogan, seeing the heartbreak of life and death and trying to square it with the usual questions of anthropomorphic notions of the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of God, creates this personal struggle for anyone who values life and humanity -- to say nothing of innocent life, especially that of children. I've talked to pious believers who write off the Holocaust as necessary for Israel to come into being, for example -- my first question is, how about that 1,000,000 children that had to die? What did they do?

I can't give you an answer, and I don't think a pastor or a rabbi can either. Anyone who believes has to wrestle with it, and sometimes it's just not possible to put both facts in one mind. This is one reason I accept my "conversation" with God as a necessary myth, and the personified God I discuss with as a representation, the "best I can do". It may be that at the heart of it, prayer is for man, not for God. In Jewish mysticism, the many names of God are considered to be manifestations of something called the Ein Sof, the ineffable, the infinite. Although the origin of "ein sof" is unclear, it seems to be a combination of the Yiddish/German for "one," and the root of "sofia," or "wisdom." Regardless, the principal is a good one. If I can describe God, tell of His attributes, be certain of what I have expounded, etcetera, I'm almost certainly lying. In other words, it's the nature of the infinite to be experienced rather than known mind-to-mind.

What's this got to do with theodicy, the problem of evil happening to good people? Only that God's rewarding the just and punishing the wicked is a fine medieval and ancient principal, but does not hold up to statistical analysis (from the old-school point of view.) Throwing in the condemned soul of an unbaptised little girl is just upping the ante; the same problem pertains.

I try to answer, and it leads to more questions. You'll answer your questions, and you'll question more, too. It's the nature of the mystic, the curious mind, and of the unbeliever, but not of the dogmatist.

To the mystic, you can't get outside of God, though you're an athiest. In the narrower view of very orthodox belief systems, you cannot get in no matter how you try.

Wonder what God thinks

PFnV

 

[grogan2767]

Also, with all the problems you admit about the Bible, there is no good reason whatsoever, to think there is ANYTHING special about those books, let alone think they are inspired by some invisible, unproven Supreme Being, or somewhat Supreme Being, God, Lessor God, Demi-God, etc. NO reason whatsoever to pick it over the Quran, or Book of Mormon, etc. Nothing. Its all the same.

Grogan, seeing the heartbreak of life and death and trying to square it with the usual questions of anthropomorphic notions of the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of God, creates this personal struggle for anyone who values life and humanity -- to say nothing of innocent life, especially that of children. I've talked to pious believers who write off the Holocaust as necessary for Israel to come into being, for example -- my first question is, how about that 1,000,000 children that had to die? What did they do?

I can't give you an answer, and I don't think a pastor or a rabbi can either. Anyone who believes has to wrestle with it, and sometimes it's just not possible to put both facts in one mind. This is one reason I accept my "conversation" with God as a necessary myth, and the personified God I discuss with as a representation, the "best I can do". It may be that at the heart of it, prayer is for man, not for God. In Jewish mysticism, the many names of God are considered to be manifestations of something called the Ein Sof, the ineffable, the infinite. Although the origin of "ein sof" is unclear, it seems to be a combination of the Yiddish/German for "one," and the root of "sofia," or "wisdom." Regardless, the principal is a good one. If I can describe God, tell of His attributes, be certain of what I have expounded, etcetera, I'm almost certainly lying. In other words, it's the nature of the infinite to be experienced rather than known mind-to-mind.

What's this got to do with theodicy, the problem of evil happening to good people? Only that God's rewarding the just and punishing the wicked is a fine medieval and ancient principal, but does not hold up to statistical analysis (from the old-school point of view.) Throwing in the condemned soul of an unbaptised little girl is just upping the ante; the same problem pertains.

I try to answer, and it leads to more questions. You'll answer your questions, and you'll question more, too. It's the nature of the mystic, the curious mind, and of the unbeliever, but not of the dogmatist.

To the mystic, you can't get outside of God, though you're an athiest. In the narrower view of very orthodox belief systems, you cannot get in no matter how you try.

Wonder what God thinks

PFnV

 

[PatsFanInVa]

I've no objective proof that it's good to choose my religion over others. That's why I don't try to get others to choose it; nor do I accept the attempts of others to define it.

Thanks,

PFnV

 

[grogan2767]

PatsfaninVA,

I hope you are not pissed at me. I just want to talk more about your God belief.

Don't take offense to these but I have some questions for you?

Do you believe in a God or gods?

If you believe in God, do you believe He/She is Omnipotent?

Omnibenevolent?

Omniscient?

Do you believe He/She created you and everything?

What do you think his/her involvement with us is?

Do you think you will go to a heaven when you die?

Do you think others could go to a Hell?

I find your position very interesting.

However, if you would be up to the challenge I have a great book recommendation for you. It is called "End of Faith" by Sam Harris.

Still I'd love to know the answers to these questions if you have time.

Thanks!

I've no objective proof that it's good to choose my religion over others. That's why I don't try to get others to choose it; nor do I accept the attempts of others to define it.

Thanks,

PFnV

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Grogan,

I just spent about an hour on a reply which was eaten by the machine. I'm glad to do this in PM as well, but need to get on the road in a bit to a buddy's house where Direct TV Sunday Ticket lives.

Essentially, my views are pretty esoteric, and not derived from biblical literalism, but certainly within the mainstream of my "denomination," for what that's worth. I also began my reply with one of those "at some point we should take it to PMs" points. Like I said I try not to push my beliefs on others, because it's an invitation to discuss what I've already examined pretty thoroughly in my own world, through somebody else's filter - a filter which, subjectively, will appear distorted or otherwise insufficient from my own point of view.

Long story short, it never ends well.

Very very brief overview from which the rest may be derived:

1. God is One
2. If I accept (1), I accept that division among parts of God are by necessity illusory.
3. I must also accept that when I speak of God I, by necessity, lie. In attempting to speak using a noun, I preclude a verb; in attempting to express His oneness, I preclude His multiplicity; in attempting to describe omnibenevolence, I make evil something not of God. If God is One, at heart, all these must be somehow a product of God, or of the process by which we perceive God.
4. Creation therefore is the act of division of God, something He chose (for who else was there to choose it?) In the Big Bang, we can only trace back to the first tiny bit of time, after which Hawking et al say we will always face a wall of mystery. Whatever the state of things at that fraction of a second, we do know that the Big Bang could have been the rapid reaction to a "Big Crunch"; that it could be the porting of matter and energy from one universe to another (belying to my tiny mind the "uni" in "universe,") or that it could have been ex nihilo explosion of energy. All these are unsatisfying answers to our limited question, "where did everything come from?" We are brats this way. If we say it all came from somewhere else, we say "well, before that, where did it come from?" If we find that it came out of nowhere we say "well it couldn't have just appeared!"

I believe in one God, and in that Oneness, creation must therefore be a process of fragmentation of the One.

My real answer is that God's oneness provides an initial clue from which I can derive other clues about the nature of things. There's a big passel of mythic representations I use to think about this, but basically I think the division of one from all allows both for individual consciousness, and for evil.

I don't believe in standard, literal heaven and hell. I can conceive of a situation where the act of self-isolation of the self from the One creates a perception of Hell, when the self realizes it is illusory; however, that seems unlikely, in that the self can only realize this as it is merged with the One.

I do not know whether individual consciousness therefore is by nature illusory, or whether there is some state which allows for individual consciousness to continue though in communion with the state of Oneness.

One mythic representation I like is the image of all of us having a divine spark within us. Our mission then is to do whatever we can to help free the divine we see everywhere, by doing good for whoever we can, therefore empowering God's (and our) "Oneness."

You may ask how I can oppose evil, if it is the product of illusion. For example, how could I kill Hitler, when doing so is the metaphorical equivalent of cutting off my nose to spite my face -- all of us being products of the One. I would kill Hitler without thinking twice; evil represents a greater damage, a greater division, in this worldview -- a greater breaking/shattering of the unity of things, on the plane which we, as humans, have the understanding to contemplate.

I am pretty sure this came out very scattered. I also am pretty sure it will strike you (not to mention 3toB) as very divorced from biblical literalism. I assure you, however, that it's all within the mainstream of traditional Jewish thought, and would probably look quite familiar to mystics who confess other faiths as well.

This was much better the first time through, but now it's football time.

PFnV

 

[Michael]

I know one thing about 3 to be 4. He single handedly ruined what use to be a fun forum. He spams so much no one comes here anymore.

 

[grogan2767]

I am trying to help him. He is a baby Christian (only 2 years in the cult) He actually can be helped. Especially if he has not married someone in the cult yet, or if his spouse is young in it as well.

I was in the evengelical Fundy cult for 20 years. He has no idea what is in his Bible.

I know one thing about 3 to be 4. He single handedly ruined what use to be a fun forum. He spams so much no one comes here anymore.

 

[dalero]

I know one thing about 3 to be 4. He single handedly ruined what use to be a fun forum. He spams so much no one comes here anymore.

amen brother

 

[3 to be 4]

its all my fault.

 

[dalero]

its all my fault.

You're harming your cause here, not helping it.

 

[3 to be 4]

but Grogan is just fine.