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| Higher Thoughts A comfortable place where we can freely exchange and co-mingle our thoughts, ideas, interests, imaginations, energies, talents, and visions. This forum is for well thought out and meaningful discussion |
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#1 (permalink) |
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Adorable Idiot
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The God of the Bible
The God described in the Bible is straight up evil. There's no way around that. He's killed millions of people, some for no greater offense than not being sufficiently excited about Him. He's not only the one who sends people to Hell, He invented the place. He's ordered Genocide and mass slaughter...
Yet, people insist that He is the source of all good. This is the greatest irony of the whole thing, IMO. I'm generally pretty okay with the whole live and let live approach to religion. Believe what you want, especially if it brings out the best in you. But I am baffled by those who worship the Biblical Uber Tyrant. Is it all out of fear? The Bible says that a petty mass killer is good, and if you don't agree, He will fuck you up for eternity, so you'd better get with the program? This is the worst kind of spirituality imaginable: one that generates the kind of fear that twists the mind and turns people against each other. If you think your God is and Awesome God, you need to think again. ![]() The Rev |
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#3 (permalink) |
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Old School
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My son is studying for his first communion. He is seven and goes to Sunday School and is learning all this Catholicism BS as it is my wife's desire. I was brought up catholic as well and learned reality on my own. However, I am committed to being 100% honest with my son.
So last night he brought up hell. I said that I don't necessarily believe in the Bible and that any god that would send a person to burn forever is not a god I wot to be apart of. I told him that believing in God requires PURE faith and I attempted to explain what faith was (dogma), emphasizing that one persons belief (e.g. god) is not better than another person's belief/god, that everyone is to be respected. I added that you should judge yourself by how you act towards peers emphasizing values of helping common man. I then I talked briefly of other religions to bring home this point.
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#4 (permalink) |
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Kalyāṇa-mitrā
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These threads are always very even kiltered and very reasonable on Yahooka.
Everyone gets their chance to be heard and understood. Respect is present in every post.
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#5 (permalink) |
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Love Junkie
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I think the Bible is outdated. Perhaps some of the stories outlined within meant something to more primitive people, but many parts are completely irrelevant to modern society. There are a few things I keep with me, things I learned from the Bible in my childhood. But now that I'm an adult with my own journeys, thoughts, and experiences to rely on, I find that "God" as I know it is a feeling I have. If I'm partaking in something that is harmful to myself or another human being, I get an overall shitty feeling about what I'm doing.
This little voice that leads most sane individuals to know the difference between right and wrong can be viewed many ways. You can call it a conscience, a moral compass, or perhaps a spiritual being whispering in your ear how to be your best. But I will say that a huge portion of the Bible, or at least some of the interpretations of various religious texts and the ways people use their beliefs to justify being awful to other people, gives me a dirty feeling. I can't really describe it other than my body gives me warnings that what I am experiencing is not from a place of love. Sometimes this feeling is so strong that it reaches beyond an emotional reaction and becomes physical. My hairs will stand on end, and I get chills and an overall feeling of discomfort. A good example was a Baptist church my husband and I attended in Texas (not necessarily by choice, it meant a lot to a family member so we put aside our own preferences). The preacher began speaking out about the gay community, turning his sermon into a rant against this group of "sinners". My body was sending me signals that this guy's message was coming from a dark place. It was as if my own moral code had alerts going off, telling me not to listen to this guy or absorb any of his message. I wanted very much to get up and leave, and as I looked over at my husband I could tell he was feeling the same way. But the rest of the congregation seemed fine. I think sometimes people replace their own internal feelings of right and wrong with things people feed to them. They trust some preacher or some book more than they trust their own intuition, or maybe they can't even hear their own beliefs anymore. That gut feeling is what I rely on more than anything else. And if something in the Bible sets off a creepy feeling in me, I discard the biblical idea and go with my own concept of what is true and righteous. I mentioned this technique to a friend of mine who got a look on his face as if he feared for my soul. To some it is blasphemous to be distrustful of things that are written in the pages of a holy book, but I am more concerned about people who are unable to use a critical mind and a sixth sense to determine the difference between good and evil.
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#6 (permalink) |
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Decade Yahookan
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the issue with this royal asshole, is that as invented by bronze era ignorant desert dwellers as he is, millions today regard him as his god.
if only emperor Constantine had chosen another religion as the ruling belief for the roman empire, there would be other god around, granted, but maybe a more benevolaent one?
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Pot doesnt create bad situations, but it breeds apathy towards them. The only thing in the universe that really rquires faith is a bad salesman. peace, Wirikuta |
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#7 (permalink) |
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Learner
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Seriously spiritual shit guys.
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#8 (permalink) |
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Jedi High Council
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I wrote a 1 page essay on why the Biblical God is a an ignorant asshole (in nicer words) for my Gr12 Religion class
I actually got a pretty good mark.It bothers me that a whole religion is based off this silly book. |
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#9 (permalink) | |
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I am the Walrus
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Quote:
My take is that the Bible was written and is interpreted by man. We probably fucked something up between the man and the book and the book and the people. I don't think JC and his boys would have been down with people marching thousands of miles across a continent to kill people only because they believe in another god.
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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ |
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#10 (permalink) |
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Adorable Idiot
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Problem of evil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think the problem of evil is a problem with omnipotence. Infinity is just not compatible with a world of finites. The old "Can God microwave a burrito too hot for Him to eat" arguments sum the contradiction issues there pretty well. My problem is, how can people worship a being that kills firstborns to make a point, sends people on errands of genocide, tortures people for eternity for disobeying Him, etc? There is such a HUGE act of cognitive dissonance there. A total refusal to confront a real problem in the book which lays the foundation of all the Abrahamic religions, and it's billions of adherents. For me, it's a problem with people, not so much God. I don't think the stories in the bible describe any being that actually exists. It's people, who insist that He does exist, is that being described, AND is the fountainhead of all Goodness, that I have a problem with. That we, as a species, are capable of literally shutting out our own reason and judgement, on such a massive scale, and to the degree that we murder one another on similarly massive scales rather than think, really makes me wonder if humanity deserves to survive. We're kinda fucktards. ![]() The Rev |
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#11 (permalink) |
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Kalyāṇa-mitrā
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#12 (permalink) | |
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Decade Yahookan
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Quote:
After trying to convince that Jehova is benevolent god, I pointed out that he wasn´t, and I gave them many examples of his barbaric actions, and asked them to answer just ona question: if he was a merry old chap, how could he possibly have wiped out Jercho like that, after beating around the bush for a while they told me they would come back with the answer later, to which I pointed out that if they had to go and think about it then it was not an easy thing to respond, they left and never came back with said satisfactory answer.
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Pot doesnt create bad situations, but it breeds apathy towards them. The only thing in the universe that really rquires faith is a bad salesman. peace, Wirikuta |
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#13 (permalink) |
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Voice of Reason
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I always found that the Bible was clearly written by different people. I mean, look how different God is in Revelations than the rest.
Revelations is almost an acid trip.
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#14 (permalink) | |
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Adorable Idiot
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Quote:
![]() The Rev |
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#15 (permalink) |
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Learner
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All this shit is silly.
The only thing I occasionally get my panties in a twist about is this idea that as I'm dying, there'll be this voice in my head guiding me toward death, telling me that I should be ready for what's going to happen, and it asks me if I'm ready. And my answer is I don't know if I'm ready. I don't know what I'm waiting for. And the voice says something like 'oh just you wait'. And then the kicker is that when the veil is lifted, it's nothing at all.
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#16 (permalink) |
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Peedman Style
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I've been sort of day dreaming a lot lately about what life is / how and why everything is. One thing for sure is that it is the craziest most beautiful thing imaginable! Our innocence is the most beautiful part of it, as we experience being right in the middle of space and time in one of perhaps infinite universes and what even beyond that?? We don't know! It's so awesome to just be so innocently.
christianity/many religions take such an awesome reality and cram it right into a fucking cage with locks made of fear and bars made of faith. So live and let live, but for the ones who wish to live a truly free life, sometimes the moral majority is very hard not to hate. For unfortunate children who are born into their "faith" it is much less likely they will ever experience the true freedom of life. |
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#17 (permalink) | |
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Victoria Aut Mors
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I had the advantage of studying under a priest who read to us from the Hebrew bible . (He was Canadian and spoke/read english ,french and hebrew.)The king james version, is just that. There have been several versions, each one is different. The most recent New living bible, is quite different from the hebrew version. Any who gets the opportunity to have someone read/translate it to them would probably enjoy it alot more than recent versions mostly because of the style and the story itself. Tho I doubt you would be convinced even after, that it is anything more than an interesting fiction. As I have.
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#18 (permalink) | ||
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Kalyāṇa-mitrā
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Quote:
Quote:
I prefer the Oxford's Annotated New Revised Standard Version, as it's had consultation of many branches from Christianity, some which I doubt some folks even know exist in the Eastern/Orthodox Church. It includes the books of these various branches, which can't be found in other branches Canon. Also, they had Rabbis and other Hebrew experts adding to the portions of the 'Old Testament', much of which is The Hebrew Bible. For that I prefer the NSRV. |
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#19 (permalink) | |
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Kalyāṇa-mitrā
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Quote:
The Revelation of John was one of many apocalyptic books floating around at the time, the selection of John's was rather random in my understanding. It wasn't officially canonized until sometime between 397 and 419 CE. Textual scholars believe that John the Apostle, John the Evangelist and John of Patmos were 3 different people based on the style of writing as well as word choice and understanding of Greek. The Nag Hammadi Library was the Gnostic library uncovered in the 40s, which has provided a lot of light on the Bible as we know it, as well as being able to gain some cultural/social information/norms/philosophy during the early years of Pre-Roman Christianity. |
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#20 (permalink) |
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Victoria Aut Mors
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So you agree ?
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