Not only would many Christians disagree, but it is also incorrect. They have faith that God tells them to read the Bible. They have faith that the Bible is written by men inspired by God. They have faith that they are living their faith. The Bible is the standard by which their faith is based. If there wasn't a bible, then how would any Christian know what to believe or how to live their life? Before there was writing, the only standard for belief in spirits and deities was word of mouth. Each tribe or village each had their own beliefs handed to them from the village holy man or tribal shaman. The beliefs were handed down to the next generation, with each new generation adding their own distinct, subjective experiences (knowledge changing with time). Writing allowed the original belief to continue to exist after the writer's death, thereby creating a more standardized way to spread beliefs. The only problem is that because our knowledge changes with time, what the men of the Bible wrote was easily understood by the people that were alive during the time in which it was written, but millenia later, our knowledge is vastly different from theirs and we are stuck with trying to interpret what the men who wrote the bible meant, which is why we have so many different denominations of Christianity.
A lot of Christians are nominal Christians, so appealing to the majority of Christians is not always a wise idea.
That's debatable. That is your opinion and nothing more.
Many people do not use the Bible and still have no problem finding God. There is only one God, and God can be found by seeking God.
The only standard for belief? How about the experience of spirits or deities directly?
All beliefs are conditioned, regardless of time period.
If the people had understood Jesus, he would not have been crucified.
People created other branches of Christianity because they reached their own conclusions from Jesus' teachings.
Right. Which is why we all come to these particular forums - to express our opinions and debate. We should be able to come here to these forums and express our opinions without someone always stating the obvious "Hey, that's your opinion." If you don't like people expressing their opinions then stop expressing yours.
I wasn't appealing to anyone. I was merely expressing my opinion.
Right. But are they called Christians which is what cpwill and I were discussing.
And your support for such a grand claim is...? How did your acquire the knowledge of how humans, that existed before writing (at least 5000 years ago), experienced spirits and deities if they never wrote it down?
Partially correct. Beliefs are thoughts. As I mentioned before, the reason for our thoughts is our survival. It's instinctive for us to want to strive for the continued existence of our bodies and because we link our thoughts and therefore our mind to our bodies, we think of/believe in ways to maintain the existence of our consciousness/soul.
Some people did understand Jesus. He had his followers, as did the other major prophets of all the religions. Jesus had the bad luck of having the ones that didn't understand him, in power (the Romans). So therefore he was crucified.
You said they reached their own conclusions from Jesus' teachings, I said they made their own interpretation from Jesus' teachings. What's the difference?
Your use of the word "incorrect" to describe someone else's belief, and then push your own as a correct one, raised a red flag.
Fair enough.
Anyone call anyone anything they want. If you call yourself a Christian, and you do not emulate Christ, you are not the defintion of the word you use to describe yourself.
I've never made such a claim. I was suggesting that myth is legend mixed with fact. That stories written down in mythology are the product of visionary states.
One is conditioned from the moment they leave the womb. So, as I said, beliefs are conditioned.
LOL. And your use of the word "problem" to describe my "framework", and then pushing yours as the correct one by not claiming there was a "problem" for the same reason you had a "problem" with mine, isn't raising a red flag?!
How do you know how Jesus lived his entire life? The bible only contains a small fraction (mostly the end) of his life. Pretty much all we know about Jesus comes from the Bible.
Their knowledge of the natural world was extremely limited. Their facts/knowledge were that all natural phenomenon were caused by spirits/gods. Our "facts" in the 21st century are different.
Totally false. One is conditioned at the moment of conception. Are you telling me that the baby in the womb is not being conditioned by it's mother's voice and the noises outside the womb, the smell of their mother, etc.? How do you explain the stress the baby goes through when being born? It's entire life it has only known the warm, dark, cramped, liquid environment of the womb. Then suddenly you're forced into a cold, bright, open air environment. The only thing that is recognizable to the baby in the new environment is the sound and smell of it's mother, which is why they calm down when swaddled and near their mother. How would you feel if your environment was completely swapped around like that and the only thing recognizable is your mother's voice? Would you still believe in a God?
Exactly my point. It is their interpretation that the bible is wrong in some cases. The men who wrote the bible did not think they were wrong.
Okay. I can accept that if you can accept that I don't believe in God because he never told me he existed and I don't read the Bible now because God never told me to, etc. And I was listening. I was trying real hard, believe me. But I never received what I would interpret as a "message" or "direction" from God.
Really? How do you know about all cultures that have existed since the dawn of man. When we say dawn of man are we talking about when homo sapiens sapiens first made their appearance around 100K-150K years ago? If so, then how do you know what other ideas came about? There are a great many cultures that have existed that we haven't discovered yet. How do you know that spirituality wasn't just one of the means that ancient, prehistoric man used and is the one that made it to the top because it seemed to describe the natural world the best compared to the others that existed at the time? Remember history is written by the victors.
No, it was an attempt convey something that was apparently lost on you, since you misunderstood the way I was using the word "problem" and took it as an attack.
I am here to share ideas. The ideas I share need no external validation.
Right. And I was attempting to convey to you that what you were conveying to me was NOT lost on me, but rather I was refuting it, which was apparantly lost on you, which is why you called it a "problem".
Then share away. Just make sure your ideas/opinions are consistent among all points of view shared here, not just yours, or else your ideas begin to lose credibility.
You said that to be a Christian you have to both call yourself that and emulate Christ. How can you emulate Christ if you only know about one small part of his life, especially when the part that is missing, you claim conditions people, from birth. You can only emulate what you know about him which is very little. And the teachings only exist in the Bible. I have already told you that it is instinctive to believe in God as it promotes the idea of the survival of your consciousness/soul. You could almost say that atheists have evolved beyond one of their instincts.
That wasn't my point. I said that our facts are different. We don't need spirits and gods to describe every natural phenomenon. They did. Therefore, everything that comes out of their culture (legends, myths, facts) is spiritual.
As I have said, I have used multiple systems, until I found that only one is needed.
My initial statement was that a purely scientific framework writes off OBEs and mystical experiences as "mistakes" of perception or cognitave faculties. If you are trying to genuinely understand such things, science offers little. Therefore, the "problem" is only such if your intention is to grasp the enormity of these experiences. If you are not interested, then there is no "problem." Does that clear things up?
I cannot promise that all views I share will be consistent among others views.
The Bible gives us enough information about Christ and his teachings.
I'll Paramahansa Yogananda explain my view on this:
That may be your belief, but I would have disagree with you. Having been an athiest for the first 20 years of my life, I've run the gambit of belief systems and I have found that all beliefs systems, even athiesm, include God, unbeknowst to most individuals. This is a statement from experience, and I do not claim it to be an objective, concrete fact.
Haha, you may say that, but I would not.You could almost say that atheists have evolved beyond one of their instincts.
So then the question is do you believe that cultural mythology has any intrinsic value in today's society?
In reality, no system is needed. Truth is self-evident. Belief systems or frameworks allow us to project what we can comprehend on our environment. The best idea is to not project at all.
Light is not made up of molecules, and therefore by the rules of materialism cannot exist.
good point on using language inaccurately; no doubt there are pockets in places that existed for brief periods over which we have no knowledge. however, going back even to the Ice Ages we see that every human culture we have any evidence of seems to have - yes - had a firm idea of the importance of the spiritual, and even life after death.
Okay, now let me explain my version:
How do you know what Jesus said or did that was left out of the Bible? How do you know that what is written in the Bible is actually what Jesus said and not embelishments on the part of the author?
I seeked it. I did not find it. The Christ Consciousness is not mentioned in the Bible. How is that your spiritual knowledge is different from other Christians, like my parents and the people at their church? None of them have ever mentioned a Christ Consciousness. How is that the name Christ only existed AFTER Jesus was alive and not before if it's an eternal Christ Consciousness?
The term atheism means that you don't have a belief in a religious god. If you think
Sure. I never denied that atheist don't have instincts. Atheists have the same instincts as theists because we are all off the same species. But atheists who think there is a creator do not think the creator is religious in nature or else they would not be atheists.
It has intrinsic scientific value as it helps us understand what the culture believed and therefore how they lived, which allows us to gain knowledge of how our knowledge evolved.
This statement would be more accurate and use less words (thereby being more simpler) if written like this:
And it can't be the other way around in that when someone looks for God but didn't find him, then he can't exist? If God is so easy to find, because he loves us, right, then why is it that there are those that look but still can't find it? Does God play hide and seek? Our primary instinct to promote the survival our bodies and therefore our thoughts/consciousness/soul explains the reason why so many would believe in a god. The people throughout history did not have the knowledge we had, nor were they allowed to think for themselves. Doing so be an invitation to your house from the Inquisition.
Camus said that the only serious philosophical question is suicide. That is wrong even in the strict sense intended. The biologist, who is concerned with questions of physiology and evolutionary history, realizes that self-knowledge is constrained and shaped by the emotional control centers in the hypothalamus and limbic systems of the brain. These control centers flood our consciousness with all the emotions - hate, love, guilt, fear, and others - that are consulted by ethical philosophers who wish to intuit the standards of good and evil. What, we are then compelled to ask, made the hypothalamus and limbic system? They evolved by natural selection. That simple biological statement must be pursued to explain ethics and ethical philosophers, if not epistemology and epistemologists, at all depths.
archaeology is an amazing thing. we know that man in those long-ago prehistoric ages buried his dead with tools that he would need in the afterlife, performed sacrifices (to include human sacrifice) to the gods, and even attempted to control the seasonal hunting via spiritual ceremony.
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I appreciate your post and your position. I can only hope that those in the scientific community who do write off OBEs, NDEs, etc., will start giving these phenomena a bit more attention and genuine interest.
Spiritual knowledge and religious scripture are not one and the same. Spiritual knowledge is accrued subjectively through devotion to one's spiritual beliefs and goals. Only religions decry individuals as being heretics.
Let us be clear: the data itself should be unbiased. However, some seem to think that scientists making faith statements(Hawking claiming God does not exist) have more credibility than others without a scientific background making faith-based claims. I love science; it's scientism that I do not care for.
You have a strange view on spirituality.
Again, spirituality and religion are not the same thing.
I do not know such things. I also do not need to.
I care little if it is embellishment from an author. The message is clear, and it is the message which is important.
So did I... At first
You're getting caught up on the words. "Christ Conciousness" is an adequate way to describe that which I am speaking of. "Christ" is a state of being, not merely an individual.
How would a creator not be spiritual in nature?
I would agree with this. Time is subjectively experienced by stringing together "present moments" in linear succession. Thus, when looking back at a "year," it seems to have "flown" by(simply because at the time you are thinking about it, it is only an abstraction).
The "creator" probably would not be religious.
What is your view on the works of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung? Both of them seem to have made a pretty impressive case for the existence of a collective human unconscious that connects all of us.
This is completely contrary to what you are saying in the other thread:
...where you were trying to tell Cephus that he can't prove Malta exists if he hasn't experienced it.
You can't use other people's experience with God as support for your argument if you think that other people's experiences aren't proof that something exists. You can only use your experience as evidence. But then, applying your argument again, means it wouldn't be admissible as proof to me or anyone else.
You make it sound like a large percentage of those that die do so by sacrificing themselves when in fact it is a small percentage. Other species sacrifice themselves as well like parents protecting their young. Nothing special.
but here's a question for you; given that he didn't have access to the knowledge that we do today; how did the author(s) of Genesis get the creation story right?and what part was that - the Universe was made in 6 days? Man was made first? I don't know what part you're talking about.
LOL. It has everything to do with what we are talking about, in fact it has everything to do about everything we all debate about. I did make the mistake of posting the wrong quote from you as it was meant to elaborate on what I was talking about our instincts. And I may have tried a bit to hard in explaining it to you. But the gist of it is self-knowledge is constrained and shaped by the emotional control centers in the hypothalamus and limbic systems of the brain which evolved by natural selection. That simple biological statement must be pursued to explain ethics and ethical philosophers, religion and its prophets, at all depths.:lol: your explanation is in no way simpler nor does it demonstrate any evidence; at best this is rambling that has little to do with the topic at hand. in particular i would love to see any evidence you have of intellectual coercion among prehistoric societies
As for prehistoric political coercion, all knowledge about the natural world was extremely limited, therefore, no coercion was needed. It was accepted what the tribal shaman said. In prehistoric times, there were no gods. People believed that the ancestors dead's spirits roamed the earth, which is why they buried them with earthly tools. It was a belief in life-after death with no gods - an instinct to promote the survival of their consciousness when faced with the knowledge of their finite lives. As the Agricultural Revolution started bringing us together into cities, the belief in spirits evolved into the belief in numerous deities that have the same flaws as men, yet held incredible power over nature. Then religion evolved yet again with monotheism, the belief in one god. Since then, the beliefs have splintered into so many different groups and beliefs that it has become more chaotic and unorganized through time. The opposite can be said with science. You cannot say that through all history, man has believed in the same thing (one god) when there are people that will kill you have different spiritual beliefs than them. If we all believed in the same thing, then why is it that we don't have the exact same spiritual beliefs as prehistoric man had? Why is that the Ten Commandments wasn't given to prehistoric man? Why wait until the Jews existed? You're trying to say that man through history has the same knowledge you have. They did not.
Religious scripture claims to contain spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is gained by applying your knowledge that there is a god (I'm not agreeing that there is a god, of course, as having knowledge doesn't mean you are right, as in the example of the earth-centered universe.) to the unexplainable aspects of their lives (the reason for the deaths of their loved ones, natural disasters, babies born with physical and mental handicaps, etc.) It is merely a means to help a person cope with the sometime harsh realities of life. It is an illusion as these aspects of their lives are not spiritual in origin and can be explained more accurately with science.
Don't we all? That is my point.
That's not the right question. The correct question would be: Why does a creator have to be spiritual in nature?
Cool.
Interesting. That's something I'd have to explore more about. Have you ever seen or heard "The Day the Universe Changed" By James Burke. It's a fascinating ride through the evolution of our knowledge and how it has made us who we are.
however, i think i had forgotten about that thread; thank you for reminding me.
cpwill said:
ah. solved the mysteries of the universe, have you
i completely fail to see how. perhaps you could explain it to such a simpleton as i using small words or perhaps stick-figure drawings?
knowledge of the natural world is still extremely limited; what we are discussing here is merely a matter of degrees.
and you know this because....? mankind has worshipped the divine as far back as we are able to trace his history.
again as with science what we are seeing is growth by degree. Why God chooses to give us what knowledge He has at what stages He has who knows? "For my ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts." says the Lord. most have figured he gave us what we could accept at the time; that he gave that ancient israelite the basic idea of how the world and life was formed, in a form that he could understand. remember that science, too, is properly speaking part of theology; which is perhaps why so many of the worlds' great scientists have been believers of some sort.
Then your analogy is a poor one. As Cephus explained to you, he can be shown pictures/video of Malta. He can even be shown Malta for himself by someone taking him there. The knowledge of Malta's existence is objective. You cannot show someone God. I have been shown how to look for God (praying, meditation, reading the bible, tripping on acid, etc.), I have been shown pictures (actually drawings that are not consistent between religions) of God, but I have yet to be taken directly to God and have him shown to me. Not only that, but the means provided to me to find God by those that claim to have experienced God (praying, meditation, reading the bible, tripping on acid, etc.) have not worked. Someone discovered Malta. He proved it exists by showing how people can find it. People tested his knowledge by going where he said it was and found that it was there.
Yes. Even animals realize that their offspring are the continuation of the existence of their genes, as I have described to you. It is instinctive.
Sure. Just as you have claimed to have done with your belief in the existence of a God. At least my knowledge can be observed by everyone. All life experiences instincts. All life has not experienced God. Even God-believers acknowledge we have inherent attributes that make us what we are, as they believe we are all sinners or flawed. If we were not sinners/flawed, we would be Gods. Although, I wouldn't call it being a sinner or flawed. I would just call it existing.ah. solved the mysteries of the universe, have you
My instinct tells me that won't do any good.i completely fail to see how. perhaps you could explain it to such a simpleton as i using small words or perhaps stick-figure drawings
Not as limited as it was when we only had a spiritual means to describe nature.
Wrong. People through history, and presently, who claim to have spiritual knowledge, will disagree with you. The Europeans who came to the New World did not think that the Native Americans possessed the same spiritual knowledge as them or that their spiritual knowledge (the Europeans) evolved from theirs (the Native Americans), or any other ancient "barbaric" culture, whose spiritual beliefs were older than theirs (the Europeans). Claiming so would get you burned at the stake. Doing so now will get you targeted for a beheading by Muslim terrorists. They do not share the same spiritual knowledge. You continue to claim the knowledge is the same when that claim will be vehemently opposed by the same people you claim to share knowledge with. The knowledge of the existence of God is not objective as in the case of the island of Malta. It's an idea/belief/thought that is interpreted based on the current knowledge at the time. The island of Malta has existed as an island ever since man has discovered it. You will not find someone willing to burn you at the stake or behead you or exile you if you believe that Malta is not an island.
We can all stand on the island of Malta, therefore we are all experiencing the existence of an island named Malta. We can all agree that it exists, despite the differences in how we experience it. All spiritual experiences do not agree on the existence of one God. Everyone who looks where people who stood on Malta tell them to look, will find an island that people call Malta. The same cannot be said for God.
Right. You must already have a preconcieved concept that God exists, or else how could you look something that you don't believe exists. Just because you believe it exists BEFORE you look doesn't mean it does exist and that you will find it.
I did have faith when I was looking. I did believe God existed and that I loved him. But again, doing so does not mean that it exists.
No. It makes the existence of Malta objective. If we both stand there on Malta, I can ask you if what you are experiencing is standing on a solid or swimming in a liquid (terms we both know of and know the definition of), we both would agree we are standing on a solid. If everything is subjective then we would never agree on anything, not even on how to procreate and therefore would never have existed. There are basic things we can agree on, if not then all of our relationships would be in chaos.
Right. and you ignore the most importan statement:
Others that claim to have experienced God would disagree with you and say that you have not experienced God because you didn't experience what they did or find the same answers that they claim God gave them.TaskmasterX said:
LOL. Now you claim to know my life and the reasons why God did not appear to me. What would you consider "pressing"? You are arguing/struggling very hard for the continued existence of your consciousness.TaskmasterX said: