GOD EXISTS

fallsfromtrees wrote:

smr wrote:snip The real facts are that God was whispering to me my whole life but I was not listening.

This is your experience with God. The problem is that all too many people who have such an experience (and I'm not denying that they are real), then place their boundaries on the God they perceive, and then insist that every one has to believe in their God, with their boundaries. It is in fact my belief that God is too large and incomprehensible to mere humans, and that any boundaries that we place on him are the creation of our own minds. As Archbishop Staynair in the Safehold series says (and I paraphrase) everyone must choose to hear God in his own way, and at his own time. He must make the choice to listen to what God has to say (end of paraphrase). This in fact gives us he ultimate control in our lives - the actual choice to listen to God or not. I;m not sure I believe in the Devil, to me it seems that there is a fundamental contradiction in traditional theology that has both an omnipotent God, and an antithetical force of evil - but if I did, anytime I think God is whispering n my ear that I need to be cruel, or to hate someone in his name, or force others to behave as I believe they should is not God but that antithetical entity, or maybe just my own hubris that I know better what;s right, and any God I believe in must be smart enough to agree with me.

Two thumbs up fallsfromtrees (who lands on feet).

Annachie wrote:DDHv, the chinese writing system that that idea is based on is only 2000 or so years old, and gets it wrong on how the characters are composed, and in some cases don't mean what the article purports.

I used a current chinese ideograph > English dictionary. First I looked at the word claimed, then looked up each component. Likely not everything is correct since entropy happens, but some of it matches what can be expected from the basic theory involved. If there is some way of falsifying said theory, I've neither found it nor thought of it yet.

The earliest discovered chinese ideographs, IIRC, are dated to about 1200 BC, but it is plain that they were far past the beginning stage then. There have been some changes since then in the forms of some ideographs, also there are some minor regional differences.

BTW, some Hebrew writing (carved into a mine tunnel wall) is estimated at 1500 BC. Whether either date estimate is anywhere near correct depends on the assumptions and evidence which were not mentioned for either case. A source with a bibliography is FAR preferred to one without.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

smr wrote:snip The real facts are that God was whispering to me my whole life but I was not listening.

This is your experience with God. The problem is that all too many people who have such an experience (and I'm not denying that they are real), then place their boundaries on the God they perceive, and then insist that every one has to believe in their God, with their boundaries. It is in fact my belief that God is too large and incomprehensible to mere humans, and that any boundaries that we place on him are the creation of our own minds. As Archbishop Staynair in the Safehold series says (and I paraphrase) everyone must choose to hear God in his own way, and at his own time. He must make the choice to listen to what God has to say (end of paraphrase). This in fact gives us he ultimate control in our lives - the actual choice to listen to God or not. I;m not sure I believe in the Devil, to me it seems that there is a fundamental contradiction in traditional theology that has both an omnipotent God, and an antithetical force of evil - but if I did, anytime I think God is whispering n my ear that I need to be cruel, or to hate someone in his name, or force others to behave as I believe they should is not God but that antithetical entity, or maybe just my own hubris that I know better what;s right, and any God I believe in must be smart enough to agree with me.

Echoes of Clyntahn

This is why it makes sense to test wherever possible 1 Thessalonians 5:21 stating that all things are to be tested is in context with comments about prophecies and actions.

The test that I like best is comparing known statements with known subsequent history. There is one place where God, through the prophet, scoffs at the idols, sarcastically challenging them to do (various things) including telling about things that are to come. If He issues that challenge, it only makes sense to test (allowing for human lacks) how well He Himself has done so.

IIRC, a lot of the current trouble in the Syria region is based on an Islamic prophecy that states there would be fighting between two Islamic forces there. That is too unspecific to make a good test. I prefer prophecies like the one that states the eastern gate of Jerusalem would be shut. A Muslim graveyard was made just outside there, so when they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and AFAWK rebuilt it on the old plan, they rebuilt that gate and bricked it up solidly. About 1500>1600 years between that prophecy and the rebuilding. Odds of accidental gate matching would be one (# of gates mentioned) divided by total # of Jerusalem gates. IIRC that would be nine. I won't even try to estimate the odds of correctly mentioning that one gate would be shut, just the odds of a match between the gate mentioned and the one that was shut. Of course this test is based on my faith assumption that the universe is logical.

The prophecy apparently used the word shut, but that can translate as both a gate being closed and a gate being blocked?
You can close a door (and re-open it) or blocka door (which means that it is no longer a door).
Gates are created to be shut (closed) and opened. It is what they are there for.
Sorry. Don't buy it. Not unless you can find and directly translate the original prophecy to find out whether they said shut (closed) or shut (blocked).

That's the problem with trying to decode ancient writing. Once you let your preconceptions in, the accuracy plummets. An interesting example is Troy. If you take the Odessy and try to map its events onto the real world, you end up with Troy (the starting point) being somewhere in East Anglia.

This means either the Odessy is severely flawed, or generations of people have been mistaken over where Troy actually was.

If an entire world can misplace a city, then we really need to examine our assumptions...

Michael Everett wrote:The prophecy apparently used the word shut, but that can translate as both a gate being closed and a gate being blocked?
You can close a door (and re-open it) or blocka door (which means that it is no longer a door).
Gates are created to be shut (closed) and opened. It is what they are there for.
Sorry. Don't buy it. Not unless you can find and directly translate the original prophecy to find out whether they said shut (closed) or shut (blocked).

That's the problem with trying to decode ancient writing. Once you let your preconceptions in, the accuracy plummets. An interesting example is Troy. If you take the Odessy and try to map its events onto the real world, you end up with Troy (the starting point) being somewhere in East Anglia.

This means either the Odessy is severely flawed, or generations of people have been mistaken over where Troy actually was.

If an entire world can misplace a city, then we really need to examine our assumptions...

Are you referring to "Where Troy Once Stood", by Iman Jacob Wilkens?
And
Professor Sir Moses Finley (Ancient History - Cambridge) expresses the view that the weight of evidence made it clear that Troy and the Trojan War did not occur in the Greek and Turkish setting.

Professor P H Damste (Speech & Language pathology) author of "Concentric Man" takes the view (short summary):
"Valuable knowledge is to be discovered about the people of the Northwest European coast around 1200 BC, how they navigated the oceans and a great war between the Kings of continental Europe and the Trojan king in England who held a monopoly of tin-mining in Cornwall. Such information is encoded in the Iliad and Odyssey. "

This type of story just points to fact that their are no coincidences in life. Are you aware of the reality going around you and are you willing to help?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/16/13-month-old-baby-keeps-parents-awake-on-cruise-ship-causing-them-to-venture-on-deck-some-will-believe-it-was-fate/

smr wrote:This type of story just points to fact that their are no coincidences in life. Are you aware of the reality going around you and are you willing to help?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/16/13-month-old-baby-keeps-parents-awake-on-cruise-ship-causing-them-to-venture-on-deck-some-will-believe-it-was-fate/

The laws of probability not only permit coincidence, they absolutely require it.

smr wrote:This type of story just points to fact that their are no coincidences in life. Are you aware of the reality going around you and are you willing to help?

Are you postulating the existence of an ESP power of thirteen month old babies that makes them uncomfortable in the vicinity of people in mortal danger?

cthia wrote:A forum dedicated to religion would be nice. Until then, Free-Range means freedom to worship here and anywhere one needs ... except of course, in the one place it is mostly needed, in our bullet-ridden public school system.
...

Because that worked out SO well in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, among others...

If there´s one place religion does not belong, it´s school. And the second place is politics.


If you want your surroundings filled with nothing but well indoctrinated and easy to control brainless minions, just run off and make yourself an evil overlord somewhere.

If God does exist, I will survive that too.

And there´s your problem. You assume that if there is a god, it will conform to what you believe. That´s very arrogant even before taking into account the history of religions.

Tenshinai wrote:

cthia wrote:A forum dedicated to religion would be nice. Until then, Free-Range means freedom to worship here and anywhere one needs ... except of course, in the one place it is mostly needed, in our bullet-ridden public school system.
...

Because that worked out SO well in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, among others...

If there´s one place religion does not belong, it´s school. And the second place is politics.


If you want your surroundings filled with nothing but well indoctrinated and easy to control brainless minions, just run off and make yourself an evil overlord somewhere.

If God does exist, I will survive that too.

And there´s your problem. You assume that if there is a god, it will conform to what you believe. That´s very arrogant even before taking into account the history of religions.

Perhaps what we need is something like the United Church of Alan Dean Fosters Humanx Confederation, where you can get first clas spiritual help without a belief in God at all.