We all need our entertainment!

I sure hope heaven is a state of mind because my heaven has women, booze and lots to smoke, in that order please.  

A perfect God would not exact punishment for punishments sake.A perfect God operating with perfect Love would understand the pain of a soul who no longer resides in the perfection of His Love.To allow someone to reside in a place called Hell is tantamount to the human quality of revenge not rightousness or justice.
Is the injustice perpetrated against God ,a perfect being?Has God somehow been injured by a souls free will?Or is it the soul who continues to be seperated and in bondage and pain for his free will decision?And how would residing in Hell ease the pain of a soul already suffering from his seperation?I ask you again has God been slighted or injured or offended by any of mankinds free will decisions?These are human traits.Who gave man free will in the first place,knowing the possibility of making a wrong choice?And to punish him eternally for that decision?Not a perfect being,surely?
I would rather be pulled by God's love than pushed by fear back into His arms.

The original meaning of sin by the way is to "miss the mark".When a child learning to walk misses the mark and falls you don't punish him eternally.

Well, I do. But then again, I'm Eeeevirulll! Bwahahahahahaha!   

Personnally, I could never subscribe to any official religion, especially one in which you are hounded day and night to join it. As a child my parents never forced me into any religion (my dad being an agnostic budhist christian, and my mom being a shamanistic philosopher). Odd combination I would say, yet they get along fine, seeing how they haven't gotten a divorce... Ever... With anybody acutally...). Instead I was allowed to pursue whatever spirituality I felt was right for me. Ultimately, being in America, I was more or less christian in my beliefs up until age nine when I rejected it for something far more scientific and found myself an athiest. As time went on that slowly morphed until I found myself with a homemade belief system. Though undoubtedly my parent's beliefs and ethics, and the rules by which I was raised played into it, there are some things which I myself decided, and other bits of wisdom I picked up off of various people in history who are highly regarded spiritually, politically, and philosophically. There is also a huge helping of science thrown in. My friends are always trying to "save" me, but becoming a christian, going to church, and believing in it's teachins are things that really disagree with my entire ideology which I have made and trust the most, not to say there cannot be things found in all religions of profound meaning and importance. I am not trying to bash somebodies religion (a lot of somebodies at that), but it is not something I could or would do. Whatever it is you believe, I hope that you are as secure in it as I am in mine.

In short, NO.

I'm stealing a line from my Emperor here (hope I don't get sent to hell ... again. It's worse than detention)... Ramen, Brother!

That sounds most correct to me and I would say that is about the place in life where spirituality divorces religion.

Nice!



It seems to me that the idea of 'woops your going to hell because you didn't happen to pick the right religion' out of all the religions floating around seems a little unfair, but i do not worry too much about it because in the end, no matter what anyone said or did, Gods justice and God's fairness is perfect.



I have to agree,,, and yes allot of religions ask you to put aside your own personal reason and logic so you can have 'faith'. This is very dangerous, it is what allows for religious cult leaders to succeed with mass suicides or for Muslim extremists to succeed with recruiting suicide bombers.



This is a reasonable concept, although i would point out that many people are already without God in this life already and seem to survive just as well as those who do.



It is human nature to be interested in concepts that differ greatly from your own... especially if the people believing in those concepts seem to be normal average beople like yourself!

my study of religion professor began his intro class with part of an episode of Daria that culminating in him asking, "Does Quin's worship of fashion count as a religion?" sadly i've forgotten what episode it actually was.

that's a good Sealab, but there are better. next halloween i'm going as Stormy (growing my hair out for that sole purpose) and my roomie's probably going as black Debbie.

random thought related to this forum and the idea that religious people often don't know much about their own religion... when i was growing up, my neighbors were pretty religions, and the parents refused to let their kids go trick-or-treating because they thought it was evil. what amuses me is that Halloween is a Christian holiday: All Hallow's Eve. the Catholic church invented it to overshadow the pre-Christian practice of Samhain, and the modern American traditions were invented during the Christian era. they weren't adopted from Pagan traditions, as may have been the Christmas tree, or as are most of the traditions practiced in Mexico's Dia de los Muertos, now observed on All Hallow's day, whereas the original celebration from Aztec times lasted a whole month on the Aztec calendar. it's a beautiful holiday if you've never seen it first-hand.

anyway, that's enough tangent for now.

Oh yes, I see whatcha mean. I think you or maybe someone in the other thread "why are we all atheists" almost got me to share this once before. I personally see it again (dunno if you do) wrapped around and intertwined with a lot of what I have read the last week or so about "religion, science, meaning, and purpose" ... this time I'll say it ... everything is a process.

Even the core of the planet is not-identical to what it was just a few moments ago (and I purposely avoided measurement systems for brevity) ... anywayz even the core of the planet is not the same now as it was then. Something has changed somewhere. Temp diff, mass gravitic center change, electromagnetic wave concentration has shifted it's intensity to another focus ... something. The same can be said of everything we know of. Matter, energy, whatever. The chair I'm sitting on is just in a slower state of changing than some other part of the process. In twenty years it will rot, or rust, or something. Even now it's not the same, exactly, as it was then. (Especially if I spill some coffee on it ... woops!)

Just because I can't see every part of the process, or feel it, does not mean it isn't happening; me not have senses to detect higher processes than I'm supposed to.

The Universe is Alive! It's Alive, I tell you! "It's A-liiiiive!" [Young Frankenstein (Gene Wilder)]

So, more to the point of agreeing with your comment, try looking at "religions" as just "cells" in the "religion-organ" of the "body" of planet Earth. Fighting amongst themselves is only gonna make God want to scratch, and that might not be the wisest thing to instigate, if the cells want to continue to function as they have been.

Ok, trivial nonsense from the peanut-gallery has subsided. Everyone please continue.   

Interesting post.

The universe is alive? Perhaps? i have often wondered if God is like an elemental force such as fire or lightning only he is the elemental force of love? Somthing which exists beyond the bounds of time and space, yea, love could be that powerful?

Trying to understand love as an elemental force is difficult though, to say that love has to be what it is just as fire or lightning have no choice but to be exactly what they are as well.

Fundamental premise:

Christian God - I'm going to put the source of knowledge next to you and give you free will, but you should remain ignorant.

Christian Devil - Go ahead, seek knowledge.

Well that's it! Game over. We all lost. I happen to know quite a lot, and so do many other people... And I thought there was once so much promise in the world... Great to know we're all failures no matter what we do now.   

Wait... Are you being sarcastic or serious???

I'm very seriously talking about the origin story (Genesis) of Christianity. And that's why even if I was confronted with absolute proof of the Christian God, I wouldn't respect him/her/it.

Yea i have to admit that going by the standard Adam and Eve story, you have a good point.

The fact that Adam and eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit could be said to be an irrelevant fact. Why? Well for this reason,,,, if they hadn't eaten the fruit, so what, sooner or later one of their descendants would. It would just be a matter of time and chance, eventually somones gonna give into temptation.

So if the Adam and Eve story was really true, then it is a logical conclusion that mandkind was destined to fail from day one. I am inclined not to believe this, ergo i am somewhat sceptical of the Adam and Eve story. I put it in the realm of being a parabelic story not a direct factual one.

I understand where you are coming from, but it seems a few points were missed from my previous argument. First off would be the seriousness of sin. Yes you are correct the original meaning of sin was "to miss the mark". This definition however needs to be applied to the context of the original writing. Sin is not simply a case of a child learning to walk and falling, it is willing and purposeful disobedience to God. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were warned not to eat of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil or even to touch it. Furthermore, they were told of the consequences which was death. For a more fitting analogy say a city is built and in that city a law is passed stating that no one must commit murder. The law is read clearly to each citizen and the consequences are made known. Now say a citizen of this city does just that and murders his neighbor. When brought before the ruler of this city would you say a simple pardon is in order? or perhaps the man should be punished according to the law that was passed? what if the one killed was your closest loved one? Would you say it was the rulers fault that the citizen killed his neighbor because the ruler allowed the possibility of this by not keeping the citizens locked inside their own houses? The ruler is now forced to pass judgement according to the law that was broken. It was even more difficult for the ruler to do this because the ruler knew the murder personally. Now imagine the unthinkable happens. After passing judgement the rulers son steps up and takes the punishment instead. The only thing the son asks is that the murderer admits to his crime and allows him to step in in his place. Would that man be grateful? would you in that circumstance? That man is Jesus. One thing your argument doesn't mention is that God gave a way to be freed from consequence of sin if you repent and put your faith in His only Son who received the punishment in place of us. To answer some of your questions as best as I can...


Yes sin is rebellion against God and against Him


No the injury was not caused by a souls free will but by a rebellion against God.



Free will gave us the ability but definetly not the necessity to sin. Furthermore, even though seperation from God was brought on by man's decision to sin, there is a way to be freed from that seperation.



The obvious answer is it would not, I hope I understood what you were asking here correctly



As I stated before sin is against God. The difference in our opinions is where the blame lies. Again it is not God that made the decision to sin. In fact it was against his will that sin occured.



As you are implying yes, God gave man free will. God however did not will for sin to happen. The word choice is an important one here. It was man that made that choice. Being given free will does not free a person from the consequences of their actions. Sin can not be downplayed to being simply the accident of a young child learning to walk. As stated before it is willingful disobedience to God.



This conclusion is based on placing the blame on God on giving us free will and as I stated that would be misplacing it. Thus this conclusion is incorrect. God in fact does understand the pain of our seperation from Him. Why is God no stranger to this? Because God feels the pain of our seperation too. God's will is that all mankind be saved and not be condemned. God does not want to see people turn from Him in rebellion. He went to the greatest lengths to secure our salvation, even to the point of taking the punishment of death upon His only son. People are imperfect and the idea of a perfect loving being may be difficult to grasp for some. People who are sinners do not always show love and correct judgement. God in contrast does has a perfect love.



The reason it was called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was not because it granted knowledge of good and evil as in a lack of ignorance and discernment but that they would know not just good but evil from experience.

Ok I'll bite the apple here... I am probably getting some of this wrong but...
Adam can mean many things in hebrew. One is red clay one is first blood, both of which allude to the idea of material or flesh. Eve is derived from a word Chayvah which basically means life or source of life or life force. So you have this idea of spirit and flesh having a conversation with God where only Flesh (Adam) was ever explicitly told not to eat the fruit and then we assume he informed life force (Eve) or perhaps he didn't. Either way serpent seems to be some primal form of life force such as perhaps Lilith or a different goddess of feminine power who's motives seem to have something to do with wanting humanity to know all sides of existence, not only paradise but also sorrow and pain. Thus the curse and the expulsion from paradise. Interestingly enough the apple could represent many types of knowledge here. Knowledge of good and evil is the commonly given explanation but why they found the need to cloth themselves doesn't fit that explanation unless genitals=evil in which case priests should be castrated? Knowledge that they where seperate and that there was a male (outward projective flesh) and female(inward reflective/receptive spirit) does however. So you have this metaphor about the material and the spiritual parts of ourselves realizing their differences and all sorts of trouble and sorrow of the world coming from it. Cain and Abel seem to represent something entirely different though. More of a difference between hunter/destroyers and grower/creators. From there the metaphor seems to entirely break down with Seth being the first patriarch?

Few things I see wrong with this. First in your analogy you compare God with a ruler. You are saying then that God is just the governor and perhaps creator of the city and not actually the creator of every single person,place,thing, or idea in it. Is God just the wheelman or did he invent the whole shebang? If he is the wheelman you're analogy sticks if he invented the whole shebang then he invented the capacity for "sin" (which imho needs a clear definition besides a list of things someone found distasteful) and if God is all powerful and all knowing (shouldn't God be?) then he saw it coming and made it happen. Another problem here is that Adam and Eve and many others where never given the option to say oops I am sorry but here is this Jesus chap who says its ok as long as I believe he is your son, can I come back into Eden now? If Adam and Eve where given the chance to repent maybe we wouldn't be here talking about this at all, we would be sitting under a tree talking to a snake.

If free will is truly free then not even God knows which way an individual will choose.Otherwise it is predestination,which would allow
God to read the hand writing on the wall since to God there is no past,present or future.

Not being a Christian but having been raised Christian I always had this "feeling" that if Jesus ever said he was the son of God then he probably regarded everyone as the sons and daughters of God. So after reading way too much of these forums I tried to look it up and found this
John 10:34
John says Jesus quotes "I said, 'You are "gods";
you are all sons of the Most High.' from Psalms 82-6
I am sure this simple line can be construed to mean a lot of things but I prefer to believe that Jesus didn't think he was god or even more special and important than anyone else. I think he just knew things everyone else seemed to have forgotten about life, the universe, and everything and was trying to tell people to be humanimals and start living their truth. If you read the rest of Psalms 82 it discusses such far off concepts as defending the poor and weak and stop catering to the rich and powerful. Good message but it seems to get drowned out by the whole REPENT THE END IS NYE!!! and THOSE PEOPLE ARE SINNERS STONE THEM IN THE YARD!!! message that seems to be the thing Jesus was always trying to stop. So...
I think Jesus lived. I think Jesus was the son of God. I think I am too.

If god is all knowing all powerful and beyond past,present, future (infinite like the whole Eternity of Eternities title) then such a paradox as predistination vs free will would only apply to our view looking up and not neccesarily the view looking down. Think about rats in a maze. Free will to them is moving a wall or piece of cheese to me. They only see the choice ahead I see the inevitable outcome and can do any number of things to change it, slow it down, or make it come quicker. If I really don't want the mouse to get the prize I can always keep it making choices till it has a heart attack. Oh one more thing, if free will is greater than God like you are saying than doesn't that make us (collective not individual) greater than God because we possess it?

True with the analogy bit, but it was an analogy after all   Also seeing something coming and causing it are two different things. I do believe that those that were faithful to God before Christ came were given the oppurtunity to repent. but I haven't done much research into that. Definetly something to look more into when I get the chance.



of course John 3:16 states that "For God so loved the world that He sent his only begotten Son, so that whosever believes in Him shall have everlasting life" which does set him apart as the only begotten son of God, in John 10:34 He was answering the charge of blasphemy for doing just that, claiming to be God.

I hesitated to answer right away .. glad I did. My first impulse was to rattle off more of my own thoughts. After reflection and careful reading of what you pointed out, I feel much more comfortable saying something like this.

Trying to understand love is not experiencing love. ErGo trying to understand God is not experiencing God. Of course there are similar, perhaps parasitic forces surrounding love, so be careful. What you share your energy with might grow strong enough to become the overweening force in a mix of various forces, if enough other creations also contribute their tiny bit to supporting it as well.

The overall question may not be how to manipulate to receive a reward, but what life one wants to experience during the short time available. If anyone has been so fortunate as to make contact with and feel the force of love, then their life is blessed. The converse is also true.

Thank you for your reply.

God gave them the chance to repent. He asked Adam what he had done, but he blames Eve, instead of asking for forgiveness. Eve then blamed the serpent instead of asking for forgiveness. If they had both asked for forgiveness instead of blaming others and seeking excuses, God would have forgiven them.



I think I said it before in the other thread, but I'll repeat it. God is infinite, and thus He knows all the variables and all the choices and all the consequences that might happen from our choices. So while there might be an infinite amount of paths that would have been taken, God knows all the results of our actions. God has an infinite processing capability to put it in other terms. It's up to us to choose our actions.




Jesus said it Himself he is the Son of God, multiple times in the Bible. When He asked his disciples what they thought He was, Peter said, you are the Messiah, the Christ. Jesus said, Don't tell anyone about this. Also in front of the Jewish senate/council where they asked Him that the people are saying rumours that you are the Son of God, the Messiah, is that true? He answered, you said it not me. How about when the Father and the Holy Spirit confirmed Jesus as the Son of God, when He was baptised: The clouds parted and a voice was heard: This is my beloved Son, and a white dove representing the Holy Spirit flew above. This also happened when Jesus went to pray with his disciples and He transformed, wearing bright white clothes, that the disciples couldn't look at directly, with Moses and Elijah on his sides. God the Father and God the Holy Spitit confirmed again to the disciples, This is my beloved Son, listen to what He is saying. The point here is that Jesus is the Christ, God the Son.

All right then, if Jesus is the most important human ever, the mighty Son of God wtf are the rest of us here for? None of this answers the point of it at all, why are we here and what is God. Jesus may have claimed he was a messiah, a savior to his people, he may have claimed he was a child of God but he never said he WAS God. Any quote from the bible is only as relevant in Christianity as the amount of stretching you can apply to it, does claiming to be the Son of God mean you are claiming to be God? The whole concept of Trinity seems to indicate that Jesus=God does it not? A collection of contradictions constantly being stretched to fit some more complex pattern of God=Man and if you don't do it missionary style you are going to Hell. It seems to me the worship of Jesus is worshiping god in the form of a specific man and using an innacurate image of that man and his horrific torture as idols of God. Sounds like madness to me. I have no problem with some of the moral teaching and spiritual concepts I was taught growing up in a Christian atmosphere, I have a problem with the total breakdown of objective logic in the face of dogmatic belief. The inability to think for oneself in the face of decades of indoctrination. Even the language that was spoken by the son of god is not the same as the one you are reading his words from (actually its someone elses account of what he said in a language he didn't say it in and translated by even others to fit their dogma and understanding of a culture they didn't grow up in). It just doesn't get much more stretched than that.