Jesus as Savior

Debate Room
101

Dear Cynical1, Get_off_my_lawn, Mordant, Sheldon and Walter:

Well, the time has come once for me to once again to leave your group; but, as before, I appreciate your allowing me to join you in this forum in spite of our strong differences.

We all know that debating—which can be intellectually stimulating (at times)—is, in reality, ultimately an exercise in futility because of our finite minds and limited ability to understand the “Big Picture.”

I’ve learned through the years that we’re all predisposed to think “I’m right and you’re wrong” and “Everything revolves around me.” But, ultimately it doesn’t.

No, ours is a short-lived “vapor-trail” experience here on earth: and shortly after we “depart the premises,” we’ll be soon-forgotten—EXCEPT by the One Who created us.

“Oh, no! There he goes again preaching to us!

“Doesn’t he know this is a forum for debate?!?”

Yep, I know.

But, I also know there’s more to life than meets the eye:

And we’re all created on purpose with a Purpose.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day visiting some friends I’ve not seen in a while: one widow who’s 100-years-old. . .a former, one-star general who suffered a stroke and suffers with the return of his childhood polio. . .and two couples whose lives have also been racked with suffering and sorrow.

Yet, each one of them still had a smile

And sweet disposition as we talked, laughed and wept together.

Why was that?

Because, they (like me) live with hope—not cynicism, despair or a fatalistic view of life.

Yes, when they look at flowers (like the ones I posted this morning) they see God’s Handiwork and creative Design. They also know there’s more to life than meets the eye, which gives them Peace and Joy that the world didn’t give and can’t take away.

Anyway, I’m outta here.

But, for what it’s worth, I’ll continue praying for you

And trust that one day you, too, will look at a flower and say:

Pic of yellow flower
Pic of yellow flower240×320 22.7 KB

Pic of purple flower
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“God made that.

“Isn’t it beautiful??”

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102

Oh dear, how sad, never mind…

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103

I find this somewhat ironic, as one side of the argument is seeking the truth while the other posits a 2000 year old mythology as an answer. I guess we need to, at a minimum, agree on the definition of “Big Picture”.

I do agree with JC on one thing. The debate between theist and atheist is a study in inquiry versus identity.

Sit Deus tuus vade tecum

104

You don’t know me, JC, or anyone else here. You just assume we are cynical, despairing and fatalistic and miserable and bereft because you base your hope and comfort on something different than we do.

Yet I have more purpose and meaning in my life than ever before, and certainly than I ever did waiting around for your god of choice to bestow it on me.

You just go right on telling yourself how awful life MUST be without your particular and very specific beliefs – some of which other Christians don’t even share – if it makes you feel better about yourself and your choices.

Maybe someday you can come back here and do two things:

  1. Actually engage with a single thing I said in this “conversation”
  2. Accept that I, too, can enjoy the beauty of a flower.
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105

I suspected as much.

Recently I’ve been cutting JC a lot of slack, working on the principle that he is a good man of good conscience who is simply out of his depth when it comes to looking at reality through anything other than the lens of faith. As such, if this really the final parting of the ways, then I will continue to cut him slack in these comments.

I suspect that his faith has been so important to him for so long that he simply cannot look at life, the world and the universe in any other way. To him the hand of god in all things is so obvious, so apparent and so undeniable that he cannot conceive of anyone not see things his way. Which must, in his thinking, mean that anyone who does deny what is obvious to him must be doing so deliberately. His words to describe this were ‘making a volitional choice’.

As such, in his mind we are stubborn and obdurate sinners who choose to deny what is plain to see. Because the truth is so plain to see the onus isn’t on him to justify his claims to us. Anyone and everyone can see it. So, by default his claims ARE the truth that we actually recognise but deny.

This is incomprehension on his part. Good men of good conscience can still fail to comprehend the minds of others and so believe that these others are living in denial of the undeniable truth. These good men mean well and genuinely believe that their thoughts, words and actions are morally good. That what they think and do stems from goodness and kindness and pity towards those who are living in darkness.

Men such as these cannot be swayed by reason or logic because their long-held beliefs are devoid of such things and they have never acquired the skills to use their powers of reason and logic to examine their beliefs. As such JC and those of us who engaged with him might as well have been talking two different languages. This outcome was probably inevitiable.

Nevertheless, it is all very sad.

Thank you,

Walter.

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106

I am almost tempted to stop reading here, kudos sir.

I don’t think leave means what you think it does.

No WE don’t know this at all, you may, but I certainly do not.

Pure projection, only you have claimed to be certain about a belief you can’t demonstrate any objective evidence to support, and while your belief claims humans are the product and sole purpose of an unevidenced deity creating the entire universe, no one here has any such egotistical pretentions.

You really do imagine that endlessly preaching your unevidenced subjective religious belief means something, why is that?

Yes your contempt for the forum guidelines and the people here was evident from the first, no need of this declaration, or your latest faux flounce.

Yet cannot support this bare claim with anything approaching objective evidence.

That’s a lie, I am done being polite, as you keep ignoring the objective fact that humans, like all living things, have evolved. Time to start calling you on your dishonesty now.

I have been visiting my best friend and brother in law in hospital for three months, he’s 56, and after surviving leukaemia, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and amyloidosis, he got a simple infection and developed sepsis, he’s an atheists and when he came out of the coma with life changing injuries remained positive and cheerful, so your egotistical religious posturing is quite sickening here.

It’s your story, and who cares anyway, delusional unevidenced beliefs don’t gain credence because they cheer us up, that would be an asinine assumption. Though of course you don’t even have the courage to make it explicitly, and hide behind the pretence of a question.

Your alleged cheerfulness is based on unevidenced superstition, and I manage that without unevidenced superstition, and even if reality made me miserable, it doesn’t justify delusional claims about magic.

Now can I just say that you can shove your lie that atheists have a cynical, despairing and fatalistic view of life, and your archaic superstition right up the arsehole you seem to be thinking with.

Liar, you have posted this lie 2 or even 3 times now, but in the unlikely event you have finally told the truth, good riddance. Debate and any semblance of rational thinking is clearly beyond your utterly closed mind.

It evolved, as have all living things, since that is an objective fact.

Fair play you have posted some truly idiotic claims, but now beauty infers design, is a child with bone cancer beautiful, how about leprosy, or a baby born with AIDS, how about parasitic wasps whose larvae hatch in paralysed pray and eat them very much alive? Or did this deity you imagine not create those, time to run to the absurdity of “god is mysterious” now I suspect.

You really are so blinkered and ignorant it’d be astonishing, if we hadn’t seen a procession of such asinine idiocy. Maybe one day you will learn to think rationally, and with some semblance of an open mind, and you will then cringe at the biased idiotic superstitious guff you’ve posted here, and I would have the good grace to not judge, unlike you and your religion.

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107

I don’t think that looking for deeper reasons is as fruitful as considering “what’s next?” We can safely assume that intelligent life is capable of evolving in this universe. What’s next? What will we evolve into? We’re on the verge of bringing a new form of intelligence into the world. What happens when we are able to harness the power of the quantum world? What other levels of complexity will arise out of what has already come about? What can DMT tell us about organic chemistry and intelligent life? Are we in a simulation? Will we be able to hijack the mechanics of the simulation? Essentially, if we can become like gods unto ourselves, has that already happened on other planets? I think better arguments for the existence of supernatural beings are found rather in the ultimate ends (goals) of the future than in the ultimate beginnings (means) of the past.

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Humans will either make it a weapon, or turn it into a whore for the corporate masters. Normal schmucks may see some bounce in vaccines, power grid improvements, etc…but only enough perks to make them more exploitable.

By implying we can “become like Gods” smacks of some serious hubris. It assumes the same evolutionary process existing on earth is exactly the same throughout the universe.

Going with that for a moment, then the explanation of what happens to advanced civilizations throughout the universe becomes simple. They exploited their planet and civilization into a self engineered extinction.

While it may be amusing and comforting to think a secular savior will actually save us, the odds are historically stacked against that precept.

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109

We will all enter Heaven via a blinding light, where St Peter will point to a door that says level 2!

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110

Really? I always thought is was an ethereal voice in a brightly lit room advising me to take a number and have a seat…

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Well that’s the beauty of making shit up, we can all have the version we like.

Level 2 for me…:wink:

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It seems almost inevitable that a civilization’s technology would develop before it had the maturity and wisdom to use it wisely.

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