Ohio Chatter DEV

jmog

Fab1b;602927 wrote:If someone is out of a job and needs work, what will get them a job? Praying or submitting resumes? Neither may work sure but only submitting resumes will lead to work!! See my views there!

In my opinion you do both.

Anyone that just prays and doesn't physically do anything to help themselves out, is retarded.

jmog

CinciX12;602960 wrote:Pretty much sounds like my entire life story up to this point..So know you aren't alone with that.

20% of it is true and actually happened. God exists and Jesus was in fact crucified. The other 80% is total and complete waste of time for humanity to even deal with.

Especially around this time of year I just find myself laughing at everything, nativity scenes in particular. That shit never happened, it is exactly that, shit. It is a feel good story for Christianity. God spoke to Jesus after John baptized him announcing him as the anointed one. You can't have that be true and then have Mary and Joseph and a bunch of dumb ass farm animals knowing that this little kid is the son of God. The bible is the biggest joke in the history of the world, literally. But God does in fact exist. Kind of why I steer clear of church and be taught the bible every sunday.

Just curious if you have any proof or even a logical argument for any of your assertations in the last paragraph?

I agree with you that the nativity scenes are bogus, but that's because we humans don't actually read closely, things like the mere fact that the wisemen actually arrived when Jesus was a toddler, not a baby and were DEFINITELY not at the manger like our nativity scenes show.

jmog

fan_from_texas;603016 wrote:That's not a fair statement to make. While I can't speak for everyone, I choose religion because a reasoned analysis of the universe strongly suggests the existence of a creator-god. Further examination suggests that if a god exists, he'd likely end up having characteristics very similar to the Judeo-Christian god. It's up to you to do your own investigation and accept/deny at your own profit/peril, but it's silly to dismiss the idea out of hand.

I'm in the same boat as you, but that's probably the scientist in me. I have a hard time accepting things blindly. I do accept a number of things in the Bible on blind faith, but I honestly had a hard time accepting the "whole thing" that way. I came to a very similar conclusion as you did and how you did it.

Y-Town Steelhound

I guess I just have a problem with people being able to thank God when good things happen to them, but God is without fault when bad things happen....kind of a double standard.

I would consider myself more spiritual than religious. I'm not a big fan of organized religion, and I think if people took the time to form their own personal relationship with God we would have a lot less problems in the world. You shouldn't have to pray from a multi million dollar building every Sunday to have your prayers heard.

I respect peoples beliefs, and I follow the Bible more as a moral code than an absolute rule set and history book. I think too many people focus on what did and didn't happen in Jesus' life rather than what he taught which actually has more societal value than wondering about the life events of someone who died thousands of years ago. I just try to help out others and be a good person. If that's not good enough for God's heaven, maybe it isn't a heaven I want to be in anyways.

CenterBHSFan

BigAppleBuckeye;603995 wrote:I think God is like the owner of a fantasy football team: he has a general plan more or less, but ultimately its up to his players on Earth to make plays! I know this is a light-hearted view, but all kidding aside, I think everyone on Earth has "free will," and sometimes bad people do bad things, which God has no control over.

I largely agree with your view. However, where we differ is this: I don't think it's "God has no control" at all. But, if he gave us free will, then he gave us free will - to do good things as well as bad/very bad things. If he did control or curb bad things happening to us, then there wouldn't be any free will at all, it would be subjugated ruling.
Do you agree or disagree with that? I enjoy talking about things like this... it allows me to use words like "subjugate" LOL!

jmog

O-Trap;603488 wrote:I suppose I can chime in on this.

I grew up in a Christian home as well. My father was a pastor, and my mother taught the children's choir for many years. I knew the right answers. I knew how I was "supposed" to act, and I even did so most of the time, church or not ... and I did it for one reason:

I felt like I was supposed to.

Truth be told, I didn't believe in ANY God at all, or any non-physical reality for that matter. I couldn't tell many people this, of course, because my dad was "the pastor," and if it got back to people in the church, it would (unjustly, I might add) reflect poorly on my dad in their eyes. In my mind, whether I believed or not, I had to act like it, because I loved my father, and I would NEVER want to see him criticized or defamed because I happened to not believe what he did. Still, though, it gnawed at me incessantly. I would ask questions in Sunday school or even to some of the pastors, and I always got quaint, token, cop-out answers (such as the one mentioned in the original post, which I got several times).

I went to college and I fell in love with philosophy ... metaphysics. I LOVED the notion that truth could exist apart from what could be observed physically, but instead be observed reasonably. I began to get militant about it, and I found a nice, anonymous outlet for it: teh interwebz.

I went on a particular message board (called NationStates) and I would intentionally search out Christians, well-educated or not, and I would argue with them. I never got upset. I never called names. I tried to remain respectful of the person with whom I was arguing. The truth is, I wasn't looking to argue for argument's sake. However, I wanted to find someone who I felt could hold their own in an academic forum, and I wanted to see holes punched in it. In retrospect, a message board probably wasn't the best, but the logic I saw there was head-and-shoulders above what I saw on the Huddle (no offense, guys). I never came across anything that wasn't without major problems or appeals to authorities I didn't accept (an appeal to a supernatural authority over natural law, for example, was logically possible, but I had no reason to start believing it: Occam's Razor, if you will).

I decided to go to college and major in religion, thinking I'd (a) come across the best defense of religion from people with Doctorates in it, and (b) if I could put to rest the best defense that religion had to offer, there would be no doubt in my mind that I was right.

For the first semester, things were fine. I would occasionally argue in class, though I had to admit, even at the time, that the professors sometimes provided fantastic, logical defenses for a certain belief. I at least developed a healthy respect for them, as they were the first people I'd ever heard that seemed like they could indeed hold their own in academia.

However, because my purpose there wasn't necessarily to get good grades, they suffered a bit, and I was assigned an academic mentor. He was one of the professors from the Religious Studies department, but he was also the Dean of Students and the Vice President of Academic Affairs. I was a little surprised that someone with so many hats had time to meet with a student every week.

In any case, I did meet with him every week, but I found myself talking more about religion and faith than about my academics, though they did go up. At the end of the semester, I had found that I was enjoying talking to him. He respected my view, and he handled my questions with genuine care, not with trite little responses, but with well-thought-out responses that provoked me to think. It was so enjoyable that I found myself looking forward to Wednesday nights, when he and I would meet.

Over the final two years of my college, I continued to meet with him. By the last semester of my senior year, I found that our discussions had made sense, and that over time, I had come to believe not only that a God-serving worldview was correct, but that I had somewhere along the line accepted much of the Bible as truth (at least, in the ways it is intended to be) and that I was a Christian. Not because I had been told so since I was little or because I wanted some mythical reason to believe, but because over the course of three years, I had come to be CONVINCED that there was a logical, rational reason for God's existence, and that the reasons for believing such were good reasons.

I don't know when it happened. It wasn't some grandiose emotional experience or instant faith-filled inspiration. It was over the course of several years, and just somehow during that time, I had come to be a "Christian."

I don't believe it's "just faith." That was one of the big cop-out answers I'd had from one of the pastors at my old church. I am more of the persuasion shared with an old friend of mine, a pastor from Warsaw, Indiana. His name is Kondo Simfukwe. He borrows shamelessly from Greek philosophy, and doing so, he says:

The truth is, I am only a Christian today because I was engaged with the validity of it over time, through genuine relationship, and on terms I accepted. He didn't spout the Bible to me, or any Josh McDowell or Lee Strobel. He used people like Albert Camus, Edmund Husserl, and even Carl Sagan. Then he showed that he could actually reason for himself in our discussions. THAT was what was so refreshing to me. No regurgitating anything from Answers In Genesis (in fact, he wasn't even a young-earth creationist). Answers that showed he had been thoughtful on the same questions I was asking ... and had refused to accept trite, Sunday-school-esque answers.

That man was Dr. David Plaster. His character was almost irreproachable. His love for learning was undeniable (the man spoke 7 languages fluently, for example). His kindness was unusual. He was, in my opinion, the perfect example of who a person should be. Hard working, always learning, and showing an abnormal understanding and love for others ... all because it was his duty as a human being.

Dr. Plaster left this world in March of 2010. I had a really rough time, and I attended his funeral in Columbus, where he had been the pastor for the Columbus Grace Brethren Church for about a year (after he left the college). He was an amazing man, and I owe much of my worldview to him. Ultimately, God has really helped me believe, resolutely, what I do. But God used him to reach me, and Dr. Plaster did his work well.

I have no doubt that upon passing away, he was greeted by the words "Well done, my good and faithful servant." I miss him, and I try to carry on in a way that would make him proud, which means that whatever truth is, I should pursue it. However, he also showed me that a strong, thoughtful, intellectual mind can arrive at Christ-centered worldview.

Sorry that was so long, and I'm sure at least one of you will give the stereotypical "tl:dr" response (Prick! ). I just thought it an appropriate time to share my story.

Thanks for this story, I've picked up parts of that story reading your posts over the years, but never got the whole thing.

While I had a similar story growing up, we had slightly different realizations as an adult in college.

I grew up in a very religious home, church 3 times a week was a given. I just got to college, started studying the sciences and just like when I was in Sunday school, when I got to college science classes I just believed what I was told.

I got to the point where I had NO IDEA what I believed and had to find it for myself.

My path to the truth from there was a scientific one, not a philosophical one.

CenterBHSFan

I have a friend who has a theory about God/good vs. Satan/bad. His theory is that they are not in a versus situation at all, but playing the good cop bad cop tag team. I always found that interesting, if not amusing, but the way he explains his theory (I have immensely oversimplified to get the basis in one sentence, indeed I cannot even remember it all) is well thought out, even if I don't agree with it.

Point being, I can respect arguments, thoughts, debates and ideas if they're thought about and respectful to the listener. These arguments that are childish, accusatory or disrespectful do not portray anything but a lot of noise and do not properly give a clear idea of the posters thoughts. Oftentimes it just leads me to believe that people are just trolling and really have no thoughts of their own regarding this issue.

BigAppleBuckeye

CenterBHSFan;604111 wrote:I largely agree with your view. However, where we differ is this: I don't think it's "God has no control" at all. But, if he gave us free will, then he gave us free will - to do good things as well as bad/very bad things. If he did control or curb bad things happening to us, then there wouldn't be any free will at all, it would be subjugated ruling.
Do you agree or disagree with that? I enjoy talking about things like this... it allows me to use words like "subjugate" LOL!

Good post CBF! By definition, once God intervenes, we lose free will. I guess my point was that while CAN step in, it was his plan to let mankind work things out for themselves.

Next segway: what happens if/when alien life is found in other universes? Was that part of God's plan as well?

Con_Alma

BigAppleBuckeye;604167 wrote:...
Next segway: what happens if/when alien life is found in other universes? Was that part of God's plan as well?

You won't know what is and what isn't part of God's plan unless told by Him.

jmog

BigAppleBuckeye;604167 wrote:Next segway: what happens if/when alien life is found in other universes? Was that part of God's plan as well?

The existence/non-existence of aliens has anything to do with the existence/non-existence of God.

BigAppleBuckeye

jmog;604184 wrote:The existence/non-existence of aliens has anything to do with the existence/non-existence of God.

Has anything? Or doesn't have anything? Not sue I understand your statement

fan_from_texas

CenterBHSFan;604129 wrote:I have a friend who has a theory about God/good vs. Satan/bad. His theory is that they are not in a versus situation at all, but playing the good cop bad cop tag team. I always found that interesting, if not amusing, but the way he explains his theory (I have immensely oversimplified to get the basis in one sentence, indeed I cannot even remember it all) is well thought out, even if I don't agree with it.

That's called dualism, and it was a big issue about 2,000 years ago (I'm thinking of the Manicheans, in particular, as being notorious gnostic dualists). My recollection is that St. Augustine scheduled a series of debates and absolutely destroyed their position.

Point being, I can respect arguments, thoughts, debates and ideas if they're thought about and respectful to the listener. These arguments that are childish, accusatory or disrespectful do not portray anything but a lot of noise and do not properly give a clear idea of the posters thoughts. Oftentimes it just leads me to believe that people are just trolling and really have no thoughts of their own regarding this issue.

Agreed. I enjoy having grown-up discussions about grown-up issues, and I find it can be done in a very reasonable way. The problem is that handful of people who aren't interested in being grown-ups.

jmog

BigAppleBuckeye;604202 wrote:Has anything? Or doesn't have anything? Not sue I understand your statement

type-o, meant to say doesn't have anything.

CenterBHSFan

BigAppleBuckeye;604167 wrote:Next segway: what happens if/when alien life is found in other universes? Was that part of God's plan as well?

Personally, I think that I'll find it fascinating, but then go on about my business. It probably will not change my point of view or feelings/thoughts at all.

believer

BigAppleBuckeye;604167 wrote:Next segway: what happens if/when alien life is found in other universes? Was that part of God's plan as well?

I think it is part of God's plan if that were to happen. For someone who believes He is the Creator of the universe it would be no surprise to me that God saw fit to deposit life in areas other than this planet.

But speaking of that, is it purely coincidental or mere chance that the Earth is positioned at the precise spot it needs to be located in order for life as we know it to exist? If our orbit is a few thousand miles farther out in space the Earth is too cold. A few thousand miles closer to the sun and the Earth is too hot.

Did the Creator make this so or is life on Earth - this tiny, tiny speck of dust in the nearly infinite universe - a random cosmic occurrence?

Some folks have a difficult time believing in God; that He is merely a figment of human imagination created by humans to give us hope for something in the after-life. I have a similarly difficult time believing that we merely evolved from some random lightning bolt that stimulated pre-organic matter in the primordial goo. Then that primitive life spontaneously separated into male and female and began to reproduce and evolved into tens of thousands of different species and plant life over billions of years.

I believe that God created all that we see and created everything so that life could adapt and evolve as necessary to that environment.

BoatShoes

As to the OP plenty of reasonable believers likewise cannot understand why someone might reject the concept of, at the very least, a creator God of some power. And, alas, for me, although I was once interested in the matter, to me, arguments about the existence of God between even the most reasonable atheists and reasonable theists always at some level collapse into a kind of fideism. To me, the cosmological argument is never really satisfied in any way that might come to create the sense of a justified true belief as opposed to mere justification. For instance, I saw the other day that Stephen Hawking and others have put at arguments how the Universe could have been created without the need of a Creator God and I suppose this ,like theistic justifications. is a noble pursuit but it just doesn't seem to me like much progress is made. For me I guess, I just don't even debate it anymore. Why be so sure that God doesn't exist and that religion is a farce? Why be so certain that God does exist? Why spend time trying to convince others who believe opposite of yourself when there is little certainty in which to ground your own position? Realistically I'm not even sure that I'm not plugged into the matrix so I suppose I just am just in general not attracted to these types of meta-questions anymore. I'm sure someone will spell out Pascal's approach to fideism but realistically you could completely rearrange the consequences of such a game because those consequences aren't grounded in any real verifiable truths.

I imagine if I could play around with the beliefs of believers and non-believers alike I suppose I would think it to be good if both militant atheists and ardent believers would be a little less stringent in their beliefs and realize while plenty of reasonable persons on both sides may have valid justifications for their positions any really knowledge on the matter, at least at this point, seems to be floating ahead of us down the river a ways. But that is just my opinion on the matter at this current point in my life.

O-Trap

Y-Town Steelhound;604093 wrote:I guess I just have a problem with people being able to thank God when good things happen to them, but God is without fault when bad things happen....kind of a double standard.

Think about it this way: If the default is already one end of the spectrum, then anything that happens toward that end of the spectrum is the default, and is thus not attributed to an outside force. However, if something happens that is toward the OTHER end of the spectrum, that thing is, by necessity, the result of actions from an outside force.

If the default for things on earth are "bad," then anything "bad" happening is just part of life on earth. Anything "good," however, would be attributed to something not bound by the normative rules of life on the earth ... meaning something that exists outside (or "above" if that is clearer) those rules.

The hard time I used to have with this was that I assumed that the default was neither good nor bad. However, if the default is that things are bad, then bad is simply part of life on earth, while good is something taking exception to the default, meaning it has to have been acted on by a force that isn't under the control of those defaults.

Y-Town Steelhound;604093 wrote:I would consider myself more spiritual than religious. I'm not a big fan of organized religion, and I think if people took the time to form their own personal relationship with God we would have a lot less problems in the world. You shouldn't have to pray from a multi million dollar building every Sunday to have your prayers heard.

Oh goodness, I agree. My church is about five house groups who meet. Each group only has about 5-8 people who meet on different days of the week, and we meet in each other's house.

The gatherings in multi-million dollar buildings are as much cultural as anything. I don't want to write off such set-ups on face value, but I am more skeptical when I see churches that are more hung up on their buildings.

rydawg5

WWJD

I Wear Pants

BigAppleBuckeye;603995 wrote:I think God is like the owner of a fantasy football team: he has a general plan more or less, but ultimately its up to his players on Earth to make plays! I know this is a light-hearted view, but all kidding aside, I think everyone on Earth has "free will," and sometimes bad people do bad things, which God has no control over.

I was very non-religious growing up, and have become more religious of late (I am 35). My father is an atheist, and we banter on occasion, and I ask him: what is MORE plausible -- the fact that everything on Earth, or even the universe, happened by sheer coincidence (whether you believe in the big bang, evolution, etc), or the fact that there HAD to be a starting point somewhere, with some entity (God?) spearheading this?

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

— Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

O-Trap

I Wear Pants;604805 wrote:Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

— Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

I would contend that the Epicurean philosophy is incredibly over-simplistic, particularly on judging God based on his willingness (or lack thereof) without judging the "why" of a lack of willingness. If ANY being is as "other-worldly" as the Creator is alleged to be, it is entirely possible that the reasoning behind it has nothing to do with malevolence.

I Wear Pants

I mostly like the quote for what it meant for someone to think that way in that day and age.

dwccrew

jhay78;602962 wrote:"Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened." (Matt 7:7,8)

Although I am a believer, I don't necessarily believe in everything taught in church or in the Bible. The Bible is a bunch of stories passed down for millenia. It's like the telephone game, not too mention how things get lost in the translation of the text.

Also, in the above quote, not everything asked is given. People pray and beg for loved ones not to die of disease (or the loved one prays for themselves), yet they do.

IMO, the creator gave us options and abilities and freewill and we have to find our own way to the creator.

O-Trap

I Wear Pants;604814 wrote:I mostly like the quote for what it meant for someone to think that way in that day and age.

That's fair.

dwccrew;604820 wrote:Although I am a believer, I don't necessarily believe in everything taught in church or in the Bible. The Bible is a bunch of stories passed down for millenia. It's like the telephone game, not too mention how things get lost in the translation of the text.

Also, in the above quote, not everything asked is given. People pray and beg for loved ones not to die of disease (or the loved one prays for themselves), yet they do.

IMO, the creator gave us options and abilities and freewill and we have to find our own way to the creator.

Yeah, the translation is a considerable task, and it's often treated too lightly.

jmog

dwccrew;604820 wrote:Although I am a believer, I don't necessarily believe in everything taught in church or in the Bible. The Bible is a bunch of stories passed down for millenia. It's like the telephone game, not too mention how things get lost in the translation of the text.

Also, in the above quote, not everything asked is given. People pray and beg for loved ones not to die of disease (or the loved one prays for themselves), yet they do.

IMO, the creator gave us options and abilities and freewill and we have to find our own way to the creator.

Not necessarily true. The first few chapters in Genesis maybe. However after that most of the Bible is written by first hand accounts and the rest by second hand accounts. It was not passed down from generation to generation.

Now if you want to talk about translations and their possible mistakes in interpretation then that is a different topic altogether but the notion that the Bible is like a book of stories just passed down by word of mouth is hogwash.

believer

I Wear Pants;604805 wrote:Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

— Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

God is in fact willing to prevent evil but chooses to allow it to exist. Since the temptation and fall of Adam & Eve sin/evil has existed in this world because, again, God has chosen to make us free-agents. He wants to give us a choice to believe or not to believe. To believe means you choose to worship Him. The souls of those who do not are doomed.

I know this may seem very convenient and like a fairy tale to some, but we were all born with at least a modicum of curiosity about what happens to us when we die. Were we born by mere cosmic chance and we simply die? Or were we put here for a clear purpose? And if so, what is that purpose?

I choose to believe we were born to worship an omnipotent God who loves us all and whose only desire is that we acknowledge Him as the Creator. In my way of thinking it's a far, far better belief than assuming we are byproducts of chance cosmic evolution; that we simply live for 70-80 years and die...nothing more.

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I don't understand religion.