9667: a work in progress

[quote="Devil Slayer"]Caleb you are seriously contradicting yourself.

First you state that you have to do your research and figure out which religion makes the most sense. (as stated by your parachute analogy)

Then you say "Imagine this, imagine that". Are you actually trying to find justifiable qualities about established religions here? Or are you trying to invent your own based on limited knowledge and an extensive imagination?
[/quote]

We're all growing here. Don't pretend everyone involved in this debate hasn't learned along the way. If we're going with the spar analogy, every punch is like a thought punch, pondering things that you never stop to think about. We've all contradicted ourselves as we've taken different stances. It's all part of the fight, finding our mistakes, and correcting them.

[quote]
If you want embrace Pluralism, hey I won't judge you
[/quote]

I haven't embraced Pluralism since you brought it up. I sort of played with the idea but dropped it, as previously mentioned. Just running thought experiments, because you can't find out the right till you try the thousand wrongs, right?

Analogies are beautiful things, I realized this the other day, watching science shows. It's the best way to create comprehension and understanding. At least, in our limited language. It's a way to send a message.

I've never respected Jesus more then I do now. What would you do if you lived a lifetime where you had the chance to grab the whole worlds attention, just for a moment in time. When the world looked, he could have said any number of things, he could have spun the crowd for his own selfish deeds, or could have just ignored the spotlight because he didn't want to go against the crowd, but instead he spoke a message of peace and forgiveness. In the middle of a stupid religious war, he looked to the people and said, there has got to be another way, "I know such and such killed such and such, and he thinks his God is the real deal, but you have to let that shit go.". It's a shame he was restricted by our foolish tools of language. I've read "the message" and it's obvious that some of the story had to have been changed, lost in translation, so it's a shame that I couldn't have seen him for myself. To build a house together and just chat. I believe in probability, if you have a story told from the 3rd person, repeated over and over from one ear to the next, somewhere along the line, the story gets exaggerated or edited to suit the needs of whoever is in the power to change it at the time.

"what was the real message?"

So when theories of evolution, and carbon dating create problems in your equation, you try to balance it out by saying, well, maybe the scientists are wrong, you create a new idea, like maybe God created creatures to evolve.

But your backing your logic on murky waters, you can't see whats really there when you've already created restrictions.

It's the same kind of murky waters that a suicide bomber parks on when he thinks that killing himself brings him to heaven.

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What would Jesus do? If history has had it's toll like it has on everything else, then it is a mystery. You have to speculate a lot, wondering which writer you can trust, and what were the motives behind the people that wrote it.

Accept that you have no idea what it was like for a day in the life of Jesus and you can see my perspective.

Like a detective shaking the puzzle pieces apart and trying to see what fits.

We know he loved analogies, and when I hate to get all analogical like I'm on a pedestal, but heres one I keep playing with.

Everything that I know is but a drop in the ocean of knowledge.

we are all playing around in our boats, like God's children. In this silly discussion, we've sailed in to different areas of speculation and assumption, but only small amounts truly add to our drop, if anything, it only leads to more questions. (At least for me it is.)

With no real direction, I've been trusting my gut and believing that as long as my motives are everything that I imagine is good, that it's worth it to poke fun at other peoples boats. To search for flaws, because if we don't, we can never strive for perfection.

Yes, we've entered a debate thats been waging for thousands upon thousands of years, way more then 2000.

I know we're all following paths of many ships before us, but at least we're moving forward.

From my side of the fence, I'm attacking everything that our very society is built on. Our calender, our government, and education were all built off of Christianity.

2 billion people, what would Jesus say if he could see the stupid crap they were doing. Mormons, and Catholics, every self-righteous individual that invokes feelings of shame and hatred. The majority running countries where trillions are spent to hurt? To feed wars? George Bush is a Christian?

To try and imagine what Jesus/God/Allah/jahweh, hey zeus, etc. would say, you have to imagine something unimaginable. You have to admit that is impossible then, hypothetically speaking, imagine if he was just a really brave dude that took on the world to spread a new way of thinking, a new peaceful way of thinking, what would he say?

If you can imagine it from the perspective of Jesus or God, think about what that message might be long and hard. One day, the spotlight may come on you. Let me know, because I want to be prepared just in case that spotlight hits me. I'm only one mind, and while it may look like I'm a little kid with his arms wide pretending he's trying to build his very own f-22 of Christianity, while all 2 billion of you are laughing, saying, "he thinks he's can make another plane, lol, listen to this idealistic nutjob. He's thinks he's going to tell me that my plane doesn't fly, we'll show him."

You see, I imagine Jesus saying, none of them really fly, we're all in this plane together.

Hypothetically, of coarse... Everyone has their own definition of perfection.

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[quote]
You can't try to Quantify God. You can't picture things from his shoes. In any religion the gods do things that from our perspective are inhumane. Don't even try to compete with the omnipotent.
[/quote]

Sure you can, the bible does all the time. Like a "father" to a child. "created in God's image". Those are just one theory, what if it was like a dog to a master, ant to a human, cell to an organism, perhaps like a quiet tree, watching us... what would it think? Some sort of inter-dimensional entity, maybe how we hope it is, but maybe not. We can't fathom it, but we can explore around it, use analogies to help understand, break the mold of what everyone has said before you and have faith that God will not punish you for using the tools of thinking that he gave to you. Use what you "know" as a base line, but don't ever lie to yourself and say you know something. Taking that step is the only way a Muslim will change his way of thinking. We try to understand God all the time, the only time we actually get any truth is when you try to understand the unimaginable. You can't fathom Hell, you can't fathom Heaven, you can't fathom the other infinite possibilities between the best and the worst. Who's to say that the next life isn't going to be more of a struggle then this one? What if this is just a proving ground?

I don't know, this is x to me. It is unknown.

The only thing I have faith in anymore is science, but that doesn't mean you have to take the lazy way out and be atheist.

As far as I'm concerned science is just another language to describe things. You believe that praying to God will coax me to label myself Christianity. (Old language)

I see it as you believe that your somehow telekinetically communicating with an alternate dimension, higher intelligence, all powerful creator of love and everything as we know it, even the logic I present to you, and your asking him to change my way of thinking.

That is a [i]crazy[/i] theory, but so is the theory of relativity, but Einstein proved that.

Don't be afraid to test it. If you believe that God has put out specific rules that prohibit testing his might, then you have just stuck yourself with one theory. If God really didn't show himself once in a while, it destroys any "divine experience" stories out the window.

Prove to me that telekinesis works.

Do we emanate mind energy? Speak to me in a scientific language so I can take you seriously, so the world can.

For example: I'm going to go in a sci-fi direction for shits and giggles, so bear with me here, I don't believe it like any of my other "throw-away" theories. What if billions of years ago, we expanded through the galaxy, and around 200,000 years ago set up a colony on Earth, maybe it was like paradise compared to where the Humans grew up.

The humans all spoke to each other telekinetically. Maybe the humans just lost their ability to speak with the mind. Maybe something happened, they lost connection, etc. Maybe prayer is like an echo, we're trying to get that ability back.

Maybe mankind has to find the language of angels again so we don't have to stumble through this stupid English one. (Damn you firefox, telekinetic's is so a word) Maybe then I could get my point across to you. You can see my perspective, I can see yours, we create a new one that fits better. Maybe then you could work out why you think good Muslim people must suffer.

Maybe this debate is just practice for that moment. How can you deliver logic that doesn't snowball in to hatred. Watch what you say. Pick your words more carefully then me, really try to imagine what would Jesus do.

Instead, I have tried to be the better man and seek my own truth, not try to find a label for myself and follow along with a crowd. I may find a label later, because everyone likes to come up with a new idea and label themselves. Some do it for followers and the feeling of power, for creating a theory that people can believe in, can strive to be good for. I don't want that, are you kidding me? I can't make a plane, I only have a natural ability to see flaws. To have the wisdom to know when

I will feel free to explore other philosophies.... nay, I crave it. Give me yours. Tell me what you really think about abortion, evolution, and creation.

Let's go to fucking town, as long as no one gets too emotional, I'm down for creating new threads for every topic anyone want to engage in.


The way I see it you have a couple of options. You can be a Christian, You can be a Pluralist, you can't be both. There is no theological backing for it. Period.

If you want embrace Pluralism, hey I won't judge you. All i ask is that you actually take the time to look into the thousands upon thousands of years philosophy research, and written documents. Its not exactly a new theory.

If you want to take the lazy way out, and become an atheist, hey I won't judge you on that either.

[quote] "Why? Why should this woman suffer for all eternity?"[/quote]

Actually there is no evidence in the bible that hell is for eternity. There is a perfectly viable theory when it comes to theology called annihilationism that states that hell is more of a limbo that souls stay in until the day of judgment when everything in it will cease to exist.

The only reason you get the fire and brimstone comparison is because of how unbearable it would be to not have God around. The darkness without light etc.

[quote]In fact, by your analogy, that would be like our own judicial system sending any non-Christian to death.

What kind of backlash do you think that kind of thinking can cause?! [/quote]

Probably something like this:

[url]http://www.castlepyros.com/pyrosforums/viewtopic.php?t=1202[/url]

Except that Christianity is all about second chances, and we don't judge people people for their beliefs. Thats Gods job.[/quote]

is anyone reading my blog?

I've been putting this together all day, so maybe I should think about it before I respond. It's all scattered, and I've been writing for a long time. I suppose perfection isn't attainable, but I should at least let these thoughts cook before I present them.

Let me know if your reading this.