Why the hostility?
iamnotaparakeet
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Can I force you to be my friend??? Even if I listed all the reasons to be and it was clear cut, does that mean a thing? No. You still have decisions to make and they have consequences. Is a judge stubborn just because he wont bend the law in your favor? No. This Judge offers that either you accept an option of His making and go free, or you pay the penalty for your own crimes. Are you the Lawmaker who decides what is right or wrong? If Providence should direct that I should know enough that I believe and with confidence, yet you believe not the testimony of me or others why should you blame God? Who are you to determine how He should act? I pray that God would undeniably reveal Himself to you as He has to me.
richardbenson
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im not here to determine how anyone including, how god should act. frankly i dont know how you can take anything in the bible seriously. how do you know god is real? does he "talk" to you? obviously i admire your faith parakeet but im not going through the nitemare of repenting only to sin again, oh no. its one thing to use an analagy of a judge, its another to actually see god in a judges robe. once that happens then i will try to do my best to live according to his ways. until then something pretty darn miraculous is going to have to happen, and it appears as god liked doing the miraculous in the past so why not now? this is kindof like the attitude creationist have reguarding dinosuars. "the bones were put here all over the earth by god to test my faith!" oh please.
thanks for praying for me but i doubt jesus will ride up on a harley and take me to tucson rock&gem show
although i did start praying recently to jesus about my lease situation and it was answerd. so i dont know if this was a coicidence or an actual answer to my prayer.
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iamnotaparakeet
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Because the brain dies after 30 seconds without oxygen.
Not often, but when He has it is not in words or emotions but rather in complete thoughts.
Thanks, I wish I could live it better and more consistently.
I've seen the one about my dad and that's plenty for me. God still does miracles, it's just not a constant activity to uphold the normative order of things. I.e. superstitions are unnecessary. Even in the Old Testament God was not constantly confusing people with constant miracles. Indeed, if there was no order to go by, how could anything be determined to be of supernatural origin?
I've never heard a creationist say this.
I doubt God will show Himself to you in that manner either. But if he does show Himself to you in this way even, I hope you wont write it off.
iamnotaparakeet
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richardbenson
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I've never heard a creationist say this.
Haha. I think Richard got that one from Bill Hicks.
I rejected the Santa Claus belief a long time before I ever rejected Christianity. What I was trying to say was that my belief in Christianity always felt phony. It felt like wishful thinking, just like Santa Claus.
It's interesting that you mention studying the creation-evolution issue. I went the same route around the age of 13, yet I ended up coming to the exact opposite conclusion.
Why do people think there's a problem with wishful thinking when it comes to believing in god, (despite the fact that it need not lead you into any kind of illusions, delusions, error, etc, and is not in flagrant contradiction of anything that you know)? Why are people who believe in god so often accused of this?
It's only like a mathematician who has a problem and whatever they do with it, turn it around, examine it from every conceivable angle, it has no solution unless posit x. The existence of this whatever thing/x suddenly solves the problem. Are you going to say to the mathematician that their solution is no good, it's just wishful thinking?
My belief in god is like that.
It's true that certain information was helpful to me in accepting the proposition; the recent work on the psychology of religion for instance which suggests that a religious tendency, belief in god, may be a side-effect/by-product, of developments in the brain in the last 50,000 years in Fluid Intelligence, that is pattern recognition, finding meaning in confusion, attribution of cause etc.
The theory is that these mental functions, very good for our survival, created a "space" which in some/many humans is "satisfied" by only one thing, belief in god, without which they are always persistently, anxiously, obsessively, compulsively, looking for cause, meaning, and patterns such that life is like one long search with no rest. Like someone in enemy territory who has to stay awake all the time to process information in case is sign of danger.
Also recent work in theories of complexity/complex systems and "emergence". I looked up "emergence" on the net, and the descriptions sound like descriptions of god, just without using the word.
I think belief in god is like accepting "0" in maths. I'm intensely grateful for its existence, and regret all the years of not using it. You can imagine, what trying to do maths without 0 would be like.
techstepgenr8tion
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Because many people on both sides - Christians and persecutors alike, are dingleberries - which are usually the most outspoken group in any conflict of interests. They aren't exactly the majority, they just do a great job of making it sound as if they are through their own self-importance.
richardbenson
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iamnotaparakeet
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Because the brain dies after 30 seconds without oxygen.
how does that prove god? are you trying to say hes breathing or breath? and thats why he cant be proved? hm. well ok i think however thats just how our bodys function and really doesnt have anything to do with a supernatural being.
No, I'm referring to the fact that my dad was dead for a few minutes before he was brought back to life. Not by CPR, but with my mom and a friend from Church praying over him that he would come back so we could take him to the hospital. I was 13 at the time and he was not breathing and had no pulse as well as his eyes were wide open and had the white part of his eyes turn yellow (which may have been due to chemotherapy, but he was still dead.) That is the largest miracle I have seen although I have seen and experienced others more personal, this is why I remained a Christian.
richardbenson
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iamnotaparakeet
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Thanks. What's really bad is that the hospital stopped the chemotherapy short and the cancer grew back. If we had been a wealthy family they wouldn't have stopped. I hate the medical policies and supposed health benefits of this nation. People are all equally valuable and healthcare shouldn't cost. America sucks in this sense.
richardbenson
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i might get back on it, once i move out in less than a month
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iamnotaparakeet
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i might get back on it, once i move out in less than a month