If God exists...

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That's not how really how the whole story goes. Yes, he did get nailed to the cross, but there's **huge** also that went along with that.

You've probably heard the whole shpeel about what people say hell is - lake of fire, black fire in a 3x3x3 box for all of eternity, Dante's Inferno...yada yada yada for all of eternity. When they say that Jesus died for the sins of everyone who existed after him - on the j-curve that our population has gone through that's what, maybe 25 billion so far in about the 1,980 or so years since he was crucified at age 33? The whole idea was this - everyone's sentence to hell, hell for the fact that they were not believers, was taken - 30, 40, maybe 50 billion people's eternity in hell was poured out on him - in concentrate and in one dose, right before he died on the cross.

When they talk about the night of Passover when he was betrayed, he wasn't even there yet, just contemplating what he'd be going through in a few hours, and the anticipation that he was going through - its in the bible - he was sweating and tearing blood, not on the cross but just praying the night before.

In that essence yes, many people died on the cross, as many people have been killed through the ages in genocide or utopian pushes by the early communists to re-aggregate everything under government control; its all been very legitimate and terrible suffering. However, Jesus death was in fact like no one else's in terms of what he did go through.


Now mind you, I'm not at all saying that I'm absolutely certain what I believe on this, I have my inclinations but I also have enough temperment of reality to know that they could be carefully constructed allegory written for the sake of explaining to the people a lot of higher principles that may have been divinely inspired, may have just been written by brilliant philosophers of the time. I am very hesitant to deny the reality that the bible presents regarding Jesus, its documented four different ways, gets very immersive into explaining the mechanics of how just the standard every day and every moment we live in is supposedly controlled by God, and that goes right back to the idea that - if he's timeless, omniscient, has not only unbounded intelligence but unbounded processing power (can't think as fast and hard as he wishes without getting a migraine); it tells me that he could calculate the outcome of freewill before it happens.

On the other hand, realistically, I agree that 90% of our lives are going on autopilot. Its like one of those books you get from the library and every time you make a salient choice to either go to p. 255 or p.74; you read about 10 or 11 pages to get there. For the most part then I think any thin watered down amount of free-will that we do have really comes down to our long-term thought processes, what we decide to change in how we think, what illusions we decide to slash through in our own minds, and of course staying restless in our quest for both truth and wisdom. From everything I've seen and heard just by listening to different ideas from different people and following my own observation; free will is a definite London force and it takes very deliberate effort to make much use of it.

According to the story a whole 1/3 of heaven fell right along with him; the guy was evidently pretty smooth and likable.

My own biggest struggle, one that I really have yet to resolve, is that when it comes to anything that gargantuan in terms of dynamics of the like and what the outcome is right now - I can't imagine his presence and creation not being deliberate. While I'd hesitate to say that I don't believe in a physical hell, there is some dissonance in the understanding that those agents he most likely created and employed do do exactly what he wanted them to do - provide a struggle - should go to such a place as hell in the end. Yes, my scope of logic could be too limited just by being here on Earth like everyone else but when people do propose that all of this was just people or things falling away from him and what he stood for and he would have been unaware of exactly what would have happened when he made them who they were; it makes God sound like a bit of a bumbling idiot and that's why its too hard for me to believe that any of this just happened on Lucifer or anyone else's own volition unknown to God when it was God himself who created all the gears and inner workings of their volition.

The only other possibility is that there is something like an entropy, a natural disorder that hits people and things kind of like radiation, and causes mutations of will in a way that has nothing to do with anything that God put into motion; that would mean that there would have to be either something outside of God's creation or - a randomizing element that he deliberately build into not only his universe but yes - his Kingdom as well, maybe for the sake of creating free will.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 11 Oct 2008, 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don't expect logic to serve in the place of faith. Faith is a different way of knowing, you see.

I don't think the two necessarily need to be divided, nor do I think that logic has to be repressed to have good faith. God gave us all of these faculties for a reason, and I don't think logic was made to temp us away from him but rather to mature our understanding of him

You know, you're right.

if you wanna go that route: if there's a problem in humans then it must go back to the designer as improper programming and design.


or simply that if there even if a god, it doesn't exist as a sentient being. certainly doesn't exist as christianity defines it. that's obvious.

Obvious to who? You? Don't talk about the faith unless you're willing to learn about it.

fact.


go ahead, show me a sentient deity.


/pray in one hand, crap in the other and see which one gets filled first

I can't cause you to have faith. All I can do is talk about mine.

And I can certainly take your abuse.

faith in what? nothing. a bunch of myths started by people who were barely out of the caves. they were used as a way to curb and control people because most people were too stupid back then to have any self-discipline and needed the threat of a permanent spanking from something much, much, much bigger than they could possibly come up to being. if not then the big, bulky alphas would simply just rule and there'd be a constant state of anarchy barely above the level of lions. and the absolute nature obviously had to be in place so that there were no exceptions for these people and the positive life after is necessary to give the people a positive goal to work for throughout their life constantly. the periodic reminder of the myth was also needed (and still needed today).


/religion is the WORST idea ever while also playing a key role in establishing a formalized structured society
//just too bad it's no longer relevant due to its massive and frequent abuse to spread intolerance and to cheat others and to spread injustice

Either that or it tells us that this life wasn't supposed to be much more than a testing ground - ie. testing us, testing what we're made of, testing our character, not for his learning but for ours.

ugh, are you really gonna fall into the ignatius loyola* idea of the holy warrior?


*actually not sure on this, i forget if it's loyola or augustine. i just know the idea is idiotic and fails rule #1 set up by every religion: god is perfect. if god is perfect then there is no need for testing. that's a human trait and circumstance...not one of the sentient divine being(s) as described by most humans.

This is the purpose of the spiritual life. There are no easy answers.

Barely know a thing about Ignations Loyola, aside from the fact that they had a hell of a football team for years and they still keep asking my dad for alumni donations?

Seriously though, I've never read the guy's writings, never heard the idea of the 'holy warrior', and from the outset I really doubt it has anything to do with my own personal philosophy, maybe some small amount of overlap - just in what I said that triggered your association - but I'm doubtful on much else.

As for a vacuum, perfection - all well and good. However, do experience or knowledge really accrue in a vacuum? Should they? If we were simply given knowledge without experience - we wouldn't have learned a thing. Not to say its impossible, maybe the guy just likes individuals a bit more than clones off the press? No one really knows for sure but it seems like experiencing some degree of hardship is almost necessary for people to have appropriate levels of humility or to really have wisdom to go with the 'data' knowledge or book smarts.

You've got a lot of hate in you, that's for sure. I don't care for the garbage you spew at me.

hate? i'm describing the mechanical fact of how religion works. YOU'RE the one who says homosexuals are a problem and that it's freedom TO religion and not freedom FROM religion. i think you need to quit projecting on others when you're the hateful, intolerant one.