first post and word of thanks from former fundie

[ORUgrad]

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you and introduce myself. I grew up in a strict fundamentalist home, went to Christian private school from K-graduate school, did mission work in Africa, and received an M.Div from Oral Roberts University. I have seen many of the "faith" ministries up close and personal. I started losing faith in the Bible god at the end of my undergrad program in Biblical Studies where "the Bible is infallible" gets proven quite otherwise very quickly. By the end of seminary, I had lost complete faith in the OT god. As I am opposed to child rape, torture, and murder (among a great many other things the OT god commanded), I came to the realization that if this violent war god was really the creator, we were all screwed. Such a god cannot be pleased. And pretending like he "loves" me and I "love" him was just a lie. Living forever praising such a beast would be hell, not heaven. I came to the realization that the "good news" was really "bad news" and that the claims of Christianity are largely non-sensical. This took many years of patient deconstructing by professors and kind non believers.

Now to the word of thanks and encouragement. I know many of you get frustrated by believers who can't seem to see what you see and you might wonder why you should bother even discussing religion with someone who seems arrogant, blind, and intolerant of your views.

I am here to say that it was the patience of many kind non believers like many of you on this very site that helped me to escape. It is extremely difficult to escape such heavy, fearful brainwashing from birth. The arrogance of many believers masks deeply held fear and insecurity. Changing your worldview is a difficult and painful experience. I believe Bill Maher when he says religion warps thinking. It is very true. Blind obedient faith is valued. Thinking for one's self is seen almost as evil if it differs from the party line. Friends you thought would be there for life suddenly cannot handle the new questions and decide that satan has taken you over. So they leave without a word. It really is a nasty experience. I realized that in the Christian world view, free will is talked about and valued but no one really has it. What good is free will if you are punished for all eternity for going against what "god wants." If I had free will, why then was I always praying to know what god's will was? And why was it so hard to hear from god? So god gave me a brain that knows how to evaluate information but really wants me to be a robot for Jesus? Why was believing the right things more important that being the right person?

Many of you that take your time to patiently dialogue with believers are having an impact. You might not see it immediately or ever. But be encouraged. I know it is easy to write people off as blind, arrogant idiots. But behind all that ego is a very scared person who has had his or her brain screwed over by religion and wants to be free. If you respond kindly to their harshness, your words have so much more impact.

I know what it is like to be deeply into darkness that everyone around you calls "light." I was as deeply into fundasmentalism as one could get- from birth. And yet now I am very thankful to be free. And I just wanted to express my gratitude on this forum.

I see my former friends suffering greatly. I know the way out of the woods but they are not yet ready to follow me out. Hopefully one day.

Peace,

[gambling_cruiser]

Welcome to the forum ORUgrad!
I'm glad you are feeling better now.
We are all humans with limited patience, limited frustration tolerance.
Some posters will reveal our limitations and get ridiculed, mocked and so on.
But if we "meet" someone who is willing to discuss instead of preaching, then sometimes something beautiful and awsome might occur. While we may disagree about things, something like friendship and understanding is growing.
More often posters of the kind anyone knows, but will not named now, are the object of our frustration that is rising out of their failing to think critically.

[Jontg]

...

*awkward man-hug* Welcome home, dude.

[Third Eye Open]

congrats, and welcome to the forum!

[Evolved Wookie]

I'm sure I speak for many when I say that I'm delighted you chose the red pill. Welcome to the party - the view's lovely :)

[Hux]

Speaking as a guy who knows several ex fundies, I can imagine the joy you must be feeling at your enlightenment. One testimony from yourself is worth more than all the berating we gove those who refuse to think critically.

We are not in the business of converting people but it is really nice when someone comes to reason by their own lights.

May I ask, did you have any real views on Hell? Did it frighten you? I ask because my exfundie mates tell me Hell was once an issue that scared them to death. When they let that one go, it became a lot easier.

Welcome. And we can only hope that certain contributors here might take note of your experience and perhaps learn something about themselves.

[Vic Vega]

Great post. I can't wait to see what you write in some of the threads in the Religion forum. I hope you're active there.

Welcome.


I'm not sure I agree with the bolded part, however:

But behind all that ego is a very scared person who has had his or her brain screwed over by religion and wants to be free.

If some of these people want to be free, they have a funny way of showing it. I think YOU wanted to be free, but from what I've seen, many probably do not.

[Darth Rotor]

Luke 1:10:Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth
So it is on JREF forums, the rejoicing when a Christian discards his faith.

Funny parallel, that. ;)

[Cynic]

If some of these people want to be free, they have a funny way of showing it. I think YOU wanted to be free, but from what I've seen, many probably do not.

I'm sure it's been put more eloquently, but to want to be free, one must first understand that they are prisoners.

Welcome aboard, ORUgrad. While this isn't an atheist forum per se, it does seem to function as one more often than not. I think you'll find that the sorts of people who gravitate toward sites such as this tend to share a common, if far less extreme, background as yours. Well, the Americans here anyway. Whenever I start thinking that all the discussion in the world with believers will never have any impact, I like to remind myself that for a large percentage of atheists, our views can be attributed to the odd thought someone planted into our heads that we just couldn't shake. I hope you're prepared for the idea that however permanent your newfound outlook feels to you, it's going to keep on evolving for the rest of your life.

[sackett]

So it is on JREF forums, the rejoicing when a Christian discards his faith.

Funny parallel, that. ;)

How close a parallel, though? After all, we have no reason to believe in heaven or angels, or in sin and repentance. The biblical passage is at best a figure of speech that tries to express the writer's state of mind; a deluded writer, as far gone in religionism as ORUgrad once was, but not, as far as we know, as capable of rescuing himself.

But there really is a JREF forum, and some of us really are glad if not exactly rejoiced that a literate and thinking person has freed himself from superstition.

ORUgrad now walks in the light of day -- and in the dark of night, using his own wits to get through life. That makes me glad, and I'll shake his hand and say Well done! while recognizing that his path is not necessarily an easier one now.

Darth, old rotor, I think you're still down there among the believers. Right? I wonder when you'll haul yourself up and earn a Well done!

[Norm Breyfogle]

ORUgrad, I salute you. I also went through a nearly identical transformation,many years ago. I wrote about it in my "This I Believe" essay:

My family moved around a lot when I was a child, and I think I latched onto Christianity for a sense of stability when the uncertainties increased in my teens. But, I’d always been seeking; Christianity was just one very big part of it for about four years.

By the time I reached age eighteen, the accumulation of my "age of reason" philosophical studies had opened my mind to the point where I had a kind of crisis and decided to let go of my childhood visions of God. I remember the exact day it happened. I was praying for the old religious passion to return to me but it wouldn't; my selfish and childish psychological motives were too obvious. So, I said goodbye to the literalistic God, asking with honest intention that he prove himself to me reasonably if he existed, and, in some deep corner of my being, it seemed he smiled lovingly and even approvingly at me as he faded away. I felt I had his blessing.

In college I continued my western philosophical studies but became more interested in eastern mysticism, too, at first through Alan Watts' writings but then through many others' as well. I also read Carlos Castaneda's books about Mexican Indian sorcery, and I started experimenting with psychedelics.

One year later, I had another peak experience, without drugs. I'd just finished reading "The Tao of Physics," and I was visualizing the scale of reality down past the submicroscopic and into the quantum level when it hit me very viscerally: it was all me, it was all my own consciousness or just consciousness in general. Of course, I'd been reading about the unity of Being for years at that point and I'd already accepted it rationally as a concept, but in this experience it seemed to become a penultimately real perception for me. I remember walking around for days afterward as if I was on a cloud, and everything seemed to be glowing from within but with a non-physical light. It was so gentle and sweet, not a self-glorification at all but more like the exact opposite, as if I'd been freed of the need to impress myself or others with anything at all.

That was when I was twenty. Everything since then has pretty much been "chop wood, carry water," even the occasional peak experiences and dark nights of the soul.

The way is Love (reason and virtue being included as a matter of course). When Jesus was asked to sum up all scripture, all of the word of God, all of "the law," he said, "Love God with all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself."

The apostle Paul said that miracles, prophesy, following the law, even faith and belief ... all of it is utterly worthless unless one has Love.

It's really that simple. The core of all religions and all philosophies can be said to agree on this.

[Epok]

Welcome aboard, dude.

[Norm Breyfogle]

Now, don't anyone get me wrong; I consider all "spiritual" statements (like the ones in my above essay) to be metaphors, not literalistic truths. Though I'm entirely non-religious, I can find value now in religion only by viewing it as poetic metaphor ... basically meaningful (and very often meaningless) fiction.

[Safe-Keeper]

I recommend Julia Sweeney's Letting go of God, available on YouTube in its entirety.

Also held in high regard is the short Flash animation Instruction Manual for Life, which can be viewed in the window below:
kAIpRRZvnJg

[ORUgrad]

gambling_cruiser "We are all humans with limited patience, limited frustration tolerance."

I do agree and understand. When I was a fundie, I was quite arrogant, prideful, and really an @$$. I don't ever want to be that way again. I do, however, have a friend who is quite "in your face" in his faith. For him, I don't soften the message. I don't ridicule him personally but I will "let er rip" with things like "So the god who commanded the Israelites to torture and murder their own children should they become rebellious- not to mention commiting infanticide and child rape of other nations- is the god you worship on Sunday morning?" Or, "So really your world view is the same as a Muslim terrorist, you simply call your gods by different names." I'm not doing it to "score points" or be "right." I care about him and he needs a loving slap or two in the face. For others, I will take a more softball approach if they really have not been challenged with why they believe what they believe. Once I pressed too hard with a girl who was deeply into "The Secret" and the Law of Attraction. She wasn't arrogant about it and I should have taken a lighter approach instead of poking hole after hole into her world view. She began to cry and I felt like a real jerk. It took me years of painful realizations before I made the change of worldview. I just know how damaging a fundamentalist Christian worldview can be and how much of life can be wasted trying to follow someone elses idea of what I should be doing with my life.


Thanks for the well wishes from everyone. You ARE making a real difference. Think of all the people who read your posts who never post themselves. This is my first thread and I have been reading here for over five years!

Hux "May I ask, did you have any real views on Hell? Did it frighten you? I ask because my exfundie mates tell me Hell was once an issue that scared them to death. When they let that one go, it became a lot easier."

Yes. Hell was a real place of burning flame forever- so I was taught. The "hell stick" was waved around if you questioned too hard. There were so so many reasons why I left this "faith". The whole thing is just not worthy of an omnibenevolent God. Jesus was obviously the plan B. The god of the OT just acted like a raving lunatic. I am supposed to want to praise this thing forever? I like a lot of the teachings of Jesus but the control, manipulation, and mythology that has bloomed around them is so destructive.

Behind the spiritual sounding language are these core teachings.

1. You cannot trust yourself. You need someone else to tell you what to do, say and believe.

2. Your mind is your enemy. It is the realm of the evil one. And he will deceive you if you let him.

3. You should only do god's will. Your will is opposed to god's will.

4. You are cursed and deserve death because of Adam and the bad apple.

5. God's anger is so great with you that he required the murder of his son in order for him to forgive you.

6. This gift of Christ actually only works if you "accept it" and believe he was god's son. If you are not sure or don't know or think it might not be true, then God will still be raging angry at you and you wont be "saved" from his wrath.

This of course produces a crapload of fear.

Vic Vega wrote: "I'm not sure I agree with the bolded part, however:

Originally Posted by ORUgrad
But behind all that ego is a very scared person who has had his or her brain screwed over by religion and wants to be free.

"If some of these people want to be free, they have a funny way of showing it. I think YOU wanted to be free, but from what I've seen, many probably do not. "

What I meant is that I feel deep down, everyone wants to be free. Free from fear, death, God's wrath, whatever. In the midst of my arrogant fundamentalism, the real "me" was something different. Something not expressed. The religion was warping and destructive and my statements of faith were given to me by others. I believed them but the real "me" felt the anxienty and knew something was very wrong. I put on a good "game face". But the real me wanted answers. I really do believe all people know deep down that something is very wrong- whether they are conscious of it are not. I was as far gone as one could go. I have even worked the platform for Benny Hinn! And I got free. So I try not to identify what people say with who they are. I really want people to get free!

If any of you want to email me on here or privately, I would be happy to talk with you. I know intimately how many Christians think and would be happy to shed insights. Critical thinking is not taught in the Christian world I was in. It has to be learned painfully. We were literally told to "turn off your mind."


Peace

[Fnord]

Yes ... welcome to the fold ...

[Cynic]

Yes ... welcome to the fold ...

Yeah, welcome to the... ... hey! :)

[Dancing David]

Welcome, there are times I doubt my chosen path and then I regain balance. Whatever path you take , be joyful.

[Hux]

Orugrad, thank you for the reply; yes it seemed a common theme amongst those who de- convert. It just struck me then as before that Christians are at the heart of it, in fear.

It is as if they have no mechanism for dealing with reality, as if Christianity is a palliative against the red tooth and claw of nature. They took a basic homespun philosophy and turned it into a celebration of the unsupported supernatural. Like all cults they shun any other explanation of the real world for their own fantasies. it's to your credit - and to anyone who tears themselves away from the mental strangulation of christianity - and religion of any sort.

[grayman]

Welcome to the forum Orugrad.

Your post reminded me of something I saw a few hours while flipping through the channels on TV (Not much else to do when the flu hits).

I found Peter Popoff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Popoff) doing his best to give you his Miracle Spring Water (http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/03/22/miracle-spring-water/). Of course, if you can find it in your heart to send a donation to support his ministry, it would be appreciated.

Some people will never learn.

[Hux]

I can top that. There is a channel here with Icelandic (English speaking) Christians. It is a God channel. They are selling 'prayer keepers'. £500 will get you a prayer keeper for half an hour, £750 gets you one for a full hour. Imagine being able to synchronise your oprayers with your valuable time.

They are frigging egg timers. Do these people have no shame?

[Olowkow]

Orugrad, thank you for the reply; yes it seemed a common theme amongst those who de- convert. It just struck me then as before that Christians are at the heart of it, in fear.

It is as if they have no mechanism for dealing with reality, as if Christianity is a palliative against the red tooth and claw of nature. They took a basic homespun philosophy and turned it into a celebration of the unsupported supernatural. Like all cults they shun any other explanation of the real world for their own fantasies. it's to your credit - and to anyone who tears themselves away from the mental strangulation of christianity - and religion of any sort.

I could not have said it any better. I have been saying it is a basic "fear" that motivates the ultraconservative religious for a long time.

I am willing to believe, I guess, that ORUgrad is not a Trojan Horse, especially as compelling and articulate as he is. I found this, particularly moving:
ORUgrad: Critical thinking is not taught in the Christian world I was in. It has to be learned painfully. We were literally told to "turn off your mind."I couldn't live like that.

ETA: and welcome to ORUgrad. You have your work cut out for you, as you owe a lot to your peers to help them out of this morass that you have begun to escape. What you say here is actually incidental and unimportant as you are preaching to the choir, and I think you have a long way to go on your journey to personal freedom. Good luck.

[ORUgrad]

I know there are Christians who were raised differently than me and I don't mean to put all of them into the same box I was raised in. I think someone can follow the teachings of Jesus and use that as a framework for how to live and be perfectly happy. The problem I see is when someone believes that the OT god is really God! It is impossible to reconcile the attrocities commanded by him with the example of love shown by Jesus.

What strikes me is that Jesus seemed to be concerned with how people acted to themselves and to others. He was much less concerned with what people believed about him personally. Yet, you would think a Christian Creed would be full of the benevolent sayings of Jesus. Instead, they are filled with doctrinal decrees about the nature of God and Jesus. Things that we could not possibly know but are required to believe. I pointed this out to an Orthodox friend of mine and said the Trinity is a doctrine that is impossible to conceptualize without falling into a heresy. And that the Creed itself is hopelessly confusing. They teach that Jesus has always existed with God, yet the Creed says Jesus was "begotten"- which means "to cause to exist."

I think the single biggest mind warping belief (there are more) is that the god of the Old Testament is the God of the Universe. This is a life ruining belief. You either must ignore it and focus on Jesus, or embrace it and watch yourself turn into a bitter and angry zealot.

I don't consider myself an atheist at this point in my life. That is not to say I never will. I certainly do not believe the OT god is god and I don't believe in a Christian concept of god. I am becoming at peace with not knowing everything. And I endeavor not to believe things for which there is no evidence for. Coming from a background like mine, I still find little things I need to let go of. But it is fine because there is no angry lunatic waiting to punish me for screwing up. I would hope that my life would continue to be a place where little pieces of darkness are revealed for what they are so that those things can be rejected as well. And my heart is to shine the light for a few others who are following where I have been. It isn't a nice place to be.

It is so nice to do things because I want to do them and not because I will be punished if I don't. It is so nice to trust myself instead of agonizing over god's mysterious will. It truly is freedom. And if there is a heaven, and if there are angels, I think they ARE rejoicing that I have found the true message of Jesus- that LOVE is god.


peace

[D'rok]

I know there are Christians who were raised differently than me and I don't mean to put all of them into the same box I was raised in. I think someone can follow the teachings of Jesus and use that as a framework for how to live and be perfectly happy. The problem I see is when someone believes that the OT god is really God! It is impossible to reconcile the attrocities commanded by him with the example of love shown by Jesus.

What strikes me is that Jesus seemed to be concerned with how people acted to themselves and to others. He was much less concerned with what people believed about him personally. Yet, you would think a Christian Creed would be full of the benevolent sayings of Jesus. Instead, they are filled with doctrinal decrees about the nature of God and Jesus. Things that we could not possibly know but are required to believe. I pointed this out to an Orthodox friend of mine and said the Trinity is a doctrine that is impossible to conceptualize without falling into a heresy. And that the Creed itself is hopelessly confusing. They teach that Jesus has always existed with God, yet the Creed says Jesus was "begotten"- which means "to cause to exist."

I think the single biggest mind warping belief (there are more) is that the god of the Old Testament is the God of the Universe. This is a life ruining belief. You either must ignore it and focus on Jesus, or embrace it and watch yourself turn into a bitter and angry zealot.

I don't consider myself an atheist at this point in my life. That is not to say I never will. I certainly do not believe the OT god is god and I don't believe in a Christian concept of god. I am becoming at peace with not knowing everything. And I endeavor not to believe things for which there is no evidence for. Coming from a background like mine, I still find little things I need to let go of. But it is fine because there is no angry lunatic waiting to punish me for screwing up. I would hope that my life would continue to be a place where little pieces of darkness are revealed for what they are so that those things can be rejected as well. And my heart is to shine the light for a few others who are following where I have been. It isn't a nice place to be.

It is so nice to do things because I want to do them and not because I will be punished if I don't. It is so nice to trust myself instead of agonizing over god's mysterious will. It truly is freedom. And if there is a heaven, and if there are angels, I think they ARE rejoicing that I have found the true message of Jesus- that LOVE is god.


peace

This is a great post.

[Dancing David]

ORUgrad, while I have turned away from the faith of my childhood and now label myself as a pagan atheist, I still find much wisdom in some of the teachings of jesus, strange but true.

I just happen to find the same message many places now, even in the mundane life of a secular person.

[ORUgrad]

I could not have said it any better. I have been saying it is a basic "fear" that motivates the ultraconservative religious for a long time.

I am willing to believe, I guess, that ORUgrad is not a Trojan Horse, especially as compelling and articulate as he is. I found this, particularly moving:
I couldn't live like that.

ETA: and welcome to ORUgrad. You have your work cut out for you, as you owe a lot to your peers to help them out of this morass that you have escaped. What you say here is actually incidental and unimportant as you are preaching to the choir.

Yes! It is fear. They call it "love". But it is FEAR. Look at all the anger you will often get when their beliefs are challenged. Yes, I could not live like that anymore either. It is natural to think critically. It takes a LOT of effort to suppress the desire and ability to do it. It is a severe handicap and requires a LOT of mental abuse to keep someone from thinking for themselves. Even though the Bible says to love god with all your MIND- I suppose that means never questioning anything. So when you get frustrated with people on here who can't or wont think critically, remember it is like becoming angry that the one legged man can't run. They have to "grow" another leg first.

Actually the primary reason for my post here was in gratitude for all of you that take your time to answer those that seem beyond help and to say you ARE making a difference! That is important as you could be doing a lot more "productive" things with your time. Yes I am involved in other forums and am trying to be a real light in a lot of darkness. I have a big chin and try my best to remember where I came from so I treat hostility with grace. The ironic thing is that the Christians will RIP into each other over their particular interpretation of a Bible passage. They are as inflamatory with each other as they are here. My quest so far has been to get them to see that Jesus came to show people how to live peacefully with themselves and each other and NOT what they must believe about him personally. And that he taught not to judge at all yet GROW IN GRACE. I will often just ask questions about whatever topic they are discussing. Christianity is so full of holes and contradictions if you can just get people to try and articulate them for themselves, sometimes they will start to THINK! ;)


I can relate to the Lucian character from the movie "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans." Here you are getting the hell beat out of you every day and you think your captors are great because they gave you "life". Then you wake up and realize you are a slave in chains. And "life" has no meaning as long as someone ELSE is defining what that meaning is for you.

But I would much rather hang out with Victor than Yahweh!

peace

[Ethnikos]

. . .and received an M.Div from Oral Roberts University. I have seen many of the "faith" ministries up close and personal. Wow.
On the wikipedia page for this school, there is a list of notable graduates. Among those:
Ron Luce is the president and founder of Teen Mania Ministries. He and his wife Katie founded Teen Mania in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1986. Luce has publicly condemned "purveyors of popular culture" as "the enemy," who according to Luce are "terrorists, virtue terrorists, that are destroying our kids... they're raping virgin teenage America on the sidewalk, and everybody's walking by and acting like everything's OK. And it's just not OK."Welcome out of Babylon.
I would be afraid to go to a school like that.
Kind of scarry stuff.
More from Ron Luce: adopted a militaristic tone, with frequent use of words such as "battle," "enemy," "soldier," "foes" and "warfare," accompanied by the display of military imagery and, at one such event, the use of simulated weapons.

[ORUgrad]

Hux and Grayman, I could tell you stories until your eyes popped out about the craziness I have witnessed in being forced to attend ORU chapel and every "revival" meeting on campus. The ironic thing is that the Seminary faculty think the Roberts administration (which was recently thrown out) are completely off base. For most of my friends, Seminary was a traumatizing experience. One of my closest friends entered ministry but is fraught with deep doubts and insecurity. Another friend recognized the harshness and shocking nature of the OT, yet is resigned that that is the way it is and became a hard, judgemental, humorless zealot who refused to speak to me for deconverting. He used to be one of the funniest guys I knew. We were in each other's weddings. Another friend sees the craziness of the OT but can't deal with it and is greatly depressed. I wish we could have all just said "Ok guys, so instead of believing that God is a genocidal lunatic, how about we just believe that Jesus came to show us that love is really God, and that the OT is JEwish mythology and just call it a day?" Would have saved us all a great deal of pain.

[Cynic]

Taken by by itself, the NT isn't all sweetness and light either, besides being rather inconsistent.

[Ethnikos]

Behind the spiritual sounding language are these core teachings.

Who needs Satan, with this sort of belief?
I think the key word for this is: Pentecostal.
I'm no expert on it but from some meetings I have gone to with friends, and from having conversations with Pentecostal ministers, they seem to blame everything on the devil, and have been accused of personally being a devil, daring to even ask them where they get their beliefs from.

[ORUgrad]

Ethnikos, thankfully I did not go to undergrad there. The Seminary professors did a good job of innoculating us to the mind rape that goes on in chapel and other places. I really feel for the undergrads there. They were taught a world view for four years in a tiny bubble that will absolutely collapse in the real world. That could be a good thing. Unfortunately, people don't make the jump to "God is really not this way" and then be happy for the revelation. They think God is really this way and there must be something wrong with me for my messed up life. God must not love me.

I will tell you a funny story that happened while I was there. A friend of mine was engaged to a wonderful girl in another state where he was from. She came down to visit him at school. One of the students saw him talking to her and when she was gone he came up to my friend and said, "Brother, I know you think that girl is going to be your wife. But God spoke to me and told me that he has someone else planned for you."

My friend looked at him without reacting at all, put a hand on the guy's shoulder and said, "Thank you so much for telling me that Brother! Would you mind telling God, the next time you talk to him, to MIND HIS OWN DAMN BUSINESS?"

Priceless!

[ORUgrad]

Cynic, yes you are right. I have noticed that if the Bible says something someone agrees with, it is quoted context free. And if it says something for which he or she disagrees, there will be a big discussion about "context." If the Bible were clear, there would not be thousands of denominations.

Ethnikos, yes. ORU is a charismatic/Pentecostal school. I actually saw Satan outside our chapel one day crying his little demon eyes out. I was so curious I went up to him and said "Wow! Satan! What are YOU crying about??" He said, "Those Christians blame me for EVERYTHING!" ;) haha.

[Ethnikos]

. . .Yet, you would think a Christian Creed would be full of the benevolent sayings of Jesus. Instead, they are filled with doctrinal decrees about the nature of God and Jesus. Things that we could not possibly know but are required to believe.The Athanasian Creed?
That's a tool of enforcement, not a tool for learning.
They put in enough so that any type of actual thinking will put you in violation, and subject to being burned.

[Ethnikos]

Ethnikos, thankfully I did not go to undergrad there. I went one year to a Christian boarding academy when I was 16 and was struck by how none of the faculty seemed religious at all. The students were supposed to be, though. I found it rather disturbing and did not volunteer to go again.
Lucky for you, that you were exposed to this sort of, encouragement to insanity, only as long as you were.

[Ethnikos]

I think someone can follow the teachings of Jesus and use that as a framework for how to live and be perfectly happy. And you decided to post on this forum. . . .why?
You might not find it too much fun, with that kind of attitude.
Well, thanks for stopping by.

[UnrepentantSinner]

Welcome ORUgrad. It took me a few minutes to interpret your user ID and I got a real kick out of it. :)

{snip}Darth, old rotor, I think you're still down there among the believers. Right? I wonder when you'll haul yourself up and earn a Well done!

American Atheists is that a way ----> This is a skeptics forum, not an atheists forum and it's bad form to denigrate your fellow skeptic like that.

[Ethnikos]

I I think the single biggest mind warping belief (there are more) is that the god of the Old Testament is the God of the Universe. This is a life ruining belief. You either must ignore it and focus on Jesus, or embrace it and watch yourself turn into a bitter and angry zealot.
Don't think that there is some way to make a compromise.
It doesn't matter how many gods you stack up, one on top of the other, all the way to the sky. Whoever ends up on top is still responsible for the lowest god's actions. You can not say there is a better god somewhere that we just don't know about.

[quixotecoyote]

Don't think that there is some way to make a compromise.
It doesn't matter how many gods you stack up, one on top of the other, all the way to the sky. Whoever ends up on top is still responsible for the lowest god's actions. You can not say there is a better god somewhere that we just don't know about.

Why not?

Once you open the door to any god, you can pretty much construct any mythology you want.

[ORUgrad]

Ethnikos, I was thinking of the Nicene Creed. And yes I do think that people can reject virgin births, raising from the dead, etc. but still follow the benevolent teachings of Jesus and strive to be a good person. The liberal Unitarians I know do this and are easy to talk to and kind without the "conversion" agenda. You might prefer them to be atheist. I just prefer them to be sane. Calling the OT god loving is clearly insane. When I read an OT passage to a Christian that talks about stoning a rebellious child until he dies and ask if that sounds like quality parental advice from an all knowing, loving creator, I either get blank stares or an angry response about "context". No matter what though, this will more often than not jump start the thinking process. It is a start anyway. So I suppose I said all that to say that if I can succeed only in getting some Christians to see that the OT god CANNOT BE GOD, I'm fine with them believing whatever they want to believe about the teachings of Jesus- as shedding this one belief will have a tremendous liberalizing effect- but more importantly- should bring some relief deep down.


peace

[Cynic]

I'm not sure there is any way to cherry pick truth. Wide swaths of Corrinthians should be ignored outright if you value women as your equals, for instances, and those books are among the most tame. After so many incidents of "well, I guess I'll ignore that part of the Jesus story...", I think you'll find that it's far more satisfying and honest to just come up with it on your own.

But this is what I meant when I said that you can look forward to your ideas continuing to evolve for the rest of your life. A stagnant mind is an inactive mind. I got out far, far earlier than you. In truth, I was never really "in", in that I never really believed in any gods. I was made to attend church and Sunday school (Presbyterian) until after I was confirmed (age 12). During most of that time that I remember, I tried really, really hard to believe, thinking there was something wrong with me that I didn't.

It got kind of comical at times. Years later reading The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series there's this whole thing where Arthor Dent learns the secret to flying, which is to throw yourself to the ground and manage to get distracted at the last moment before impact. And in many senses, that's exactly the approach I tried to take. I remember several early Christmas mornings in my room with some sort of goofy religious candle (angels, etc) promising to "believe harder" this year, actively pretending to believe and hoping I could keep it up, like trying to maintain some "in the zone" feeling you get when you're doing well at Tetris or something and you're afraid to think for fear or falling out of it.

Anyway, I eventually gave up on that. The more I thought about it, the more I became obsessed with the idea of honestly and integrity. Over the years my thinking went from wishing I could believe, to thinking it's a nice idea but it's not true, to thinking it's a nice idea, but not very well thought out, to thinking it isn't such a nice idea at all, to, eventually, thinking it's pretty much a worst case scenario. A lot of people might liken it all to recovering from Stockholm Syndrome, and I'm hard-pressed to disagree with the analogy.

Anyway, you might not believe it now, but if you really keep on the path of skepticism, I expect you'll experience this for yourself. While merely retaining those bits of the bible you agree with isn't necessarily "cherry picking truth" in and of itself, you have to admit by now that part of the problem with the system that you're recovering from is that you've been conditioned to just accept things as good ideas. It's not as simple as cutting out the obviously bad things and cutting out the rationalizing. Everything has to be evaluated because what might seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to you now might not later on after a few choice notions break the spell of even those and make you see it in a different light.

Better, IMO, to chuck it all and start with what you know.

[ORUgrad]

Don't think that there is some way to make a compromise.
It doesn't matter how many gods you stack up, one on top of the other, all the way to the sky. Whoever ends up on top is still responsible for the lowest god's actions. You can not say there is a better god somewhere that we just don't know about.

You have to understand that I am interested in helping people who are where I was. And to do that, you cannot get them from Yahweh is God to God does not exist in one leap. It just wont happen. We are taught NOT to think. and the mere suggestion that god does not exist will push the "tilt" button and "game over." You have to start where they are. And where they are is believing that a lunatic is the creator. So let them keep their assumption that there IS a creator and ask questions about this OT God and how they understand this God. If you can get a zealot (of which I was one) to no longer believe the OT god is the creator, that is a HUGE SUCCESS. Maybe they then believe that Jesus is God in human form. At that point, it doesn't matter because that person will no longer be a zealot, will get a huge dose of humility, and will begin to question a lot more things and START THE THINKING PROCESS. Once people start thinking, they will often deconvert themselves. Not all at once. And with lots of pain.

All I am suggesting is that we open the door for people instead of trying to push them off a cliff. You might prefer them to believe Jesus never existed and there is no creator, but the more life changing belief that will bring them peace and no doubt will potentially radically change their character for the better is that they no longer have to worship a lunatic! They can believe JEsus existed or didn't exist. I don't care. However, worshiping a lunatic and calling it "good" has severe psychological consequences I wish to help people overcome.


peace

[Cynic]

Ethnikos, I was thinking of the Nicene Creed. And yes I do think that people can reject virgin births, raising from the dead, etc. but still follow the benevolent teachings of Jesus and strive to be a good person. The liberal Unitarians I know do this and are easy to talk to and kind without the "conversion" agenda. You might prefer them to be atheist. I just prefer them to be sane. Calling the OT god loving is clearly insane. When I read an OT passage to a Christian that talks about stoning a rebellious child until he dies and ask if that sounds like quality parental advice from an all knowing, loving creator, I either get blank stares or an angry response about "context". No matter what though, this will more often than not jump start the thinking process. It is a start anyway. So I suppose I said all that to say that if I can succeed only in getting some Christians to see that the OT god CANNOT BE GOD, I'm fine with them believing whatever they want to believe about the teachings of Jesus- as shedding this one belief will have a tremendous liberalizing effect- but more importantly- should bring some relief deep down.

On the other hand, this route could get you branded as incredibly anti-semetic. ;)

[Ethnikos]

Ethnikos, I was thinking of the Nicene Creed. The Athanasian Creed was produced by the Council of Nicea. And yes I do think that people can reject virgin births, raising from the dead, etc. but still follow the benevolent teachings of Jesus and strive to be a good person. The liberal Unitarians I know do this and are easy to talk to and kind without the "conversion" agenda. You might prefer them to be atheist.I'm not an atheist, nor do I want people to be atheists. I believe in God but am skeptical of religion. I think most religion is counterproductive to actual salvation.
I just prefer them to be sane. Calling the OT god loving is clearly insane. Having a degree in divinity, I would expect you to know something about the other gods in the region of Canaan and points outward. YHWH is pretty toned down on the violence compared to let's say, Baal. There is one I was reading the song to, who cuts off the hands and strings them around her waist and takes the heads and hangs them from her neck, and wades, knee deep through the blood.
When I read an OT passage to a Christian that talks about stoning a rebellious child until he dies and ask if that sounds like quality parental advice from an all knowing, loving creator, I either get blank stares or an angry response about "context". How about people in the vicinity of Canaan who put their children "through the fire" which sounds like a sacrifice to me. At least YHWH waits for the kid to give a reason, first.
No matter what though, this will more often than not jump start the thinking process. It is a start anyway. So I suppose I said all that to say that if I can succeed only in getting some Christians to see that the OT god CANNOT BE GOD, How good is your hypothetical god who allows someone to impersonate him and cause havoc in his name?
I'm fine with them believing whatever they want to believe about the teachings of Jesus- as shedding this one belief will have a tremendous liberalizing effect- but more importantly- should bring some relief deep down. I'm sorry for your former anguish and good luck with reconstructing some sort of sane belief system.

[ORUgrad]

Cynic, great post! Really! This paragraph hit me the most...

"The more I thought about it, the more I became obsessed with the idea of honestly and integrity. Over the years my thinking went from wishing I could believe, to thinking it's a nice idea but it's not true, to thinking it's a nice idea, but not very well thought out, to thinking it isn't such a nice idea at all, to, eventually, thinking it's pretty much a worst case scenario. A lot of people might liken it all to recovering from Stockholm Syndrome, and I'm hard-pressed to disagree with the analogy.

This is exactly the point I made to my Orthodox friend. Fundamentalists and some other Christian groups suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. They worship a god who beats the hell out of them for no real reason and this is the "cross" we must bear. And we love our attacker because after he is finished beating the hell out of us in this life, we get to spend eternity thanking him for this "gift." I certainly am not in a place where I can claim I have "arrived" and as I mentioned before, there will be areas of darkness that I will discover still in me. The difference is that now I have my mind back and I can trust myself. I don;t claim to have it all together. For someone in as deep as I was, it took me ten good years of reading, unlearning, and THINKING to get over all the fear that goes with the deconverting process. It is HELL. So I will be the first to admit I am still in "process" but do endeavor to use my brain to better my life. I would add to it a big dose of humility and grace for myself and for those like me still trapped.

[Ethnikos]

All I am suggesting is that we open the door for people instead of trying to push them off a cliff. I appreciate your concern for others.
Thinking may be something that some people have a natural aversion to and may not have anything to do with what they were taught as children.

[ORUgrad]

The Athanasian Creed was produced by the Council of Nicea.

No. The Nicene Creed was produced at the first Council of Nicea. The Athanasian Creed came much later and is completely different. I tried to link to a relevant article describing both but the editor will not allow me. Google both Creeds to see the differences.

YHWH is pretty toned down on the violence compared to let's say, Baal. There is one I was reading the song to, who cuts off the hands and strings them around her waist and takes the heads and hangs them from her neck, and wades, knee deep through the blood.

How about this?? Hosea 13:16:
16Samaria shall bear her guilt and become desolate, for she rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women shall be ripped up.

How about we agree that both YHWH and Baal were lunatics not worthy of worship?


How about people in the vicinity of Canaan who put their children "through the fire" which sounds like a sacrifice to me. At least YHWH waits for the kid to give a reason, first.


Really, dead is dead. Whether by stoning or burning. No YHWH does not wait for the kid to give a reason. The kid is asked nothing at all.

Deuteronomy 21:18"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' 21(N) Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.(O) So you shall purge the evil from your midst,(P) and all Israel shall hear, and fear.


I'm sorry for your former anguish and good luck with reconstructing some sort of sane belief system.

Thanks for your encouragement.

[Ethnikos]

Thanks for your encouragement.

Deuteronomy 21:18"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' 21(N) Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.(O) So you shall purge the evil from your midst,(P) and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Sounds like someone who should have moved out a long time ago and got a job. This can't be talking about an infant. At this point, the dude should run like hell and he would be fine.
No. The Nicene Creed was produced at the first Council of Nicea. The Athanasian Creed came much later and is completely different. I tried to link to a relevant article describing both but the editor will not allow me. Google both Creeds to see the differences.Athenasius wrote the Nicene Creed. It seems a matter of nomenclature. Later was added condemnations against non-believers, so to distinguish between the two versions, some people use the convention of using two different names, though the actual creeds are identical.
How about this?? Hosea 13:16:
16Samaria shall bear her guilt and become desolate, for she rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women shall be ripped up.That's like Tim Callahan's example of the prophecy of Egypt being completely destroyed, never actually happened. The top of the ruling class got it though, but mostly just loosing their nice positions in government.

[Dragoonster]

And you decided to post on this forum. . . .why?
You might not find it too much fun, with that kind of attitude.
Well, thanks for stopping by.

Kind of rude.

I'm a lifelong atheist and don't care if Jesus was divine, existed, or was a fictional creation. The morals he espoused were pretty darn good imo, he and Gandhi, Buddha are about on part for me, and I respect them all.

And I don't think it's necessary to give up all gods in order to become a better or more tolerating person. I'd be thrilled if all Christians started actually practicing Jesus' teachings and ignored the OT altogether. More thrilled if they abandoned religion altogether, but it's not quite a binary situation. Even theists can be good people.

edit: I may be misunderstanding your objection here, sorry if that's the case

[Ethnikos]

Kind of rude.

I'm a lifelong atheist and don't care if Jesus was divine, existed, or was a fictional creation. The morals he espoused were pretty darn good imo, he and Gandhi, Buddha are about on part for me, and I respect them all.

And I don't think it's necessary to give up all gods in order to become a better or more tolerating person. I'd be thrilled if all Christians started actually practicing Jesus' teachings and ignored the OT altogether. More thrilled if they abandoned religion altogether, but it's not quite a binary situation. Even theists can be good people.
I did not mean it in a rude way, sorry if it came out that way. I was just kidding around. Oops, I guess I need to be serious.
I'm just saying there isn't like a large contingent of, yes NT, no OT, people here. That's all. I don't have anything against him at all. You can read in his post how screwed up the scene was that he came out of. I agree, it is screwed up. That's why I say Babylon. Religion has gotten to the point to where it is like Abraham leaving Ur of the Chaldees. There was no God in that city. There were lots of gods.

[Marduk]

I did not mean it in a rude way, sorry if it came out that way. I was just kidding around. Oops, I guess I need to be serious.
I'm just saying there isn't like a large contingent of, yes NT, no OT, people here. That's all. I don't have anything against him at all. You can read in his post how screwed up the scene was that he came out of. I agree, it is screwed up. That's why I say Babylon. Religion has gotten to the point to where it is like Abraham leaving Ur of the Chaldees. There was no God in that city. There were lots of gods.

What about Babylon ?

[Ethnikos]

What about Babylon ?

Don't get all offended. It is a figurative Babylon from Revelation.

[portlandatheist]

Why did I join JREF? Oh yeah, posts like this! Your post made my day. Thank you. Welcome to The JREF

[hamelekim]

Kind of rude.

I'm a lifelong atheist and don't care if Jesus was divine, existed, or was a fictional creation. The morals he espoused were pretty darn good imo, he and Gandhi, Buddha are about on part for me, and I respect them all.

And I don't think it's necessary to give up all gods in order to become a better or more tolerating person. I'd be thrilled if all Christians started actually practicing Jesus' teachings and ignored the OT altogether. More thrilled if they abandoned religion altogether, but it's not quite a binary situation. Even theists can be good people.

edit: I may be misunderstanding your objection here, sorry if that's the case
But Jesus supported the Law of the Old Testament. He came not to get rid of the law but to fulfill it. He lived his life perfectly within the law, with the spirit of the law.

The Old Testament God and the New Testament God are the same, they never change. If you fail to understand this, and why it is so, then you lack discernment and understanding. Or maybe you realize it and just reject it.

The Old Testament law is a complete condemnation of man, and how we can never measure up to God's standards, hence Jesus died on the cross. This runs counter to every single other religion in the world. That should make you stop and think, when you condemn all religions as wrong, why is it that all of them but one state that you can have salvation through works?

[hamelekim]

You have to understand that I am interested in helping people who are where I was. And to do that, you cannot get them from Yahweh is God to God does not exist in one leap. It just wont happen. We are taught NOT to think.

What did the Bereans do? Did they not think? Did they not question? We are told to test the spirits to see if they are right.

If a preacher says not to question, that is his failing, not Christianities. It's like the whole rapture question. We have become so wrapped up in denominations and rules and regulations that we consider it heresy to question any of it.

That doesn't mean that Christianity is wrong, or that people don't have the core message right, but certainly our teachings are not complete.

1 Corinthians 13:9

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

Acts 17:11

11Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness,(A) examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.



and the mere suggestion that god does not exist will push the "tilt" button and "game over." You have to start where they are. And where they are is believing that a lunatic is the creator. So let them keep their assumption that there IS a creator and ask questions about this OT God and how they understand this God. If you can get a zealot (of which I was one) to no longer believe the OT god is the creator, that is a HUGE SUCCESS.


Where in the OT is god a lunatic, and if so, compared to who's standards? Because God doesn't compare to our standards. How can the finite and imperfect judge the infinite and perfect?

It seems that you have a problem with God judging people, because that is what he does in the OT. He leaves people to do their own thing, because they rejected him, and then uses Israel as a beacon of light, and a rod of iron among the nations.

I see nothing wrong in this. The creator has a right to judge us, and do with us what he will.

The OT God and NT God are one and the same, this was always the case, and always will be.


Maybe they then believe that Jesus is God in human form. At that point, it doesn't matter because that person will no longer be a zealot, will get a huge dose of humility, and will begin to question a lot more things and START THE THINKING PROCESS. Once people start thinking, they will often deconvert themselves. Not all at once. And with lots of pain.


At that point you get the New Age people who believe that Jesus was one of the great teachers, and that they will come again, which they will, and deceive the nations with things that their ears want to hear.

People reject the truth because they don't want to believe it, not because it isn't true.


All I am suggesting is that we open the door for people instead of trying to push them off a cliff. You might prefer them to believe Jesus never existed and there is no creator, but the more life changing belief that will bring them peace and no doubt will potentially radically change their character for the better is that they no longer have to worship a lunatic! They can believe JEsus existed or didn't exist. I don't care. However, worshiping a lunatic and calling it "good" has severe psychological consequences I wish to help people overcome.

peace
Jesus did exist, unless you are a hardcore zealot against Christianity, he was a historical figure, not mythological. You can argue about the miracles all you want, but he did exist, and he did change the world.

I would think long and hard about giving up eternal life because of a lack of understanding and trust.

Sometimes it is better not to burn bright and die out, then to burn steady and endure.

[Hux]

Orugrad, see what you are missing?:rolleyes:

Welcome to sanity. Pretty soon your eyes will glaze over when you read the kind of crap as above.

[Dancing David]

Hamelekim
I would think long and hard about your superstitious clap trap, if god exists, they made me. the way I am, only a sick pervert would make something, then condemn it for being the way they made it.

Sometimes it is better to realize that you do not know the truth and stop pretending that you do.

Pascal's wager cuts both way, what if you are praying to the wrong god?

[Fiona]

Who needs Satan, with this sort of belief?
I think the key word for this is: Pentecostal.
I'm no expert on it but from some meetings I have gone to with friends, and from having conversations with Pentecostal ministers, they seem to blame everything on the devil, and have been accused of personally being a devil, daring to even ask them where they get their beliefs from.

The bogyman is Satan. The world is going to be judged by God, by His allowing Satan to have his way with the planet, as he sees fit.
So the new thing is really the old thing, evil, but with the technology to facilitate it, and on a world wide basis.
The world has gone on long enough in not recognizing the true God, so we will have as our god, who we seem to want, the god of wilful desire, Satan. That leaves us exposed to people motivated by a pathological desire for self-interest, which is destructive to the average person.

I just don't understand what you believe Ethnikos: I know you have posted extensively and I have read much of it: but can you see why I might be confused?

[Rodney]

As I am opposed to child rape, torture, and murder (among a great many other things the OT god commanded), I came to the realization that if this violent war god was really the creator, we were all screwed.
You should fit right in here.

[HansMustermann]

Sounds like someone who should have moved out a long time ago and got a job. This can't be talking about an infant. At this point, the dude should run like hell and he would be fine.

Now I'm used to a certain level of bullcrap in fundie rationalization, but... did you base yours on just postulating something that's not actually in there?

[ORUgrad]

Why did I join JREF? Oh yeah, posts like this! Your post made my day. Thank you. Welcome to The JREF

Thanks. That was my intent. To make those of you who wonder why the heck you waste your time answering people to know that your insights are valuable and do have an impact. I think I said in an earlier post that I had been a lurker here for five years. Upon further reflection, I think it has been much longer. Look at this one thread. 55+ responses but almost 700 readers! I'm sure nothing I write will be perfect. And I am sure there will be areas of blindness many of you will help me uncover (kindly preferably but I will take the light howeverI can get it too ;) ). I am ok with the fact that I don;t know everything and by no means have I "arrived."

With much appreciation...

[ORUgrad]

What did the Bereans do? Did they not think? Did they not question? We are told to test the spirits to see if they are right.

If a preacher says not to question, that is his failing, not Christianities. It's like the whole rapture question. We have become so wrapped up in denominations and rules and regulations that we consider it heresy to question any of it.

That doesn't mean that Christianity is wrong, or that people don't have the core message right, but certainly our teachings are not complete.

1 Corinthians 13:9

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

Acts 17:11

11Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness,(A) examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.




Where in the OT is god a lunatic, and if so, compared to who's standards? Because God doesn't compare to our standards. How can the finite and imperfect judge the infinite and perfect?

It seems that you have a problem with God judging people, because that is what he does in the OT. He leaves people to do their own thing, because they rejected him, and then uses Israel as a beacon of light, and a rod of iron among the nations.

I see nothing wrong in this. The creator has a right to judge us, and do with us what he will.

The OT God and NT God are one and the same, this was always the case, and always will be.



At that point you get the New Age people who believe that Jesus was one of the great teachers, and that they will come again, which they will, and deceive the nations with things that their ears want to hear.

People reject the truth because they don't want to believe it, not because it isn't true.


Jesus did exist, unless you are a hardcore zealot against Christianity, he was a historical figure, not mythological. You can argue about the miracles all you want, but he did exist, and he did change the world.

I would think long and hard about giving up eternal life because of a lack of understanding and trust.

Sometimes it is better not to burn bright and die out, then to burn steady and endure.

hamelekim, I appreciate and understand your concerns and will start another thread to deal with the issues you raise- as they are important ones. Thank you for posting this. It is exactly the type of post I am interested in addressing.

[ORUgrad]

One more thought... the hostility shown between Christians on some of the other forums I post on is truly amazing. In fact, after a heated exchange with one of my friends who went to ORU with me, I realized that here I was having difficulty even being understood by someone I call a friend, who was raised in a similar way to me, speaks the same language, has had similar experiences, is from the same culture, same race, and was raised in the same religion! And we wonder why we have such trouble with people who are born into a completely different culture, religion, language and race!

The problem is certain core beliefs that are destructive. If you worship a god that commands you to rape the children of your enemies, there will probably not be a lot of love and grace in your life. If I could just get people to see the incompatibility of an all loving creator with a brutal lunatic, their life will change. People who believe like this live under such a cloud of anxiety. For those who are brainwashed, the only way to get through is to go after the issues of gigantic contrast like this. I don't want people to think like me. I want them to think like THEM. Right now, fundamentalists are being mouthpieces for someone ELSE. For them to find their own mind, they must let go of the belief in this monster god who will throw them into hell for asking honest questions. This is where my heart is. It happened for me. I know the way out for people who are like I used to be. It is a painful path but a joyeous destination. For me, I do not care if they want to believe mythology. I don;t care if they believe the earth was formed in six literal days. Why? Because that belief by itself will not motivate someone to walk into a marketplace and blow themselves up to defend their god's honor. I would just be happy with a world where people actually believed that loving your enemies was a good thing to do. The insane dictators and followers in the world are only following the example of the god they believe in.

peace

[Ethnikos]

Now I'm used to a certain level of bullcrap in fundie rationalization, but... did you base yours on just postulating something that's not actually in there?
Thanks for your high level of debate. (kidding)
Answer: No.
Is someone else reading something else into it?
God is giving people a way out, from abusive domestic relationships. As in, take it to the village elders, and allow them to take extreme measures, when necessary. And that makes God evil? I don't think so.

[Ethnikos]

I just don't understand what you believe Ethnikos: I know you have posted extensively and I have read much of it: but can you see why I might be confused?Yes.
On one side is a powerful spiritual entity influencing a global elite to repress the people who they strive to dominate, on the other side is each person being a satin in themselves. There's a little bit of a difference. It is easy for preachers to miss the nuance here, and that's how I see a problem in so-called religion, where there is a dis-service being done which does not lead to true salvation. Jesus came to take away that fear of our own destruction and to put it on the head of the one responsible (Satan) and destroy him, and not us.

[Hux]

One more thought... the hostility shown between Christians on some of the other forums I post on is truly amazing. In fact, after a heated exchange with one of my friends who went to ORU with me, I realized that here I was having difficulty even being understood by someone I call a friend, who was raised in a similar way to me, speaks the same language, has had similar experiences, is from the same culture, same race, and was raised in the same religion! And we wonder why we have such trouble with people who are born into a completely different culture, religion, language and race!

The problem is certain core beliefs that are destructive. If you worship a god that commands you to rape the children of your enemies, there will probably not be a lot of love and grace in your life. If I could just get people to see the incompatibility of an all loving creator with a brutal lunatic, their life will change. People who believe like this live under such a cloud of anxiety. For those who are brainwashed, the only way to get through is to go after the issues of gigantic contrast like this. I don't want people to think like me. I want them to think like THEM. Right now, fundamentalists are being mouthpieces for someone ELSE. For them to find their own mind, they must let go of the belief in this monster god who will throw them into hell for asking honest questions. This is where my heart is. It happened for me. I know the way out for people who are like I used to be. It is a painful path but a joyeous destination. For me, I do not care if they want to believe mythology. I don;t care if they believe the earth was formed in six literal days. Why? Because that belief by itself will not motivate someone to walk into a marketplace and blow themselves up to defend their god's honor. I would just be happy with a world where people actually believed that loving your enemies was a good thing to do. The insane dictators and followers in the world are only following the example of the god they believe in.

peace

I cannot speak for anyone but me Grad but I for one do not concern myself with the nuances of a God that does not exist. Moreover, you will find those who are intransigent and insist on believing the Supernatural realms exist. But only in part. Thus, a Christian might believe in Unicorns but not ina flying Horse. Certain Christians might believe in talking snakes but find it hard to swallow a camel coming out of a rock. It is this selective and ludicrous stance that annoys anyone with a grasp of reality and you are going to encounter it continuously. So you may well ask yourself if it is worth 'debating' the brain dead notions of a bygone age or whether it might be more worth your while to discard them and spend your time in other pursuits? Its going to be an uphill task to convince people who's only book tells them 2+2= whatever it says.

[Niggle]

Hi, ORUgrad. Welcome. I'm glad that you've escaped, and I wish you the best in getting over the demons they've left behind. I was raised Catholic and suffered from many of the same fears as you, so it isn't limited to Pentecostals, though they do seem to be much more extreme. I "officially" left the church almost twelve years ago now, and I'm still struggling with feelings of worthlessness and fear. Yours won't be an easy road, but I'm glad to see you get a start on it. Thank you for letting us know we actually are helping sometimes.

May the peace you seek be yours, may you spread it far and wide, and may those you care about accept it in the light in which it is offered.

[Hux]

Niggle, it would do you more good to talk about these unnecessary fears of worthlessness than anything else; especially if you cannot convince yourself.

Once, as Orugrad understood, you jettison these unsupported fears, your life can take on new meanings, free of these medieval notions that haunt you. Catholicism had made a career out of making its adherents feel like crap about themselves. Contrary to what another claimed on here, its not just the Calvinists that think themselves unworthy.

You gotta let it go. Talk about it.

[Ryan O'Dine]

Just want to add my welcome to ORUgrad.

I hope you can stick around and contribute. I think your point of view would be invaluable here.

[Cynic]

The problem is certain core beliefs that are destructive. If you worship a god that commands you to rape the children of your enemies, there will probably not be a lot of love and grace in your life.

I'd caution you against assuming that most people take what they "believe" very seriously. My own experience growing up pales utterly by comparison to the intensity of your own regarding religion, yet my wife is almost as far away from me in that regard in the other direction. A great many people are what I'd term "areligious", and are utterly clueless about it. When I first started dating her the subject of religion came up and she said she was "basically Christian", but as time went on I discovered that she knew so little -- and concerned herself so little -- of any religious notions that she barely qualified as an atheist except on the technicality that she didn't hold a belief in god.

You see this with anti-gay sentiment. It's tempting to blame it on religion, and it's certainly there. But sometimes things just bleed outside the lines and the source doesn't matter anymore. Some people just don't like gays and when pressed on why, they might cite the bible to justify their thoughts, but that's not really where they came from. It's all very incestuous, information. But I think it gives the average person too much credit to assume they actually understand the ramifications of their own "beliefs".

More often than not, people are told what to think and then given bible quotes that supposedly back that up. The bible is rarely read and then interpreted. As George Bernard Shaw observed, "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means."

[Moochie]

Now, don't anyone get me wrong; I consider all "spiritual" statements (like the ones in my above essay) to be metaphors, not literalistic truths. Though I'm entirely non-religious, I can find value now in religion only by viewing it as poetic metaphor ... basically meaningful (and very often meaningless) fiction.


As that great philosopher, Sergeant Schultz used to say: "I know nothink!"



M.

[sleepy_lioness]

Hi ORU,

Glad to see you've thrown off the shackles. I was similar to you - fundie Baptist upbringing, fear of hell, the works. I left all that at the age of about 17, when I woke up one morning and God wasn't there. It's hard to explain. I was going through a tough time emotionally, but I'd always been able to sense God's presence before. One day he'd just gone. It was awful at the time. I got through it, and have wavered between atheism and liberal Anglicanism ever since. I think I only really got over my fear of hell several years later, when a very wise and compassionate priest asked me whether I could ever condemn anyone, even my worst enemy, to eternal torture. I said of course not. He said, so why do you think God is less loving than you are?

It also helped to discover how slight the foundations for the doctrine of hell are in the bible, and how much the doctrine grew out of the medieval church's need to control its followers.

Right now I'm in an Anglican phase. I got to this because I needed a 'spiritual' aspect to my life, so I tried Buddhist meditation. While I still practice and I got a lot out of it, I discovered that, for me, tradition was very important in building a sense of community and 'spirituality' (however defined), so I ended up back at the local Parish church. Most of my adult life I've been an atheist.

If I could disagree with you slightly: I think it's a mistake and an oversimplification to say OT-bad, NT-good. Not only does this have the potential (no more than that) to feed off centuries of Christian anti-Judaism, it is also, in my view, incorrect. There's plenty of beauty in the OT and plenty of horror in the NT, and it's the NT that is often, in my experience, used to manipulate vulnerable followers of Christianity (he *died* for you! how can you possibly do/think/be that?!). For me the solution is to understand the bible as a record of people's developing and changing understanding of God. They often get it wrong, as we all do (the human condition), and the bible shows that, as well as suggesting some ways in which it's possible to get it gloriously right. Just a personal view.

[sleepy_lioness]

Niggle, it would do you more good to talk about these unnecessary fears of worthlessness than anything else; especially if you cannot convince yourself.

Once, as Orugrad understood, you jettison these unsupported fears, your life can take on new meanings, free of these medieval notions that haunt you. Catholicism had made a career out of making its adherents feel like crap about themselves. Contrary to what another claimed on here, its not just the Calvinists that think themselves unworthy.

You gotta let it go. Talk about it.

Talking's often overrated, in my experience. Sometimes you just have to live with it. Or acknowledge it and watch the feelings come and go.

[ORUgrad]

God is giving people a way out, from abusive domestic relationships. As in, take it to the village elders, and allow them to take extreme measures, when necessary. And that makes God evil? I don't think so.

Ethnikos, when you read that passage, does it say anything about having a discussion with the Elders? Does it say anything about "giving the kid a chance to explain"? Does it say anything about abusive domestic relationships? No it does not. What is rebellion? Is it not the exercise of free will that Christians champion? Why then, when free will is excercised, is it called "rebellion" and most times is dealt with with extreme brutality in the OT? The OT god is not interested in free will. He is interested in conformity to what he wants (for the chosen ones.)

If you went to your father for advice on how to deal with a "rebellious" son and your father told you to take a gun and blow his brains out, would you not think your father was psychotic? Actually shooting him in the head is far more humane than stoning as stoning has a torture component to it. Just think about that.

[Dancing David]

Talking's often overrated, in my experience. Sometimes you just have to live with it. Or acknowledge it and watch the feelings come and go.

Amen.

I was shocked two years ago to find myself all melancholy at a Xmas Eve service. (I go for my wife, it is a family thing.)

Last year I was fine. Mumbling blasphemy while I sing the carols and hymns.

[ORUgrad]

I cannot speak for anyone but me Grad but I for one do not concern myself with the nuances of a God that does not exist. Moreover, you will find those who are intransigent and insist on believing the Supernatural realms exist. But only in part. Thus, a Christian might believe in Unicorns but not ina flying Horse. Certain Christians might believe in talking snakes but find it hard to swallow a camel coming out of a rock. It is this selective and ludicrous stance that annoys anyone with a grasp of reality and you are going to encounter it continuously. So you may well ask yourself if it is worth 'debating' the brain dead notions of a bygone age or whether it might be more worth your while to discard them and spend your time in other pursuits? Its going to be an uphill task to convince people who's only book tells them 2+2= whatever it says.

Hux, I do see your point. However, I know the path that lead me out. And it will lead others out who are where I was. I can't start with "there is no god." I have to start with "Why do you think the OT god is god?" I would rather them believe God is all love and kisses than God is a raving lunatic. We tend to become what we worship.

[Moochie]

<snip>

"If some of these people want to be free, they have a funny way of showing it. I think YOU wanted to be free, but from what I've seen, many probably do not. "

What I meant is that I feel deep down, everyone wants to be free. Free from fear, death, God's wrath, whatever. In the midst of my arrogant fundamentalism, the real "me" was something different. Something not expressed. The religion was warping and destructive and my statements of faith were given to me by others. I believed them but the real "me" felt the anxienty and knew something was very wrong. I put on a good "game face". But the real me wanted answers. I really do believe all people know deep down that something is very wrong- whether they are conscious of it are not. I was as far gone as one could go. I have even worked the platform for Benny Hinn! And I got free. So I try not to identify what people say with who they are. I really want people to get free!

<snip>


I think I agree with this. To my mind, a very large part of the "spiritual persona" we present to the world grows out of our need and desire to be accepted by those around us. I think a potentially funny sitcom would be one where a fundamentalist of any persuasion is somehow made to live in a household/town, etc, in which he or she is the only religious person. How would they behave, not having to constantly "testify" and demonstrate their religio-licks?


M.

[ORUgrad]

I'd caution you against assuming that most people take what they "believe" very seriously. More often than not, people are told what to think and then given bible quotes that supposedly back that up. The bible is rarely read and then interpreted. As George Bernard Shaw observed, "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means."

Cynic, I agree with you. I have said that a big bulk of Christians are functionally agnostic. They go to church but essentially live life how they want and don't think about a lot of issues. I'm not concerned about people like this. I'm concerned about people who really do take the Bible seriously and have warped thinking like I used to as a result. Such thinking ruins lives. It is these people that are my target.

[ORUgrad]

Hi ORU,


If I could disagree with you slightly: I think it's a mistake and an oversimplification to say OT-bad, NT-good. Not only does this have the potential (no more than that) to feed off centuries of Christian anti-Judaism, it is also, in my view, incorrect. There's plenty of beauty in the OT and plenty of horror in the NT, and it's the NT that is often, in my experience, used to manipulate vulnerable followers of Christianity (he *died* for you! how can you possibly do/think/be that?!). For me the solution is to understand the bible as a record of people's developing and changing understanding of God. They often get it wrong, as we all do (the human condition),

Sleepy, I agree with you. For the most part, I do not believe in "X is completely good" or "y is completely evil". There is Jekyll and Hyde in everyone. Some more Jekyll. Some more Hyde. This is true with the Bible too. I did not mean for my posts to indicate otherwise.

[ORUgrad]

for those of you who are interested to know what people like me have had to come out of. Please go to youtube and search for "Jesus Camp" and watch it. It will open your eyes. They are doing this to KIDS in the name of God! I have experienced this but not at that young of an age. My heart bleeds for these kids. Their path will not be easy.

[Moochie]

I appreciate your concern for others.
Thinking may be something that some people have a natural aversion to and may not have anything to do with what they were taught as children.


Definitely a cynical view, there. Do some studying. You'll find that this idea, too, is wrong.


M.

[Moochie]

But Jesus supported the Law of the Old Testament. He came not to get rid of the law but to fulfill it. He lived his life perfectly within the law, with the spirit of the law.

The Old Testament God and the New Testament God are the same, they never change. If you fail to understand this, and why it is so, then you lack discernment and understanding. Or maybe you realize it and just reject it.

The Old Testament law is a complete condemnation of man, and how we can never measure up to God's standards, hence Jesus died on the cross. This runs counter to every single other religion in the world. That should make you stop and think, when you condemn all religions as wrong, why is it that all of them but one state that you can have salvation through works?

Define "salvation." I'm serious.


M.

[Moochie]

<snip>

Jesus did exist, unless you are a hardcore zealot against Christianity, he was a historical figure, not mythological. You can argue about the miracles all you want, but he did exist, and he did change the world.

How? What/which world? White folks' world?


M.

[Moochie]

Thanks for your high level of debate. (kidding)
Answer: No.
Is someone else reading something else into it?
God is giving people a way out, from abusive domestic relationships. As in, take it to the village elders, and allow them to take extreme measures, when necessary. And that makes God evil? I don't think so.

Taking "it to the village elders" may have worked sometime, somewhere, but not in recent times.

Do you get out much?

I'm serious. I read. I watch. I try to keep up with what others are doing. And the "elders" are just as confuddled as the "juniors," from my vantage point. I'm referring specifically to "elders" in both the Christian and Jewish traditions, as exemplified in articles as recent as this week where it was demonstrated that "elders" in a certain tradition could not be trusted to be either truthful or honorable in respect to child sexual molestation. I don't have the article at hand but check the NYT, for one source.


M.

[Moochie]

Just want to add my welcome to ORUgrad.

I hope you can stick around and contribute. I think your point of view would be invaluable here.


Without a doubt, I concur wholeheartedly.


M.

ETA: Apologies for the multiple posts -- it's not always apparent that no one else is posting at the same time as you are.

[Ethnikos]

Taking "it to the village elders" may have worked sometime, somewhere, but not in recent times.


If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19then his father and his mother. . . It seems like it may be at the discretion of the parents. They would be the ones to determine when it would be appropriate to take this course of action.

[Fiona]

Yes.
On one side is a powerful spiritual entity influencing a global elite to repress the people who they strive to dominate, on the other side is each person being a satin in themselves. There's a little bit of a difference. It is easy for preachers to miss the nuance here, and that's how I see a problem in so-called religion, where there is a dis-service being done which does not lead to true salvation. Jesus came to take away that fear of our own destruction and to put it on the head of the one responsible (Satan) and destroy him, and not us.

No idea what you are talking about. All I can glean is that satan needs a middle man: he corrupts people for this reason. The rest is incomprehensible to me

[godless dave]

For me the solution is to understand the bible as a record of people's developing and changing understanding of God. They often get it wrong, as we all do (the human condition), and the bible shows that, as well as suggesting some ways in which it's possible to get it gloriously right. Just a personal view.

How can you tell when they get it right and when they get it wrong?

[Moochie]

It seems like it may be at the discretion of the parents. They would be the ones to determine when it would be appropriate to take this course of action.

Well, to a child, the parents would be "elders." Can they always be trusted?


M.

[Ethnikos]

Ethnikos, when you read that passage, does it say anything about having a discussion with the Elders? Does it say anything about "giving the kid a chance to explain"? Does it say anything about abusive domestic relationships? No it does not. What is rebellion? Is it not the exercise of free will that Christians champion? Why then, when free will is excercised, is it called "rebellion" and most times is dealt with with extreme brutality in the OT? The OT god is not interested in free will. He is interested in conformity to what he wants (for the chosen ones.)

If you went to your father for advice on how to deal with a "rebellious" son and your father told you to take a gun and blow his brains out, would you not think your father was psychotic? Actually shooting him in the head is far more humane than stoning as stoning has a torture component to it. Just think about that.
This (below) sounds like more of what I was talking about earlier, with the threatening prophecies of total destruction. It might be that one reported case of this law being carried out would be enough to strike fear in the hearts of the potentially rebellious.
So you shall purge the evil from your midst,(P) and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Free-will (ours) is not what I champion. Free will to rebel is what Satan took advantage of. Free will for Adam was taken advantage of by Satan to have them join him in rebellion. God is the one who still has the use of free will, and He uses that freedom to choose to save us.

[Norm Breyfogle]

"As that great philosopher, Sergeant Schultz used to say: "I know nothink!"

- Moochie

---------------

I'm not sure I catch your drift ...?

[billydkid]

Don't you know that all non-believers are mean, cruel and evil people???

[Moochie]

"As that great philosopher, Sergeant Schultz used to say: "I know nothink!"

- Moochie

---------------

I'm not sure I catch your drift ...?


It doesn't matter. Weak attempt at funny.


M.

[Ethnikos]

No idea what you are talking about. All I can glean is that satan needs a middle man: he corrupts people for this reason. The rest is incomprehensible to me

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death.
Replacing the external Satan with an internal satan seems to go against God's will, to me. Those who have willfully sold themselves completely to Satan are already judged, by their own action, and are not to be taken into account along with the ordinary people just trying to make their way through the world.

[Norm Breyfogle]

"It doesn't matter. Weak attempt at funny."

- Moochie

--------------

Ah. Good; then I guess did understand your Schultz quote. In other words, recognizing how little we know is the beginning of wisdom. Right? I concur.

[sleepy_lioness]

How can you tell when they get it right and when they get it wrong?

How does any of us make a moral judgement? I don't think that my process for deciding whether something in the bible is moral or immoral is any different from your process for deciding the same in, say, the Aeneid. Genocide is wrong, loving one's neighbour is right. And so on.

[Jontg]

Why not?

Once you open the door to any god, you can pretty much construct any mythology you want.
Unless you make that god omnimax--once you state that some entity controls everything in the universe, no amount of obfuscating myth can change the fact that It is by definition responsible for everything in the universe, including the actions of so-called adversarial beings. God created Satan and controls his actions, thus everything Satan does is on His own head.

[Fiona]

Replacing the external Satan with an internal satan seems to go against God's will, to me. Those who have willfully sold themselves completely to Satan are already judged, by their own action, and are not to be taken into account along with the ordinary people just trying to make their way through the world.

Know anybody who has "willfully sold themselves completely to Satan"? I don't

[Ethnikos]

Know anybody who has "willfully sold themselves completely to Satan"? I don't

Maybe not personally.
That's kind of my point.
When it comes to people like me and you, we don't concern ourselves so much about our maybe being evil, as much as we do about what evil persons might do to us.
God has in store weapons of destruction, hopefully against those who have decided that we are their enemy, and wish to do us harm. Thinking we are the targets of God's wrath, and obsessing on it, is not the way to save people. It's ridiculous and evil and not helping God's plan.
As for those people who are intent on our harm, they should not be included into the discussion of those being led into salvation. I mean those people we do not know personally, and there are just a few, and this is who God talks about in prophecies of dire destruction. He means them. Not us. That is, if we do not do the bidding of those marked for destruction. Better to die at their hands than to die by the hand of God.

[Fiona]

Maybe not personally.
That's kind of my point.
When it comes to people like me and you, we don't concern ourselves so much about our maybe being evil, as much as we do about what evil persons might do to us.
God has in store weapons of destruction, hopefully against those who have decided that we are their enemy, and wish to do us harm. Thinking we are the targets of God's wrath, and obsessing on it, is not the way to save people. It's ridiculous and evil and not helping God's plan.
As for those people who are intent on our harm, they should not be included into the discussion of those being led into salvation. I mean those people we do not know personally, and there are just a few, and this is who God talks about in prophecies of dire destruction. He means them. Not us. That is, if we do not do the bidding of those marked for destruction. Better to die at their hands than to die by the hand of God.

For my part I see no reason to believe that people I do not know are different in kind from people I do know. In fact I think that kind of thinking is actively detrimental to us as a society. As babies we do not know there is anyone else out there. As we grow we learn there are other people and we form bonds of attachment with more and more people: so first our carers and then our wider family and then perhaps school mates and teachers. At each stage, if all goes well, we increase our conception of who is "us" and we learn that we share a common humanity with wider and wider circles. For a very few very admirable people that comes to include the whole world. For most of use we stop somewhere along the line or we run out of time

We respond differently to those we perceive as "us" and the exclusion of groups of people is instrumental in allowing us to do some very bad things indeed.

I do not like your characterisation: I do not think it is true and I do not think it is likely to enhance civilisation.

If this is what your posts come down to count me out

[Ethnikos]

We respond differently to those we perceive as "us" and the exclusion of groups of people is instrumental in allowing us to do some very bad things indeed.
If these were people we were capable of doing something to, we wouldn't need God, would we?
I'm not saying, be mean to anyone you don't know.
I'm saying the person, or persons, plotting the destruction of most people alive on the planet (not that it is their goal necessarily, but collateral damage), are probably not your next door neighbor or some one you eat lunch with.
So, there is not one person on earth who you would not want to include in your group that you would include yourself in (as in, us)? Just wondering. There are people who believe that God loves everyone and Hitler goes to heaven. I think that is a little strange, personally, and avoid ever getting into a serious conversation with those people.

[Fiona]

If these were people we were capable of doing something to, we wouldn't need God, would we?
I'm not saying, be mean to anyone you don't know.
I'm saying the person, or persons, plotting the destruction of most people alive on the planet (not that it is their goal necessarily, but collateral damage), are probably not your next door neighbor or some one you eat lunch with.
So, there is not one person on earth who you would not want to include in your group that you would include yourself in (as in, us)? Just wondering. There are people who believe that God loves everyone and Hitler goes to heaven. I think that is a little strange, personally, and avoid ever getting into a serious conversation with those people.

I do not believe anyone is plotting the destruction of most people alive on the planet, Ethnikos. It is certainly true that some decisions and some arrangements have bad results. This is largely because those who take the decisions are just like us: they mess up; they do not see everyone as "us" and so they suffer the misfortunes of others a little too stoically; they see the problem in front of them but not the unintended consequences. Etc

All of that means we should try to participate in those decisions and influence them where and how we can: and the very tendency to see " us" and " them" hampers that process no matter who is adopting it; as all people do to some extent

No: there is not one person I do not include as "us" (as an aspiration, I hasten to add: I am not a particularly good or large hearted person so I do not actually achieve this: but I have no doubt that this is the aim) in that there are no monsters; no non-humans; nothing but ourselves and all our faults. Some people are arrested in their development so that their conception of "us" is very narrow and that can lead to genocide or serial killing of any number of other horrible things: they need to be stopped and we need protection against them: but they are still human.

I think you illustrate this very well: you assume that there are those so alien we can legitimtely exclude them from "us": but you don't know any: this is just a "them" group and you should beware of that kind of thinking

God doesn't come into it.

[Ethnikos]

INo: there is not one person I do not include as "us" (as an aspiration, I hasten to add: I am not a particularly good or large hearted person so I do not actually achieve this: but I have no doubt that this is the aim) in that there are no monsters; no non-humans; nothing but ourselves and all our faults. Some people are arrested in their development so that their conception of "us" is very narrow and that can lead to genocide or serial killing of any number of other horrible things: they need to be stopped and we need protection against them: but they are still human.

I think you illustrate this very well: you assume that there are those so alien we can legitimtely exclude them from "us": but you don't know any: this is just a "them" group and you should beware of that kind of thinking

God doesn't come into it.What happens when these people who need to be stopped are over the governments of the world's most powerful nations? Who stops them, then?
That's where God comes in.

[ORUgrad]

Ethnikos, I would really like for you to consider my question.You did not answer it. And I think it is paramount to the entire discussion.

"If you went to your father for advice on how to deal with a "rebellious" son and your father told you to take a gun and blow his brains out, would you not think your father was psychotic?"

To that I would add this. What do you think would happen to a general who told our troops, "Ok boys, now after the invasion and you have killed all the men and non virgin women, save the little girls for your raping pleasure. And if you find any pregnant women, kill them too but also rip out the fetus." If you were in such an army, would you "follow orders"? Or would you think your general was psychotic?

When I was in seminary I took a class on alternative religions. My report was on Wiccans. For the report I tracked down a high priestess of a coven here in town and asked if I could interview her. She was kind, gracious, and very UN "witch" like. She described lots of harsh judgement by Christians and her desire to just be left alone. She said she didn't even believe in Satan. Yes she believes a different set of mythologies. But her beliefs do not lead her to be psychotic. She has no interest in "casting spells on Christians" and believes if she cast an evil spell on anyone, it would come back to her three times worse. I would not want to be in such a belief system. But at the time it struck me hard that this woman was not my enemy. I played a tape of my interview for the class and one person got up and walked out because he thought demons might oppress him. Anyway, my point to the class was that this woman, while believing things that seemed odd to us, was doing the best she could with the knowledge and life she had. She did not hate Christians. She just wanted to be left alone and not be persecuted for her beliefs. Given her worldview, this seemed like a reasonable request. I was however chastised for not quoting the judgment of God to her and "evangelizing" her. I suppose I just didn't feel like being an @$$hole for Jesus. It was ironic that she had a more peaceful worldview than I had at the time because I believed in a psychotic god and she did not. Often we fear what we do not understand. And it is much easier to point the finger than to lend a hand.


peace

[Ethnikos]

"If you went to your father for advice on how to deal with a "rebellious" son and your father told you to take a gun and blow his brains out, would you not think your father was psychotic?"I had that happen.
Well, not exactly.
While involved in a vigorous fight among my siblings, my father got frustrated and gave us each a knife and told us to kill each other, and just get it over with.
Of course we thought he was crazy, but we stopped fighting, standing there with lethal weapons in our hands.

[Ethnikos]

To that I would add this. What do you think would happen to a general who told our troops, "Ok boys, now after the invasion and you have killed all the men and non virgin women, save the little girls for your raping pleasure. And if you find any pregnant women, kill them too but also rip out the fetus." If you were in such an army, would you "follow orders"? Or would you think your general was psychotic?
I hope you realize the Bible does not command people to rape girls.

[Fiona]

What happens when these people who need to be stopped are over the governments of the world's most powerful nations? Who stops them, then?
That's where God comes in.

I do not know what or whom you are referring to here? Who is "over the governments"? Are you suggesting that the heads of government of the "world's most powerful nations are psychopaths or have no sense of "us"?

It seems to me that the heads of government can, at times, be such people: it may even be common in history. One's notion of what should happen then is predicated largely on one's politics and one's view of the status of the rule of law and such. It is an open question how we make arrangements to avoid this: and when and how we recognise the legitimacy of extra-legal action to overturn such a government or head of state when we fail to prevent it. What we do know is that the solution, for better or worse, comes from people.

If, on the other hand, you are suggesting that there is another tier which has power over and above the governmental level then I simply see no evidence for that.

[ORUgrad]

I hope you realize the Bible does not command people to rape girls.


Exhibit A: Numbers 31:15-18

15Moses said to them, "Have you let all the women live? 16Behold, these, on Balaam’s advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the LORD in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD. 17Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. 18But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.

I can break down this passage contextually if you like. There are actually several things that are quite problematic. The bottom line here though is "keep alive for yourselves." has nothing to do with raising them and everything to do with making them sex slaves.


Exhibit B: Isaiah 13:9-16

13Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the [a]earth shall be shaken out of its place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of His fierce anger.
14And like the chased roe or gazelle, and like sheep that no man gathers, each [foreign resident] will turn to his own people, and each will flee to his own land.
15Everyone who is found will be thrust through, and everyone who is connected with the slain and is caught will fall by the sword.
16Their infants also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.


rav·ish (rāv'ĭsh)
tr.v. rav·ished, rav·ish·ing, rav·ish·es

To force (another) to have sexual intercourse; rape.


It was passages like these and MANY more that kept staring me in the face while I sang praises to this god at church until finally I could not stand it anymore and had to admit if this was really god, we were all screwed. And I could not sing praises to such a creature and pretend he "loved" me.

[ORUgrad]

I had that happen.
Well, not exactly.
While involved in a vigorous fight among my siblings, my father got frustrated and gave us each a knife and told us to kill each other, and just get it over with.
Of course we thought he was crazy, but we stopped fighting, standing there with lethal weapons in our hands.

I hope your dad was kidding. Or was just stressed out and did not really mean it. Unfortunately, YHWH, was quite serious. Do you think if you had read this passage as a child, you would have thought YHWH must have been crazy too? If so, what would you have thought of someone who told you that this god was who you were to worship and praise as all loving?

[Darth Rotor]

How close a parallel, though? After all, we have no reason to believe in heaven or angels, or in sin and repentance. The biblical passage is at best a figure of speech that tries to express the writer's state of mind; a deluded writer, as far gone in religionism as ORUgrad once was, but not, as far as we know, as capable of rescuing himself.
You took me a bit literally there, old friend. ;)

DR

[Darth Rotor]

Know anybody who has "willfully sold themselves completely to Satan"? I don't
Anton LeVay? :confused:

Welcome, there are times I doubt my chosen path and then I regain balance. Whatever path you take , be joyful.
Amen. :)

[sackett]

You took me a bit literally there, old friend. ;)

DR

I know that I did. But you can understand that I didn't like being compared to an angel.

[Darth Rotor]

I know that I did. But you can understand that I didn't like being compared to an angel.
And you weren't being so compared, you devil you! :) It's the similarity in approach that I find parallel, ironic, and amusing.

DR

[Ethnikos]

I do not know what or whom you are referring to here? Who is "over the governments"? Are you suggesting that the heads of government of the "world's most powerful nations are psychopaths or have no sense of "us"? No, or maybe, depending on who you mean, specifically.
Above the governments, as in who selects the candidates, so that whoever wins an election, they are guaranteed to do the bidding of the elite, who are only a few people, but represent the powers of Totalitarianism, such as crowned royalty, for example.

[Dancing David]

Know anybody who has "willfully sold themselves completely to Satan"? I don't

I have, repeatedly.

[Cynic]

No, or maybe, depending on who you mean, specifically.
Above the governments, as in who selects the candidates, so that whoever wins an election, they are guaranteed to do the bidding of the elite, who are only a few people, but represent the powers of Totalitarianism, such as crowned royalty, for example.

Where to gods come into the picture there, then?

[Dancing David]

What happens when these people who need to be stopped are over the governments of the world's most powerful nations? Who stops them, then?
That's where God comes in.

Well, you just shot your own argument, god has done a crappy job.

How many people died in Poland and China in WWII, just so god could glory in free will?

[Cynic]

I once sold a car to Satan but the bastard not only didn't pay, but left my car in the driveway!

[Dancing David]

When I was in seminary I took a class on alternative religions. My report was on Wiccans. For the report I tracked down a high priestess of a coven here in town and asked if I could interview her. She was kind, gracious, and very UN "witch" like. She described lots of harsh judgement by Christians and her desire to just be left alone. She said she didn't even believe in Satan. Yes she believes a different set of mythologies. But her beliefs do not lead her to be psychotic. She has no interest in "casting spells on Christians" and believes if she cast an evil spell on anyone, it would come back to her three times worse. I would not want to be in such a belief system. But at the time it struck me hard that this woman was not my enemy. I played a tape of my interview for the class and one person got up and walked out because he thought demons might oppress him. Anyway, my point to the class was that this woman, while believing things that seemed odd to us, was doing the best she could with the knowledge and life she had. She did not hate Christians. She just wanted to be left alone and not be persecuted for her beliefs. Given her worldview, this seemed like a reasonable request.

Yeah, us wiccan are an interesting bunch, about 30% are outright crazy, some are just as intolerant as anyone else. But overall a very harmless and fun loving bunch.

[Ethnikos]

I can break down this passage contextually if you like. There are actually several things that are quite problematic. The bottom line here though is "keep alive for yourselves." has nothing to do with raising them and everything to do with making them sex slaves. I don't see that in the verse. Being slaves, or being forced to do anything in particular.
Exhibit B: Isaiah 13:9-16

13Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the [a]earth shall be shaken out of its place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of His fierce anger.
14And like the chased roe or gazelle, and like sheep that no man gathers, each [foreign resident] will turn to his own people, and each will flee to his own land.
15Everyone who is found will be thrust through, and everyone who is connected with the slain and is caught will fall by the sword.
16Their infants also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.
Wives, not young girls.
This is what I think is called hyperbole. It says the sun will cease giving light. The earth shaken from its foundation. God was stirring up the Medes, and bringing the Persians to wreck Babylon. Well, as far as I know, the earth is still in its original orbit, and the sun still gives light, and the Babylonians were not exterminated but absorbed into a bigger empire.
It was passages like these and MANY more that kept staring me in the face while I sang praises to this god at church until finally I could not stand it anymore and had to admit if this was really god, we were all screwed. And I could not sing praises to such a creature and pretend he "loved" me.I don't remember that being the case, when I was growing up. It seemed somewhat ambivalent, concerning the Old Testament God, and we never were urged, from what I remember, to make any determination about Him, other than He did exist.

[Darth Rotor]

I once sold a car to Satan but the bastard not only didn't pay, but left my car in the driveway!
Did you repossess it?



Or

Did you, or call in an exorcist?



OK, I may go to Hell for that pair of gawdawful puns.

DR

[Ethnikos]

Where to gods come into the picture there, then?The point I was trying to get at earlier had to do with who the dire prophecies were about. Are they against us, as in ordinary people, or against the truly evil people, who are in positions to actually carry out whatever sort of diabolical plans they may have in mind.
The reason God would have to intervene is because of the global nature of their plans, and the existence of the technological necessities to bring it about.
The point being, that taking those pronouncements from God, and applying them to ourselves, is not a good way to try to bring people over to a relationship with Jesus, and in fact may be counter productive.

[Fiona]

I have, repeatedly.

This ain't a purchase it's a rental...

[Fiona]

Above the governments, as in who selects the candidates, so that whoever wins an election, they are guaranteed to do the bidding of the elite, who are only a few people, but represent the powers of Totalitarianism, such as crowned royalty, for example.

How are candidates selected where you are?

Here anyone can stand if they are eligible. They have to be nominated on an official form and they have to have a proposer and a seconder and 10 signatures from electors who support them. And they need to put up a deposit (might be £500 or it might have gone up recently). They have to agree to stand in writing. Don't think there is much more to it.

[LisaLynn]

Coming from a background like mine, I still find little things I need to let go of. But it is fine because there is no angry lunatic waiting to punish me for screwing up. I would hope that my life would continue to be a place where little pieces of darkness are revealed for what they are so that those things can be rejected as well. And my heart is to shine the light for a few others who are following where I have been. It isn't a nice place to be.

It is so nice to do things because I want to do them and not because I will be punished if I don't. It is so nice to trust myself instead of agonizing over god's mysterious will. It truly is freedom. And if there is a heaven, and if there are angels, I think they ARE rejoicing that I have found the true message of Jesus- that LOVE is god.


peace

As a former fundy child myself, I just have to tell you that was really well put and beautiful. :)

[Ethnikos]

How are candidates selected where you are?

Here anyone can stand if they are eligible. They have to be nominated on an official form and they have to have a proposer and a seconder and 10 signatures from electors who support them. And they need to put up a deposit (might be £500 or it might have gone up recently). They have to agree to stand in writing. Don't think there is much more to it.
How did you elect(?) Tony Blair to be the E.U. President?
How did you elect(?) Gordon Brown to be the P.M.?

[Ladewig]

Welcome to the forum.


When I read an OT passage to a Christian that talks about stoning a rebellious child until he dies and ask if that sounds like quality parental advice from an all knowing, loving creator, I either get blank stares or an angry response about "context". No matter what though, this will more often than not jump start the thinking process. It is a start anyway.

You say this approach will help them start thinking "more often than not." I must say that I have found the opposite to be true. Do you really have evidence that pointing out an ordinary contradiction is scriptures really does start the thinking process?

[Moochie]

Welcome to the forum.




You say this approach will help them start thinking "more often than not." I must say that I have found the opposite to be true. Do you really have evidence that pointing out an ordinary contradiction is scriptures really does start the thinking process?

I would think it would depend a great deal on how one presents the information, don't you? Generally, if one isn't sympathetic toward the person one is conversing with, the chances of one's words making a positive impact are pretty slim, I would think.

Having come from a similar background, ORUgrad's regard for the person he/she is speaking with would likely be positive and sympathetic. In any case, I personally feel not enough can be said for having empathy toward those one seriously hopes to engage in a meaningful discussion.


M.

[RandFan]

Belated welcome ORUgrad. Let me just say that "something GOOD is going to happen to you today."

I grew up a Mormon but I used to get up Sunday morning to watch cartoons. Often I got up too early and had to sit through an Oral Roberts sermon. On one such day my grandfather died. I wonder what Oral meant? Oh well.

Jump in, the water is fine. :)

[Fiona]

How did you elect(?) Tony Blair to be the E.U. President?
How did you elect(?) Gordon Brown to be the P.M.?

Don't know about the EU president and I don't know what the office does: nobody does because there isn't one yet; the proposed office has no formal power so far as I know.

Gordon Brown is prime minister because he is the leader of the majority party in the house of commons. Some would say that a change of leader should automatically trigger an election: I disagree, but the point is eminently arguable.

Now how about you answer my question?

[Meadmaker]

Welcome to the forum.




You say this approach will help them start thinking "more often than not." I must say that I have found the opposite to be true. Do you really have evidence that pointing out an ordinary contradiction is scriptures really does start the thinking process?

Just because they don't immediately pat you on the back, say that you are right, and burn their Bible doesn't mean that they didn't start thinking. Don't expect immediate, visible, results.

[ORUgrad]

You say this approach will help them start thinking "more often than not." I must say that I have found the opposite to be true. Do you really have evidence that pointing out an ordinary contradiction is scriptures really does start the thinking process?

You are right Ladewig. I have no way to quantify "more often than not." Perhaps I should have said "many times." I would base that on my own life in hearing such contrasts, my own defense of them, and my own great discomfort. Another thing I did after seminary was read many books and internet blogs about deconversion experiences. These dealt with not ordinary contradictions, but "extraordinary" ones such as the god who loves everyone also orders genocide, infanticide, AND YES ABORTION- FORCED ABORTION. You can claim "context", culture, etc. only so long before you start to get really, really uncomfortable with the contrast between the god you are supposedly worshiping on Sunday and the god that is claiming to be this god in the Bible. So I do not care about arguing over how long Jesus was supposedly in the tomb or what he said on the cross or if he was being literal when he said "this is my body." All of that is a smoke screen. No one will give up their deeply ingrained faith over simple discrepancies in the Bible. And non-theists are trying to take too big of a bite by trying to force the point that there is no God at all. Just ask why they worship a god who claims to have CREATED EVIL. And why they think YHWH would be against voluntary abortion when he ordered forced abortion!

My point is that Christians already do not worship YHWH. They worship a god that their church has created for them who is all loving, kind, benevolent, and wants to be my best friend. This god is infinitely patient, slow to anger, full of grace, mercy, etc. It is a Sunday morning creation that isn't reality. So really it is better to ask them why they think their god is all those things when the Bible teaches he is NOT those things. And why they worship a god who commits, approves of, and orders attrocities on par with the greatest psychotic minds in history. It just isn't an easily defensible position to be in. They can mouth off lame excuses but somewhere inside them is a real "them" underneath the brainwashing that is screaming BU11 ****!!! When you ask them to show you how the mindset of a middle east terrorist is any different from that of YHWH, there will be some type of internal conflict. You may not see the fruit of it. And, yes there will be those who are too far gone and will never give up their faith and will worship a monster because they fear the monster will throw them into hell. But I have "faith" in the underlying desire of all people to be free. Maybe I am misguided here. But I have seen good fruit from this approach and it saves so much time in not getting side tracked by little inconsistencies in the Bible.

I would try to be as tactful as I could and perhaps soften the wording a little bit depending on who I was talking to. I would have no problem with "letting 'er rip" with an arrogant preacher. And would soften the tone with someone who is really just unhappy with their religion in general and looking for answers. These questions will cause great pain internally for the believer. And I am very sympathetic to it. But being free is far better than wasting one's life.

So they can keep their belief that god exists and the Bible is infallible. Asking them why the infallible Bible says such horrific things about the god they worship and why they continue to worship such a creature and why their Sunday morning concept of god does not exist in the Bible is really all someone needs to be asked about in order to begin a possible deconversion. Fundamentalist are already in hell. Deconversion rescues them from it.

peace :)

[ORUgrad]

Well, to a child, the parents would be "elders." Can they always be trusted?


M.


Moochie, thanks for your insightful posts here. I would add that one thing I have noticed about my own religious upbringing is that it sought to tell me I could not trust myself and that someone else knew what was best for me. And it taught me that my will was evil and I needed to pray to know god's will. So it essentially taught me to not be "myself". Rather, be what someone else wanted me to be. Be an empty conduit for god to "use" as he saw fit! And we wonder why people have such a hard time being authentic?!? Sounds like a great recipe for a psychosis to me.

[ORUgrad]

Unless you make that god omnimax--once you state that some entity controls everything in the universe, no amount of obfuscating myth can change the fact that It is by definition responsible for everything in the universe, including the actions of so-called adversarial beings. God created Satan and controls his actions, thus everything Satan does is on His own head.

Good insight Jontg. YHWH is documented in the OT as sending an evil spirit to torment King Saul. Oh wait! I thought Satan controlled the demons! Doh!

[ORUgrad]

I had that happen.
Well, not exactly.
While involved in a vigorous fight among my siblings, my father got frustrated and gave us each a knife and told us to kill each other, and just get it over with.
Of course we thought he was crazy, but we stopped fighting, standing there with lethal weapons in our hands.

Children know the truth. Children know that it is insane to order someone to torture and murder their own rebellious children. You knew this as a child. What happened to you to cloud your good judgment since then? Why is it now ok for YHWH to command this and it somehow is not insane?

[shawmutt]

"[Skepticism] is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches."

;)

Thanks for the words of encouragement ORUgrad. Now if we can just get an anti-vaxxer to get his vaccines...

[ORUgrad]

Originally Posted by ORUgrad

I can break down this passage contextually if you like. There are actually several things that are quite problematic. The bottom line here though is "keep alive for yourselves." has nothing to do with raising them and everything to do with making them sex slaves.

Ethnikos "I don't see that in the verse. Being slaves, or being forced to do anything in particular."

I will break this down in more detail in a post I am working on called "Why the Old Testament God is not God." But briefly, Moses has just murdered men, boys, and women who have slept with a man. Since the boys were killed too, there was no compassion for the children in general. And since the young girls and women who had been with a man sexually were killed (because they were defiled), for what purpose do you think they kept the little girls alive for? Moses says "keep them alive FOR YOURSELVES." Do you think he meant, "Hi little girl. I just killed your mommy, daddy and brothers because our god says they were living in our promised land and worshiping another god. But our leader says I get to keep you. I'd like to give you a home, raise you, and take great care of you. Wont that be great?"


Quote:
Exhibit B: Isaiah 13:9-16

13Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the [a]earth shall be shaken out of its place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of His fierce anger.
14And like the chased roe or gazelle, and like sheep that no man gathers, each [foreign resident] will turn to his own people, and each will flee to his own land.
15Everyone who is found will be thrust through, and everyone who is connected with the slain and is caught will fall by the sword.
16Their infants also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.


Ethnikos : "Wives, not young girls."

Are you suggesting that it is perfectly fine to rape the wives of the nation you conquor as long as they are not "too young"? As girls during the period were often very young when they married, it would be safe to say that some would be girls. I am against the rape of any woman- even though YHWH seems to not only approve, but command it.



Ethnikos wrote: "This is what I think is called hyperbole. It says the sun will cease giving light. The earth shaken from its foundation. God was stirring up the Medes, and bringing the Persians to wreck Babylon. Well, as far as I know, the earth is still in its original orbit, and the sun still gives light, and the Babylonians were not exterminated but absorbed into a bigger empire."

Yes hyperbole. Like when Jesus said some of them standing there would not die until he came back. Or anyone with tiny faith can move mountains, etc. etc. All the failed prophecies are hyperbole. If the Bible says something we don't like, there is hyperbole, context, culture. If we like it, it is quoted context free. It is all code for "the Bible says some really crazy ****, and a lot of things that really just ain't true."

I got tired of playing the game. What a relief!!!!

[ORUgrad]

As a former fundy child myself, I just have to tell you that was really well put and beautiful. :)

Lisa, you are welcome. Remember, you still have that "still small voice" inside of you. In fact it IS you. Trust yourself. Look at how far you have come! :)

[shawmutt]

Oh, and ORUgrad, in case you get discouraged in your attempts to help people--I was lined up to go to Yale seminary for the Episcopal church in a previous lifetime. A friend who was attending dropped out, and our conversations about why was a pivotal moment in my "deconversion" from the faith--so keep up the good work!

[ORUgrad]

I would think it would depend a great deal on how one presents the information, don't you? Generally, if one isn't sympathetic toward the person one is conversing with, the chances of one's words making a positive impact are pretty slim, I would think.

Having come from a similar background, ORUgrad's regard for the person he/she is speaking with would likely be positive and sympathetic. In any case, I personally feel not enough can be said for having empathy toward those one seriously hopes to engage in a meaningful discussion.


M.

Moochie, yes this is very important. Knowing the mindset is crucial. Knowing what works and does not work in most cases gives me a huge advantage. I am over the anger now which also gives me a huge advantage. I'm not attached to the idea of them ever coming out of the darkness. But instead of raging at the darkness, my goal is to turn on the light for as many people as are ready.

[ORUgrad]

Just because they don't immediately pat you on the back, say that you are right, and burn their Bible doesn't mean that they didn't start thinking. Don't expect immediate, visible, results.

Great point. Most of this is "seed planting" and I do not expect to see fruit all the time- or even some of the time.

[ORUgrad]

Oh, and ORUgrad, in case you get discouraged in your attempts to help people--I was lined up to go to Yale seminary for the Episcopal church in a previous lifetime. A friend who was attending dropped out, and our conversations about why was a pivotal moment in my "deconversion" from the faith--so keep up the good work!

Wow! I wish I had had such a friend! It would have saved me over $50,000! It was still a small price to pay for freedom though. What were your chief reasons?

[shawmutt]

Wow! I wish I had had such a friend! It would have saved me over $50,000! It was still a small price to pay for freedom though. What were your chief reasons?

For going, or for my deconversion?

[ORUgrad]

For your deconversion.

[shawmutt]

Well, I was raised fire and brimstone Baptist, left the Baptist church--church altogether for a while, and joined the more liberal (to me) Episcopal church after high school. I've doubted my whole life, and said as much to many church leaders, but my doubt in God was sold to me as strength, not weakness. "Wise men still seek him..." and whatnot.

I moved from the country and suburbia to the city of New Haven and got all confused. I met all these faithful people who were equally faithful to different gods! Either we all were wrong, or none of us were right! Or just I was right… I kept my faith, convinced that if I learned enough about the Bible, that if I progressed enough in my church, I would be shown the secret handshake and all would be revealed.

In the end, it was a culmination of many things, the realization that the infallible Bible of my youth was not really infallible, the special pleading for the “loving” God of the OT (and “loving” God of the NT as well, for that matter), and the conversations with my friend who left seminary—who told me in no uncertain terms that there is no secret handshake.

It’s funny, I was just listening to an episode of Skeptic’s Guide. They interviewed a guy who was a mentalist and skeptic, and worked his way into the inner circles of psychics. Long story short, he said the really good folks knew they were all playing a game, and there were a lot of winks and nudges that went on. I have a hard time believing that the religious leaders of the world don’t have that same kind of “inside knowledge.” That the secret handshake reveals not the face of God but the face of religion.

Over time I’ve made concession after concession with my brain, you can almost see them over time if you dig through the thousand posts I’ve made here. From non-Christian theist, to deist, to agnostic, and at this point I’m the closest to calling myself an atheist than I’ve ever been. I’ve lived as though there were no God for a long time though.

I was a member of the local UU church for nearly four years, but that soured on me as well and I just recently rescinded my membership. In that church there’s a lot of talk with little action, a heaping helping of (non-Christian) woo woo, and a whole lot of angry (ex)Christians.

[ORUgrad]

They interviewed a guy who was a mentalist and skeptic, and worked his way into the inner circles of psychics. Long story short, he said the really good folks knew they were all playing a game, and there were a lot of winks and nudges that went on. I have a hard time believing that the religious leaders of the world don’t have that same kind of “inside knowledge.” That the secret handshake reveals not the face of God but the face of religion.

Over time I’ve made concession after concession with my brain, you can almost see them over time if you dig through the thousand posts I’ve made here. From non-Christian theist, to deist, to agnostic, and at this point I’m the closest to calling myself an atheist than I’ve ever been. I’ve lived as though there were no God for a long time though.

I was a member of the local UU church for nearly four years, but that soured on me as well and I just recently rescinded my membership. In that church there’s a lot of talk with little action, a heaping helping of (non-Christian) woo woo, and a whole lot of angry (ex)Christians.

I understand exactly what you mean. A few things that helped me along the way was 1. I gave up being angry that I had wasted x number of years following after something that was illusion because I realized that most people spend their entire life following illusions! I was actually lucky! 2. I gave up the need to label myself. People get really uncomfortable if you refuse to tell them what church, religion, or philisophy you belong to or don't belong to. They want to know so they can judge you to see if you are one of "us" or one of "them." I happen to like a lot of the things I read in Buddhism. I also enjoy different aspects of many different philosophies. I do not mind discussing aspects of what I like and don't like. But I am not going to label myself a "buddhist" or an "existentialist" or an anything. Because to do so invites people who do not share these views to find the weakest point and force you to defend it. I have a friend who does this to me and he gets so upset when I call stupid, stupid- even if it is within a philosophy I otherwise admire. To label myself means I have found "it" and so now I can stop looking. I don't ever plan to arrive, so I will enjoy the journey. I don't have to have a position on everything. So don't label yourself. You are a free person with a brain that does not know everything. Maybe this year you believe in god (just hopefully not YHWH) :) and next year you don't. Allow yourself to change in whatever way you want and on your timeline. And 3. I decided that I was going to be authentically "me"- which meant that I was ok with people not liking "me" because I was not conforming to the perception they had of me. How many people do you know that you could say anything you wanted and you would not be judged or told you shouldn't believe this way or that way? I personally have a total of one. Be who you are right now and you will discover who your true friends are. This is amazingly liberating! It takes SO much energy to maintain someone elses expectations for how you should believe and act. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said "Most people are somebody else."

Sorry to be so long winded! :)

[Ethnikos]

Children know the truth. Children know that it is insane to order someone to torture and murder their own rebellious children. You knew this as a child. What happened to you to cloud your good judgment since then? Why is it now ok for YHWH to command this and it somehow is not insane?Here is what the John gill commentary says,
. . .and according to the Targum of Jonathan,

``if he feared (God, and showed any token of repentance) and received instruction, and they (his parents) desired to preserve him alive, they preserved him; but if he refused and was rebellious, then they stoned him;''

but the Jews say this law, and that of retaliation, were never put into execution:. . . Like I said earlier, it was more of a threat, than anything else, meant to keep people aware of the possible repercussions to their actions.
I do not think my judgment is clouded. There are things I find disturbing to me in the Bible but I do not let it bother me too much. Some things are an artificial history, made long after the fact, for some reason or other, that was important at the time of the writing.
I feel bad for your personal experience in what was advertised to you as being Christian. I think it was a lot like the occult. That's my opinion and it has to do with being brought up in a very conservative and restrained church that was all about being holy and pure and had nothing to do with having a "religious experience". To us, that is just invoking the wrong spirits. So we would not even consider the Oral Roberts brand of religion, Christian at all. I wish I could give you some good advice, but am sorry to say that the demon spirit is inside all the denominations now. The only thing I can suggest is to find a small home sized church that is fundamentalist, and I don't mean being weird about the Bible, I mean people who read the Bible as an inspiration of what religion is supposed to be about. Which is, how to be a good person, and to notify others, as possible, about the good news that Jesus is sending his spirit into the world to help people be good.

[godless dave]

Any belief in "spirits" is an occult belief. ORUGrad's isn't any crazier than yours just because your spirits are nicer.

[Ethnikos]

Any belief in "spirits" is an occult belief. ORUGrad's isn't any crazier than yours just because your spirits are nicer.What? OK, well fine. I do not mean ORUGad's current belief, but the sort of thing evoked by the likes of Mr. Roberts. The church I grew up in did not have any kind of excitement. No loud speaking or calling on Jesus. It was how to be a good person and was a very quiet personal thing between you and God.

[truethat]

gambling_cruiser "We are all humans with limited patience, limited frustration tolerance."

I do agree and understand. When I was a fundie, I was quite arrogant, prideful, and really an @$$. I don't ever want to be that way again. I do, however, have a friend who is quite "in your face" in his faith. For him, I don't soften the message. I don't ridicule him personally but I will "let er rip" with things like "So the god who commanded the Israelites to torture and murder their own children should they become rebellious- not to mention commiting infanticide and child rape of other nations- is the god you worship on Sunday morning?" Or, "So really your world view is the same as a Muslim terrorist, you simply call your gods by different names." I'm not doing it to "score points" or be "right." I care about him and he needs a loving slap or two in the face. For others, I will take a more softball approach if they really have not been challenged with why they believe what they believe. Once I pressed too hard with a girl who was deeply into "The Secret" and the Law of Attraction. She wasn't arrogant about it and I should have taken a lighter approach instead of poking hole after hole into her world view. She began to cry and I felt like a real jerk. It took me years of painful realizations before I made the change of worldview. I just know how damaging a fundamentalist Christian worldview can be and how much of life can be wasted trying to follow someone elses idea of what I should be doing with my life.


Thanks for the well wishes from everyone. You ARE making a real difference. Think of all the people who read your posts who never post themselves. This is my first thread and I have been reading here for over five years!

Hux "May I ask, did you have any real views on Hell? Did it frighten you? I ask because my exfundie mates tell me Hell was once an issue that scared them to death. When they let that one go, it became a lot easier."

Yes. Hell was a real place of burning flame forever- so I was taught. The "hell stick" was waved around if you questioned too hard. There were so so many reasons why I left this "faith". The whole thing is just not worthy of an omnibenevolent God. Jesus was obviously the plan B. The god of the OT just acted like a raving lunatic. I am supposed to want to praise this thing forever? I like a lot of the teachings of Jesus but the control, manipulation, and mythology that has bloomed around them is so destructive.

Behind the spiritual sounding language are these core teachings.

1. You cannot trust yourself. You need someone else to tell you what to do, say and believe.

2. Your mind is your enemy. It is the realm of the evil one. And he will deceive you if you let him.

3. You should only do god's will. Your will is opposed to god's will.

4. You are cursed and deserve death because of Adam and the bad apple.

5. God's anger is so great with you that he required the murder of his son in order for him to forgive you.

6. This gift of Christ actually only works if you "accept it" and believe he was god's son. If you are not sure or don't know or think it might not be true, then God will still be raging angry at you and you wont be "saved" from his wrath.

This of course produces a crapload of fear.

Vic Vega wrote: "I'm not sure I agree with the bolded part, however:

Originally Posted by ORUgrad
But behind all that ego is a very scared person who has had his or her brain screwed over by religion and wants to be free.

"If some of these people want to be free, they have a funny way of showing it. I think YOU wanted to be free, but from what I've seen, many probably do not. "

What I meant is that I feel deep down, everyone wants to be free. Free from fear, death, God's wrath, whatever. In the midst of my arrogant fundamentalism, the real "me" was something different. Something not expressed. The religion was warping and destructive and my statements of faith were given to me by others. I believed them but the real "me" felt the anxienty and knew something was very wrong. I put on a good "game face". But the real me wanted answers. I really do believe all people know deep down that something is very wrong- whether they are conscious of it are not. I was as far gone as one could go. I have even worked the platform for Benny Hinn! And I got free. So I try not to identify what people say with who they are. I really want people to get free!

If any of you want to email me on here or privately, I would be happy to talk with you. I know intimately how many Christians think and would be happy to shed insights. Critical thinking is not taught in the Christian world I was in. It has to be learned painfully. We were literally told to "turn off your mind."


Peace


Call me a cynic, but I'm finding it very hard to believe that you are truly an MDiv graduate who refers to Adam and the apple. One of the first things you learn in even the most glancing examination of Genesis is that there is no apple ever mentioned. It's sort of scorned upon when people make this error.

As an atheist in the MDiv program? Eh color me a little skeptical here.

[SusanB-M1]

Talking's often overrated, in my experience. Sometimes you just have to live with it. Or acknowledge it and watch the feelings come and go.
And reminding yourself that, whenever you think it is God, it is actually your own mind, evolved, intelligent and capable of every single one of those thoughts that can take all the credit.

[ORUgrad]

Call me a cynic, but I'm finding it very hard to believe that you are truly an MDiv graduate who refers to Adam and the apple. One of the first things you learn in even the most glancing examination of Genesis is that there is no apple ever mentioned. It's sort of scorned upon when people make this error.

As an atheist in the MDiv program? Eh color me a little skeptical here.

Ok, you Cynic! :) Yes I am aware that an "apple" is not mentioned. I was being lazy. My point was made however. I was NOT an atheist in seminary. I was a believer who deconverted after getting out. I am also aware that it was Eve who ate from the tree and then gave it to Adam. If you are expecting verbal perfection, you wont find it here. It is ok if you don't think I went to seminary. I wont get TOO upset. :p

[godless dave]

What? OK, well fine. I do not mean ORUGad's current belief, but the sort of thing evoked by the likes of Mr. Roberts. The church I grew up in did not have any kind of excitement. No loud speaking or calling on Jesus. It was how to be a good person and was a very quiet personal thing between you and God.

Right, but you still believed some kind of God existed.

[Ethnikos]

Right, but you still believed some kind of God existed.Apparently, I missed your point, or did not properly address it.
I think there is a spirit in the world that is from the Creator. I also believe that, for some reason, there is another spirit in the world, of the destroyer. The Creator spirit takes one form, but is found in may places. The destroyer is also found in may places, but in different forms. A form for every circumstance. In fact, there is one for the purpose of masquerading as being the Creator spirit. Some people are taken in by it. Some people are not. Our buddy, ORUGrad, is one that was not taken in by the destroyer. Good for him.

[shawmutt]

Apparently, I missed your point, or did not properly address it.
I think there is a spirit in the world that is from the Creator. I also believe that, for some reason, there is another spirit in the world, of the destroyer. The Creator spirit takes one form, but is found in may places. The destroyer is also found in may places, but in different forms. A form for every circumstance. In fact, there is one for the purpose of masquerading as being the Creator spirit. Some people are taken in by it. Some people are not. Our buddy, ORUGrad, is one that was not taken in by the destroyer. Good for him.

So you're a Hindu?

[BobTheDonkey]

Apparently, I missed your point, or did not properly address it.
I think there is a spirit in the world that is from the Creator. I also believe that, for some reason, there is another spirit in the world, of the destroyer. The Creator spirit takes one form, but is found in may places. The destroyer is also found in may places, but in different forms. A form for every circumstance. In fact, there is one for the purpose of masquerading as being the Creator spirit. Some people are taken in by it. Some people are not. Our buddy, ORUGrad, is one that was not taken in by the destroyer. Good for him.

And how do you know that you weren't taken in by the destroyer?

[godless dave]

Apparently, I missed your point, or did not properly address it.
I think there is a spirit in the world that is from the Creator. I also believe that, for some reason, there is another spirit in the world, of the destroyer. The Creator spirit takes one form, but is found in may places. The destroyer is also found in may places, but in different forms. A form for every circumstance. In fact, there is one for the purpose of masquerading as being the Creator spirit. Some people are taken in by it. Some people are not. Our buddy, ORUGrad, is one that was not taken in by the destroyer. Good for him.

This all sounds like the occult to me.

[Niggle]

Niggle, it would do you more good to talk about these unnecessary fears of worthlessness than anything else; especially if you cannot convince yourself.

Once, as Orugrad understood, you jettison these unsupported fears, your life can take on new meanings, free of these medieval notions that haunt you. Catholicism had made a career out of making its adherents feel like crap about themselves. Contrary to what another claimed on here, its not just the Calvinists that think themselves unworthy.

You gotta let it go. Talk about it.

Thanks for your concern, Hux. I understand the problem, which does help, but I'm unable to afford the therapy I need right now (no job and no medical coverage). I'm not comfortable talking about it on an internet forum, but I am making some progress still.

[Niggle]

Talking's often overrated, in my experience. Sometimes you just have to live with it. Or acknowledge it and watch the feelings come and go.

Talking has helped immensely, but only once I was talking to the right people (those who could actually help). Also, talk is worthless without followup action. Changing the language you use can help change the thought patterns behind it, too.

Um, we're getting pretty OT here. Should we start a new thread about it, or is this enough?

[ORUgrad]

Here is what the John gill commentary says,
Like I said earlier, it was more of a threat, than anything else, meant to keep people aware of the possible repercussions to their actions.
I do not think my judgment is clouded. There are things I find disturbing to me in the Bible but I do not let it bother me too much.].

Well my friend, all Christians must do this to keep themselves from the realization that the god they worship on Sunday morning is a mental creation that has nothing to do with YHWH from the Old Testament who was the monster we have already discussed (a fictitious monster). I suppose it was more important to believe the truth about this even though it made me "feel" bad, than to continue to believe a lie because it made me feel good.


[/QUOTE]Some things are an artificial history, made long after the fact, for some reason or other, that was important at the time of the writing.
I feel bad for your personal experience in what was advertised to you as being Christian. I think it was a lot like the occult. That's my opinion and it has to do with being brought up in a very conservative and restrained church that was all about being holy and pure and had nothing to do with having a "religious experience". To us, that is just invoking the wrong spirits. So we would not even consider the Oral Roberts brand of religion, Christian at all. I wish I could give you some good advice, but am sorry to say that the demon spirit is inside all the denominations now. The only thing I can suggest is to find a small home sized church that is fundamentalist, and I don't mean being weird about the Bible, I mean people who read the Bible as an inspiration of what religion is supposed to be about. Which is, how to be a good person, and to notify others, as possible, about the good news that Jesus is sending his spirit into the world to help people be good.[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure how you keep all of this straight in your head and determine what is true and what isn't. If you can dismiss much of the Bible as a "things that disturb you but you don't pay much attention to", why not just jettison the whole "YHWH is god" concept all together? I mean, don't you functionally do this already? You ignore the horror in the OT and just worship god as if he is a good, loving, parent right? Do you need Jesus to help you be good? Or do you decide to be good?

[Ethnikos]

So you're a Hindu?
No. But I suppose it could be possible for a person raised as a Hindu to somehow cut through the clutter and find the form of the Creator in an understanding of what God really is.

[Ethnikos]

And how do you know that you weren't taken in by the destroyer?I know how God has worked in my life in miraculous ways. It has nothing to do with screaming and crying and calling forth Jesus, and feelings of ecstasy.
It is quiet and subdued, but irresistible and gives peace.

[Ethnikos]

This all sounds like the occult to me.

If you think anything involving the supernatural is occult.
I don't think finding the real God has to be done only through a formula that has to be taught. (it does help to have a few things explained to you, but it is something right out in the open)
Jesus said, "If someone tells you that I can be found in a hidden room, believe him not."

[Ethnikos]

Well my friend, all Christians must do this to keep themselves from the realization that the god they worship on Sunday morning is a mental creation that has nothing to do with YHWH from the Old Testament who was the monster we have already discussed (a fictitious monster). I suppose it was more important to believe the truth about this even though it made me "feel" bad, than to continue to believe a lie because it made me feel good.Which one is fictitious, or does that matter to you? If it is all in people's heads, how does that make God evil? What if everything in the OT that makes God look bad are the fake parts? That would be throwng the baby out with the bathwater. You need to break completely free from people's influince on you before you can find your own understanding.
I'm not sure how you keep all of this straight in your head and determine what is true and what isn't. If you can dismiss much of the Bible as a "things that disturb you but you don't pay much attention to", why not just jettison the whole "YHWH is god" concept all together? I mean, don't you functionally do this already? You ignore the horror in the OT and just worship god as if he is a good, loving, parent right? Do you need Jesus to help you be good? Or do you decide to be good?Who are the twelve tribes? How did they get there and where did they come from and how is the fact that there are twelve, significant?
These are important questions, and I don't mean, to us. They were important to the people living there and especially when it came time for the exiled to go back to where they came from. Were they really from there? How did they have more of a right to be there than the people they found upon their return. Answers were needed and needed now and ones that gave them clear title to the land, good enough for the imperial powers that be.
And that is what you want to use to determine if there is a God, or not? You need to wake up to the world around you and get out of the delusion you have been under. Satan does not want to let go of you so soon.

[BobTheDonkey]

I know how God has worked in my life in miraculous ways. It has nothing to do with screaming and crying and calling forth Jesus, and feelings of ecstasy.
It is quiet and subdued, but irresistible and gives peace.

But...how do you know that it wasn't the Destroyer who did all that just to sucker you away from true salvation?

[Hux]

If you think anything involving the supernatural is occult.

In as much as they are both unseen. But you don't get to make a definition of 'supernatural' just so it suits you. If there is a supernatural we should be able to to sense all supernatural and not those special pleadings. We don't see Werewolves, Zombies, Vampires, Unicorns, fairys and what have you. These are elements of the human imagination. Just like the zombie you think you have special knowledge of.

[RSLancastr]

ORUGrad, cngrats. it could not have been easy. know that we are here for you if you need support on your new path.

[Ethnikos]

But...how do you know that it wasn't the Destroyer who did all that just to sucker you away from true salvation?I think it would have been working to destroy me. Not working to save me. Unless you think that the destroyer was not so interested in physically destroying me, but wanted me to live long enough for me to forsake God, and then I could be destroyed, spiritually. Have a go at that.

[BobTheDonkey]

I think it would have been working to destroy me. Not working to save me. Unless you think that the destroyer was not so interested in physically destroying me, but wanted me to live long enough for me to forsake God, and then I could be destroyed, spiritually. Have a go at that.



bolding added

Exactly my point. How do you know that you're not following the Destroyer and being set up for a fall? I doubt many people would follow the Destroyer if he didn't make their lives better initially, ya know?

[Ethnikos]

In as much as they are both unseen. But you don't get to make a definition of 'supernatural' just so it suits you. If there is a supernatural we should be able to to sense all supernatural and not those special pleadings. We don't see Werewolves, Zombies, Vampires, Unicorns, fairys and what have you. These are elements of the human imagination. Just like the zombie you think you have special knowledge of.
I think I made one post over on the "I am not going to argue religion" thread. I had a difficult time defining what exactly is supernatural. Since my definition was so far off from everyone else's view, I declined from making any further posts on that thread. What you would call supernatural, I would (in agreement with the Coast to Coast definition) think of as being on the fringe of the natural.
According to my understanding of Occult, it would involve the knowing, and making use of, secret names for spiritual entities, be they good or bad. I do not believe in that, and the name of Jesus is known far and wide.

[Ethnikos]

Exactly my point. How do you know that you're not following the Destroyer and being set up for a fall? I doubt many people would follow the Destroyer if he didn't make their lives better initially, ya know?I already believed in Jesus, so apparently, for me to fall, would involve my stopping to believe in him.

[BobTheDonkey]

I think I made one post over on the "I am not going to argue religion" thread. I had a difficult time defining what exactly is supernatural. Since my definition was so far off from everyone else's view, I declined from making any further posts on that thread. What you would call supernatural, I would (in agreement with the Coast to Coast definition) think of as being on the fringe of the natural.
According to my understanding of Occult, it would involve the knowing, and making use of, secret names for spiritual entities, be they good or bad. I do not believe in that, and the name of Jesus is known far and wide.

Well, realistically, anything that's not natural is supernatural...so...fringe of natural is leaning towards supernatural...

(besides, haven't we discussed Coast to Coast's reliability before?)

[Cynic]

I already believed in Jesus, so apparently, for me to fall, would involve my stopping to believe in him.

Unless you've been deceived by the destroyer into thinking Jesus was the route to salvation when it was really some other way. We could do this for eternity, though, couldn't we? You don't have any way of knowing you aren't barking up the wrong tree about all this than anyone else. The difference between having faith and having an opinion is honesty.

[BobTheDonkey]

Unless you've been deceived by the destroyer into thinking Jesus was the route to salvation when it was really some other way. We could do this for eternity, though, couldn't we? You don't have any way of knowing you aren't barking up the wrong tree about all this than anyone else. The difference between having faith and having an opinion is honesty.

Took the words right of my mouth.

[Hux]

I had a difficult time defining what exactly is supernatural.

I don't think many others do. Its only a problem of definition when you need to cherry pick it.

[Ethnikos]

(besides, haven't we discussed Coast to Coast's reliability before?)I'm not using that to bolster my argument. I just don't want to be plagiarising. I pick up little concepts, here and there and incorporate them into what I write. I don't want to take credit for something as obvious as that, where it is pretty much word for word out of George Noory's mouth.

[BobTheDonkey]

I'm not using that to bolster my argument. I just don't want to be plagiarising. I pick up little concepts, here and there and incorporate them into what I write. I don't want to take credit for something as obvious as that, where it is pretty much word for word out of George Noory's mouth.

And while that is to be commended, it does not mean that what is said on that program is more reliable. Just because it comes across the radio waves does not make it true. We've had this problem before, Eth. Your methods for determining what to accept as true and incorporate into your beliefs are quite suspect (recall the discussion regarding the Health Care proposals - you admitted that you were more interested in what pundits claim the proposals do than in reading the actual proposals to find out).

What really appears to happen is that you hear something supporting/fitting what you want to believe and then you incorporate that into your belief system and claim that it's now a belief with evidence.

[Ethnikos]

And while that is to be commended, it does not mean that what is said on that program is more reliable. Just because it comes across the radio waves does not make it true. We've had this problem before, Eth. Your methods for determining what to accept as true and incorporate into your beliefs are quite suspect (recall the discussion regarding the Health Care proposals - you admitted that you were more interested in what pundits claim the proposals do than in reading the actual proposals to find out).Oh come on. There are five current versions of the bill and the Senate just came out with one twice the size as the original bill. And I am supposed to read all that? I got sick of arguing with people who support it, without reading it either. So if Obama gets in front of the camera and reads from his teleprompter, Everything will be fine if you vote the way I tell you, then you just buy it? How am I any more foolish than you or anyone else?

[BobTheDonkey]

Oh come on. There are five current versions of the bill and the Senate just came out with one twice the size as the original bill. And I am supposed to read all that? I got sick of arguing with people who support it, without reading it either. So if Obama gets in front of the camera and reads from his teleprompter, Everything will be fine if you vote the way I tell you, then you just buy it? How am I any more foolish than you or anyone else?

You don't need to read the entire bill. Perhaps just the sections that are in contention - e.g. the section where coverage is provided for end-of-life counseling.

The point remains, Eth. You make no real attempt to even listen with a critical ear, nor to further your knowledge on the subject beyond what satisfies what you want to believe and you continue to cite sources that you have been shown are highly suspect.

I fear that you do not see the darkness in which you stumble around and I am simply attempting to draw you to the light :)


ETA: By "draw you to the light," I mean "encourage you to think critically."

[Ethnikos]

What I want is the happy talk that the candidate, Obama, was sying.
Not what we have left after the HMO's, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance companies got though with it, which is nothing, zero.

correction: Less than zero, with Medicare cuts.

[Ethnikos]

I fear that you do not see the darkness in which you stumble around and I am simply attempting to draw you to the light :)


ETA: By "draw you to the light," I mean "encourage you to think critically."I guess I must just think that I am special.

[Marduk]

What I want is the happy talk baloney that the candidate, Obama politician, was sying.
Not what we have left after the HMO's, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance companies got though with it, which is nothing, zero.

correction: Less than zero, with Medicare cuts.

so what youre saying is that you aren't just gullible enough to believe a 2500 year old collection of fairy tales

but that you also believe what politicians say when theyre running for election

my thats pretty amusing right there
:p

[BobTheDonkey]

What I want is the happy talk that the candidate, Obama, was sying.
Not what we have left after the HMO's, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance companies got though with it, which is nothing, zero.

correction: Less than zero, with Medicare cuts.

Ok, I think we've gone far enough off topic with the healthcare issue. I wasn't attempting to discuss healthcare, Eth. I was making a point about credibility of sources and the need for critical thinking.

[BobTheDonkey]

I guess I must just think that I am special.

This could be sarcasm...but I'm going to choose to take it at face value and state that acknowledging the problem (or at least part of it) is the first step to solving the problem, so progress is being made :)

[Ethnikos]

This could be sarcasm...but I'm going to choose to take it at face value and state that acknowledging the problem (or at least part of it) is the first step to solving the problem, so progress is being made :)I don't know. I get accused of that a lot. Maybe I think that God protects me from being sucked into falsity, if that is a word. Or maybe I do think to a certain extent. I probably seem way out there but I don't seem to get in trouble from it, other than being a subject of ridicule in a discussion. Well, thanks for your concern. I don't think anyone here wishes me ill. I have the same sort of concern for others that you exhibit towards me. I don't mean anyone ill, either.

[Marduk]

I don't know. I get accused of that a lot. Maybe I think that God protects me from being sucked into falsity,

nope, in fact I can state categorically that your God frequently pushes you into falsity and has done, since the first moment you started believing in him
thats what he does
all the time

you'll find out I guess
then I get to shout "I told you so" at your funeral
:p

[BobTheDonkey]

But how do you know that your belief in god hasn't merely deluded you to the truth of the real world around you?

Eth, the beauty of the world that you attribute to a god is so much more amazing and beautiful when you accept that it wasn't made by anybody - that nature, in it's own right, is indeed the most beautiful show on Earth (to borrow Dawkins' thunder...:D)

[Ethnikos]

nope, in fact I can state categorically that your God frequently pushes you into falsity and has done, since the first moment you started believing in him
thats what he does
all the time

you'll find out I guess
then I get to shout "I told you so" at your funeral
:pI feel a little bit bad about wrecking ORUGrad's thread.
I don't see it as the way you describe it. I was born with a knowledge of God, so I don't hardly feel like a believer, as in the ordinary use of the word. I don't feel like I am alone in this because I have a sister who is just like that too. This is one reason why I have no fear of discussing religion. It is almost as if it is completely out of the scope of my concern. I do not base my faith in religion because I have a direct link to God. That probably sounds insane but it is not some sort of magic or voices or anything like that. I just know, and for some reason, never forgot. We were all with God before we were born, as spirits, and another thing, we actually volunteered to be here. Some people I guess have a choice or something and I guess one option is whether or not you remember anything that happened before you became a person. I think what most people do is take the third choice, which is, I will remember some of it for a certain length of time, and then decide if I want it to just fade away, as an unnecessary encumbrance to life.

[Marduk]

I feel a little bit bad about wrecking ORUGrad's thread.

On the contrary you are a living example of why hes so relieved and a classic example of why he changed his opinion, you are the illustration to his OP in this thread

I don't see it as the way you describe it. I was born with a knowledge of God, so I don't hardly feel like a believer, as in the ordinary use of the word. I don't feel like I am alone in this because I have a sister who is just like that too.
so I'm guessing that your parents arent atheists then
:rolleyes:

This is one reason why I have no fear of discussing religion. It is almost as if it is completely out of the scope of my concern. I do not base my faith in religion because I have a direct link to God. That probably sounds insane
Yes it does, you sound just like Dani El, any impending doom we should know about ?

but it is not some sort of magic or voices or anything like that. I just know, and for some reason, never forgot.

do you think that your belief is somehow valid when all you have is your belief

We were all with God before we were born, as spirits, and another thing, we actually volunteered to be here.

Oh I'm sorry I had mistaken you for a christian, they dont believe in reincarnation yanno,

Some people I guess have a choice or something and I guess one option is whether or not you remember anything that happened before you became a person.
My memory says you got this wrong.

I think what most people do is take the third choice, which is, I will remember some of it for a certain length of time, and then decide if I want it to just fade away, as an unnecessary encumbrance to life.
do you also believe that spirits that talk to John Edwards can only remember their initials ?
:D

[Ethnikos]

so I'm guessing that your parents arent atheists then
:rolleyes:
That could be another possibility, I suppose.
If you have older siblings, and while you were in the womb, you are sitting there listening to your mother tell them all about God. Somehow your little fetal mind takes it all in and becomes an unborn believer.
Kind of ruins my story, if that is true.

[BobTheDonkey]

That could be another possibility, I suppose.
If you have older siblings, and while you were in the womb, you are sitting there listening to your mother tell them all about God. Somehow your little fetal mind takes it all in and becomes an unborn believer.
Kind of ruins my story, if that is true.

Belief in a god, as with any belief, is a choice you make. You make that choice every single day. Some people choose to believe regardless of whether it's justifiable or not (here's a hint: you have admitted that your belief is grounds for being labeled insane, and yet you persist in believing in a completely unproven set of beliefs), some people choose to change their belief system based on critical thinking.

[willhaven]

I believe that you never see the fruits of your labor in debates within one thread. You argue your point and come to the end of the line and plant a seed of doubt. Something that makes the guy on the other side question what he believes. That's how I got here. I was a Christian for over a decade and spent the last 4-5 years in various states of questioning, disbelief or making excuses for my religion.

I never expect to get a "you're right" from anyone. I just like to beat them up over the same talking points and try to get them to explain themselves until they give up. That's the fun part. :]

[Ethnikos]

I believe that you never see the fruits of your labor in debates within one thread. I used to post over on a Christian forum. There was this guy there who had a particular belief based on a single verse in the Bible. No matter what people would post about, he would jump in and force the person to answer if they believe in that verse the way he did. Of course, I debated the guy for months because I thought he was not an idiot exactly but some sort of problem with understanding anything he didn't think up himself.
Well, the point of this story is that the guy won. I went back a while ago and the place is dead, compared to what it was two years ago. (he's still there) I imagine people got sick of it and found other forums to go to. So, you don't win debates by beating people up, you just end up being the last man standing, since you find yourself alone.

[ORUgrad]

ORUGrad, cngrats. it could not have been easy. know that we are here for you if you need support on your new path.

Thank you so much RS. I'm sure I will continue to learn and grow. I am very thankful to have a free mind. And look forward to even more light.

[ORUgrad]

Belief in a god, as with any belief, is a choice you make. You make that choice every single day. Some people choose to believe regardless of whether it's justifiable or not (here's a hint: you have admitted that your belief is grounds for being labeled insane, and yet you persist in believing in a completely unproven set of beliefs), some people choose to change their belief system based on critical thinking.

I'm a living example of your post Bob. I had all kinds of crazy beliefs which didn;t seem crazy since most people around me also believed such things. As Dan Barker says, I didn't lose my faith, I gave it up willingly. It wasn't ME that was crazy. It was my beliefs.

[ORUgrad]

I believe that you never see the fruits of your labor in debates within one thread. You argue your point and come to the end of the line and plant a seed of doubt. Something that makes the guy on the other side question what he believes. That's how I got here. I was a Christian for over a decade and spent the last 4-5 years in various states of questioning, disbelief or making excuses for my religion.

I never expect to get a "you're right" from anyone. I just like to beat them up over the same talking points and try to get them to explain themselves until they give up. That's the fun part. :]

I made this point I think in my OP. Glad to see another person get free. :)

[ORUgrad]

I used to post over on a Christian forum. There was this guy there who had a particular belief based on a single verse in the Bible. No matter what people would post about, he would jump in and force the person to answer if they believe in that verse the way he did. Of course, I debated the guy for months because I thought he was not an idiot exactly but some sort of problem with understanding anything he didn't think up himself.
Well, the point of this story is that the guy won. I went back a while ago and the place is dead, compared to what it was two years ago. (he's still there) I imagine people got sick of it and found other forums to go to. So, you don't win debates by beating people up, you just end up being the last man standing, since you find yourself alone.

Some things are really foundational. If you oppose torture, rape, genocide, infanticide, and forced abortions, but you claim to worship a god who commanded such things, you are suffering from classic Orwellian doublethink- that is - holding two opposing viewpoints simultaneously in your mind while claiming to believe both. If you think about this one example for any length of time, you will eventually lose your faith in such a god. You must at least conclude that you oppose such things even though your god approved of such things. And since he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and does not change (as the infallible Bible says), you must conclude that he still approves of such. So is the Christian God really "Christian"?

This is the one issue that will bring the most pain to the "believer" if they will allow themselves to think. The contrast is so huge,it just isn't possible to explain it all away and be even halfway believeable.

[skullerello]

Hey, ORUgrad , This is "skullerelo" here. Just want to add my welcome-to-the- forums message here like everyone else who hasn't tried to bust your chops on OT vs NT dogma.
I have been a life-long "heathen", I grew up in a remote part of North-America called Wisconsin and I was the product of an American male Lutheran WWII veteran of German heritage who married the daughter of Italian immigrants, and my mother was excommunicated from her Catholic church, because she married a man who'd been divorced. (period) Now, granted, that's a very stupid reason for trying to drive down the number of your attending parrishoneers, but, that's the way they did things things back then, and the CHURCH still behaves that way today.
My wife's church didn't want to marry us becaause we wanted to have our ceremony down by the river ...
Regardless, she and I got married. She's completely bat-(rule 8) insane, but I still love her. I have lots of friends who belong to different churches, and among them, several members of different clergies, one of whom gave us the wicked aspices to be married, and that's why I'm writing you tonight.
I'm happy to read your posts.
Religion is an "oppiate for the masses" ; however, it divides us as a people instead of uniting us as a species on a tiny globe which we all inhabit.
That may have been religion's primary function, but thru' the centuries, we've left it6 to do just the oppositeriers, We are your gods; your gods are us, and we're making a mess of this whole situation. ORUgrad
Scholar
as a IScholar

[Marduk]

That could be another possibility, I suppose.
If you have older siblings, and while you were in the womb, you are sitting there listening to your mother tell them all about God. Somehow your little fetal mind takes it all in and becomes an unborn believer.
Kind of ruins my story, if that is true.

my memory as a human goes back to when I was 6 months old, I remember the old house I lived in before we moved, I am told this is exceptional

whats the earliest age you remember ?

[Dancing David]

I feel a little bit bad about wrecking ORUGrad's thread.
I don't see it as the way you describe it. I was born with a knowledge of God, so I don't hardly feel like a believer, as in the ordinary use of the word. I don't feel like I am alone in this because I have a sister who is just like that too.

Ah tes, an unproven assertion is the basis of everything else.

What were you raised by a robot?

This is one reason why I have no fear of discussing religion. It is almost as if it is completely out of the scope of my concern. I do not base my faith in religion because I have a direct link to God.

You have an opinion, a belief, it could be a space alien or your imagination.

That probably sounds insane but it is not some sort of magic or voices or anything like that.

Sure it is.

I just know, and for some reason, never forgot. We were all with God before we were born, as spirits, and another thing, we actually volunteered to be here.

Sure. ,ore opinion.

Some people I guess have a choice or something and I guess one option is whether or not you remember anything that happened before you became a person.

And an Invisible Pink Unicorn?

I think what most people do is take the third choice, which is, I will remember some of it for a certain length of time, and then decide if I want it to just fade away, as an unnecessary encumbrance to life.


Uh sure, iiiiiimmmaginaaaaaation.

[Fiona]

Some things are really foundational. If you oppose torture, rape, genocide, infanticide, and forced abortions, but you claim to worship a god who commanded such things, you are suffering from classic Orwellian doublethink- that is - holding two opposing viewpoints simultaneously in your mind while claiming to believe both. If you think about this one example for any length of time, you will eventually lose your faith in such a god. You must at least conclude that you oppose such things even though your god approved of such things. And since he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and does not change (as the infallible Bible says), you must conclude that he still approves of such. So is the Christian God really "Christian"?

This is the one issue that will bring the most pain to the "believer" if they will allow themselves to think. The contrast is so huge,it just isn't possible to explain it all away and be even halfway believeable.

Well it seems to me that what you say is true for some people: not, I think, for Ethnikos.

You say that decent people oppose such things as genocide, infanticide, and rape etc. I agree

You say that to the believer, God commanded such things

You conclude that anyone who worships God suffers a contradiction which cannot be resolved.

As far as I understand Ethnikos's position he resolves it by refusing the idea that God ever commanded such things in the first place. He does recognise the problem, and on this board he has shown a number of strategies for resolving it.

For example Ethnikos tries to study the bible in hebrew and he seeks to demonstrate that it can be read to mean something quite other than the usual translations suggest: so god did not command us to do bad things: that is an error.

Again Ethnikos is suspicious of many of the religious organisations and heirarchies: they seek to distort god's word for their own purposes and so they promote false translations and wrong readings. It is not clear to me whether this is because they are controlled by Satan or whether it is a matter of the pursuit of secular power. No matter.

With both of the above Ethnikos seems to say that the bible is the word of god: it has been distorted, but we have the possibility of finding the true word if we try hard as individuals.

But at other times he seems to say that it is not the word of god at all. So, for example, he has argued that the bible is the ideological justification for the actions of an ancient people: a bit like a version of history written by apologists after one of any people's more reprehensible actions. At those times he seems to say it is not the word of god at all: it is more like a national narrative.

I have had a lot of trouble getting to grips with Ethnikos's actual position because of these apparent contradictions: and i can only think that he believes in a mixture of those things, so that there are some parts of he bible not worth study for they are merely false history for political ends; and other parts which are worth study because they are the word of god but falsely represented.

I am sorry if this is not correct Ethinikos but I do honestly find it hard to grasp your position and this is my best shot

If that is anything like correct, then what people have been asking you to show is how you tell the difference between those things which are accessible of a correct translation and those which are nothing to do with god and so not worth pursuing.

The answer seems to be that you have a direct link to god and you know his nature: so you know what he would and would not do and, and you can determine what is true from that. You seem to apply that same certainty to everything you hear and read. This is what people mean by filtering through your preconceptions. There is nothing here but what you choose to believe of your God.

There is nothing wrong with that, IMO. But what puzzles me is why you go to all the trouble you do with your translations and such. Since you are necessarily going to arrive at your starting point the journey seems pointless: though if it is akin to going for a circular walk for exercise, then by all means carry on.

[ORUgrad]

Hi Fiona! :) Actually, Eth will deny such things are in the Bible. When I then show him, he will come up with an impossible interpretation of what the text could mean or say things like "Well it says to rape women, not girls." As if it is ok to rape as long as the woman is over 13 or so. Eth is not my primary target because he has an esoteric and eclectic view of Christianity that makes it difficult to know where he is coming from. With former fundie's like me, there is an absolute belief that the Bible is the word of God and therefor infallible. Therefor, pointing out such contrasts in my above post will cause much internal pain for someone with such a dogmatic view of the Bible. There just isn't anywhere for them to move. Doublethink is quite painful to think about.

[BobTheDonkey]

Hi Fiona! :) Actually, Eth will deny such things are in the Bible. When I then show him, he will come up with an impossible interpretation of what the text could mean or say things like "Well it says to rape women, not girls." As if it is ok to rape as long as the woman is over 13 or so. Eth is not my primary target because he has an esoteric and eclectic view of Christianity that makes it difficult to know where he is coming from. With former fundie's like me, there is an absolute belief that the Bible is the word of God and therefor infallible. Therefor, pointing out such contrasts in my above post will cause much internal pain for someone with such a dogmatic view of the Bible. There just isn't anywhere for them to move. Doublethink is quite painful to think about.

The doublethink leads to apologetics...which in a very severe and unique form is what Eth does. When it comes to passages Eth doesn't agree with/like, he/she twists the original Hebrew to make the Bible say something more palatable. That's apologetics the same as any other brand of Christian apologetics.

Just because it's not the form of apologetics we're used to seeing does not mean it's something other than apologetics.

This is why I continue to ask Eth how he/she knows for certain that it is god he's following, instead of the Destroyer.

[Marduk]

This is why I continue to ask Eth how he/she knows for certain that it is god he's following, instead of the Destroyer.

does it matter which fictional character he follows ?
if so may I suggest he follow Homer Simpson, in all the time I've known him, hes never let me down
:D

[Ethnikos]

With former fundie's like me, there is an absolute belief that the Bible is the word of God and therefor infallible.The Bible is infallible concerning our development of character. We should take it as if it was a wise friend, who is our mentor, teaching us how to be good.

[BobTheDonkey]

The Bible is infallible concerning our development of character. We should take it as if it was a wise friend, who is our mentor, teaching us how to be good.

Then, you believe murder, rape, and pillage are all acceptable behavior?

ETA: And, really, not just acceptable behavior, but encouraged behavior?

[Belz...]

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you and introduce myself. I grew up in a strict fundamentalist home, went to Christian private school from K-graduate school, did mission work in Africa, and received an M.Div from Oral Roberts University. I have seen many of the "faith" ministries up close and personal. I started losing faith in the Bible god at the end of my undergrad program in Biblical Studies where "the Bible is infallible" gets proven quite otherwise very quickly. By the end of seminary, I had lost complete faith in the OT god. As I am opposed to child rape, torture, and murder (among a great many other things the OT god commanded), I came to the realization that if this violent war god was really the creator, we were all screwed. Such a god cannot be pleased. And pretending like he "loves" me and I "love" him was just a lie. Living forever praising such a beast would be hell, not heaven. I came to the realization that the "good news" was really "bad news" and that the claims of Christianity are largely non-sensical. This took many years of patient deconstructing by professors and kind non believers.

Now to the word of thanks and encouragement. I know many of you get frustrated by believers who can't seem to see what you see and you might wonder why you should bother even discussing religion with someone who seems arrogant, blind, and intolerant of your views.

I am here to say that it was the patience of many kind non believers like many of you on this very site that helped me to escape. It is extremely difficult to escape such heavy, fearful brainwashing from birth. The arrogance of many believers masks deeply held fear and insecurity. Changing your worldview is a difficult and painful experience. I believe Bill Maher when he says religion warps thinking. It is very true. Blind obedient faith is valued. Thinking for one's self is seen almost as evil if it differs from the party line. Friends you thought would be there for life suddenly cannot handle the new questions and decide that satan has taken you over. So they leave without a word. It really is a nasty experience. I realized that in the Christian world view, free will is talked about and valued but no one really has it. What good is free will if you are punished for all eternity for going against what "god wants." If I had free will, why then was I always praying to know what god's will was? And why was it so hard to hear from god? So god gave me a brain that knows how to evaluate information but really wants me to be a robot for Jesus? Why was believing the right things more important that being the right person?

Many of you that take your time to patiently dialogue with believers are having an impact. You might not see it immediately or ever. But be encouraged. I know it is easy to write people off as blind, arrogant idiots. But behind all that ego is a very scared person who has had his or her brain screwed over by religion and wants to be free. If you respond kindly to their harshness, your words have so much more impact.

I know what it is like to be deeply into darkness that everyone around you calls "light." I was as deeply into fundasmentalism as one could get- from birth. And yet now I am very thankful to be free. And I just wanted to express my gratitude on this forum.

I see my former friends suffering greatly. I know the way out of the woods but they are not yet ready to follow me out. Hopefully one day.

Peace,

I'm a little late here, but welcome, and congratulations.

[Moochie]

Moochie, thanks for your insightful posts here. I would add that one thing I have noticed about my own religious upbringing is that it sought to tell me I could not trust myself and that someone else knew what was best for me. And it taught me that my will was evil and I needed to pray to know god's will. So it essentially taught me to not be "myself". Rather, be what someone else wanted me to be. Be an empty conduit for god to "use" as he saw fit! And we wonder why people have such a hard time being authentic?!? Sounds like a great recipe for a psychosis to me.

It not only is a great recipe, but it's one that works, too. I cannot enumerate the number of grossly dysfunctional families I have met where their abject dysfunction was quite clearly centered on the presence of religion in their lives -- predominantly Christian religion, and I include my own family here. I don't think there's a one among my immediate family and close relatives who has escaped unscathed. The most appalling thing, to my mind, is how such families are able to assume a veneer of normalcy about them so that unless one were like them, or at least clued to the visible evidence, one wouldn't distinguish them from those who actually are sane and healthy.


M.

[Moochie]

The doublethink leads to apologetics...which in a very severe and unique form is what Eth does. When it comes to passages Eth doesn't agree with/like, he/she twists the original Hebrew to make the Bible say something more palatable. That's apologetics the same as any other brand of Christian apologetics.

Just because it's not the form of apologetics we're used to seeing does not mean it's something other than apologetics.

This is why I continue to ask Eth how he/she knows for certain that it is god he's following, instead of the Destroyer.

I guess s/he does it in much the same way as a child might pull the blankets up over their head and believe they are thus protected from whatever frightens them at the time.


M.

[inquiringone]

Welcome! I am a theist, but recently had to stop all religious practices. I converted from born-again Christianity to paganism at age 21, then found myself getting too far with that, too. I kept finding myself quoting The Book of the Law (the Thelemite holy book) at other people, so I made myself stop all religious practices, no matter what the faith was. If I engage in any religious practice at all, I start going into religious-nut mode, which is not pretty regardless of the faith. I would put my religion above all else and try to force myself to conform to the party line at all times, because that was the only way I knew how to be religious. I still need to create a worldview that is not clogged up with religion.

Oddly enough, my parents never forced me to be religious. Indeed, they tried to discourage me from being batty, but I just went insane at age six and stayed that way on and off for the next twenty-six years.

[ORUgrad]

Welcome! I am a theist, but recently had to stop all religious practices. I converted from born-again Christianity to paganism at age 21, then found myself getting too far with that, too. I kept finding myself quoting The Book of the Law (the Thelemite holy book) at other people, so I made myself stop all religious practices, no matter what the faith was. If I engage in any religious practice at all, I start going into religious-nut mode, which is not pretty regardless of the faith. I would put my religion above all else and try to force myself to conform to the party line at all times, because that was the only way I knew how to be religious. I still need to create a worldview that is not clogged up with religion.

Oddly enough, my parents never forced me to be religious. Indeed, they tried to discourage me from being batty, but I just went insane at age six and stayed that way on and off for the next twenty-six years.

Wow, age six! What happened to you around that time to have influenced you so negatively? When you are crafting your world view, remember to always keep it "flexible". Think of yourself as always in process. People who live like they have figured it all out have the appearance of stability. But many times there is a deep underlying insecurity. And remember, it is OK NOT TO HAVE AN OPINION about something until YOU have had time to think for yourself, consider the options, and then pick the view or views that makes the most sense to you and is evidence based. No one philosophy by itself can account for all of the various phenomena of life. And there is no rule that says you have to pick only one. Take what works for you from one or several. Yes, what serves you today might not serve you in five years. When I was deconverting, I looked into many other spiritualities and tried a few on to see how they would fit. There are good things in many of them. None have been BS free. Refuse to label yourself. Remember, it is ok to be wrong. To be wrong means you are learning, recognize self error, and seek to correct. But making a religion out of anything leads to dogmatic, exclusive, and rigid thinking. You are the imperfect god of your life. That is why you have a brain. I am finally beginning to really use mine. Be flexible, and relax! Instead of giving the world a coke, I owuld like to give it a Xanex :)

The above advice is what I wish I had been taught instead of the useless crap that was masquerading as wisdom.

peace

[Ethnikos]

So is the Christian God really "Christian"?
I think so.
http://forums.randi.org/picture.php?albumid=216&pictureid=1702
Detail from Rembrandt's, "Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple".

[Marduk]

I think so.


Not going to answer my question then ?

[Dysphemist]

I'm also a little late. Congratulations ORUgrad! Your kind of OP puts a smile on my face.

[BobTheDonkey]

Not going to answer my question then ?

You mean the painting by Rembrandt, one of the greatest artists of all time*, didn't answer your question?


*to borrow a line from Doc

[Marduk]

You mean the painting by Rembrandt, one of the greatest artists of all time*, didn't answer your question?


*to borrow a line from Doc

in a word
No
:p

[ORUgrad]

I'm also a little late. Congratulations ORUgrad! Your kind of OP puts a smile on my face.

That is why I wrote it. :) Thank YOU. :D

[ORUgrad]

Jesus and the money changers:

Christians like to say Jesus was fully god and fully human. Yet when it comes to the human aspect of JEsus, they think of his human side as just his physical body aparently. So they see everything JEsus did and said in the Bible as completely spiritual. So when his mother complains the wine has run out, and JEsus says to her "Woman, why are you bothering me with this?" or when he calls the Gentile woman a "dog" when she asks for healing of her son, or when he curses the fig tree for not having figs on it, or when he takes a whip and beats the money changers, these are seen as deeply spiritual lessons for us to meditate on. Perhaps Jesus as "fully human" was subjected to human shortcomings like impatience, anger, hunger, and ego? Heresy! I have yet to see anywhere where Christians can point to a single instance of Jesus showing his humanity. Why? Because they see the "human" side as sinful. And they don't want to infer that Jesus was sinful. So all of Jesus "human acts" were spiritualized.

And Eth, I don;t think a painting of Jesus driving out money changers rises to the level of the atrocities of YHWH.

[Marduk]

Detail from Rembrandt's, "Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple".

should be renamed "how to be convicted of violent assault"
:D

[inquiringone]

Wow, age six! What happened to you around that time to have influenced you so negatively?
peace


I heard about original sin at church and went nuts. I already thought I was inferior to others, but wanted to know why it was. Voila! Church gave me the answer. Never mind that it was wrong. When you're six and an adult tells you something, you're apt to believe it. Of course, I was rather stupid and believed it for 15 years after that...

I am also the only person I know of who dragged her mom to church as a child! Mom would sometimes "kidnap" me and take me to the museum instead whenever I was getting off the deep end.

[Ethnikos]

my memory as a human goes back to when I was 6 months old, I remember the old house I lived in before we moved, I am told this is exceptional

whats the earliest age you remember ?

18 months when my brother was born.
That's probably the only significant thing to change around that time.

[Ethnikos]

Jesus and the money changers:

Christians like to say Jesus was fully god and fully human. Yet when it comes to the human aspect of JEsus, they think of his human side as just his physical body aparently.
Statement 1: Jesus was fully god and fully human
Statement 2: his human side as just his physical body

If statement 2 was true, then statement 1 would be false.
Someone in the hypothetical "Christians" did not check their logic.
Not all Christians are so lame.

[ORUgrad]

Statement 1: Jesus was fully god and fully human
Statement 2: his human side as just his physical body

If statement 2 was true, then statement 1 would be false.
Someone in the hypothetical "Christians" did not check their logic.
Not all Christians are so lame.

It isn't what you say, it is how you act that ultimately determins what you believe. I agree that Christians do not SAY the human side of Jesus was only his physical body. Yet that is how they behave. Nothing Jesus ever says in the Bible is looked upon other than spiritual- at least by fundamentalists.

[Ethnikos]

It isn't what you say, it is how you act that ultimately determins what you believe. I agree that Christians do not SAY the human side of Jesus was only his physical body. Yet that is how they behave. Nothing Jesus ever says in the Bible is looked upon other than spiritual- at least by fundamentalists.The Gospel is nothing like a biography. It exists, not to explain what Jesus was really like, but to lay down a lot of concepts having to do with the spiritual. So you don't get much of the human side of the man.
For us, maybe the important thing is to understand the principle of indwelling divinity. Jesus is the ultimate example of that. We need to be like him, and have that in us, in order to be good. So there would be an emphasis on that aspect of Jesus' life.
Honestly, I'm mystified about what you are calling fundamentalism. From the description of it, it seems very foreign to me. To me, a fundamental belief is the ten commandments. That's just something that no matter how you interpret scripture, you just don't mess with it. Other than that, there shouldn't be a strict orthodoxy. Except, maybe what you are talking about. There are people introducing the heresy that Jesus had a sinful nature. To me, that would be just wrong and not something to be taught, for any reason. I think that would destroy the very foundation of Christianity. "The prince of this world cometh," said Jesus, "and hath nothing in me."

[ORUgrad]

How can Jesus be fully human and not have a sinful nature since according to Christian teaching all humans are born with a sinful nature. What is sin? To the early Greeks it was to miss the mark. To make mistakes is different than willful evildoing. If you are going to argue that Jesus never made mistakes, then it is YOU who are espousing heresy.

[Ethnikos]

How can Jesus be fully human and not have a sinful nature since according to Christian teaching all humans are born with a sinful nature. What is sin? To the early Greeks it was to miss the mark. To make mistakes is different than willful evildoing. If you are going to argue that Jesus never made mistakes, then it is YOU who are espousing heresy.Heresy, according to who?
Sinning is not making mistakes. It is knowingly placing your own judgment before God's judgment. That's what Adam did in the Garden. God judged that it would be bad for Adam to eat from the tree. Adam decided he could use his own judgment, overriding God's.
Jesus decided to always follow God's decisions, all the way to the cross.

[Dancing David]

The Gospel is nothing like a biography. It exists, not to explain what Jesus was really like, but to lay down a lot of concepts having to do with the spiritual. So you don't get much of the human side of the man.
For us, maybe the important thing is to understand the principle of indwelling divinity. Jesus is the ultimate example of that. We need to be like him, and have that in us, in order to be good. So there would be an emphasis on that aspect of Jesus' life.
Honestly, I'm mystified about what you are calling fundamentalism. From the description of it, it seems very foreign to me. To me, a fundamental belief is the ten commandments. That's just something that no matter how you interpret scripture, you just don't mess with it. Other than that, there shouldn't be a strict orthodoxy. Except, maybe what you are talking about. There are people introducing the heresy that Jesus had a sinful nature. To me, that would be just wrong and not something to be taught, for any reason. I think that would destroy the very foundation of Christianity. "The prince of this world cometh," said Jesus, "and hath nothing in me."


"I don't like the way the word fundamentalist is used by the people who call themselves fundamentalists. So it isn't special pleading."

[cyborg]

Jesus decided to always follow God's decisions, all the way to the cross.

Quite convenient that there is no action he could perform otherwise no?

[Belz...]

I know how God has worked in my life in miraculous ways.

No you don't.

[Marduk]

18 months when my brother was born.
That's probably the only significant thing to change around that time.

ok and you already stated that your parents were fundies, so that completely destroys your claim that you were born knowing about God doesn't it as you have no evidence for that. It would be far more accurate to say that you were born like the rest of us knowing nothing and were then indocrinated into christianity by your parents at a time you dont even remember because you were too young

so what are we saying here
your belief is a result of brainwashing as a child by your parents
simple as

can you tell me next, was your upbringing from when you do remember it filled with christian thought provided by your parents too ?

;)

[Ethnikos]

"I don't like the way the word fundamentalist is used by the people who call themselves fundamentalists. So it isn't special pleading."You can look it up in Wikipedia and it says that the word fundamentalism was not in the dictionary before 1950. It came about from a controversy about how to interpret scripture. Liberals could look at the archaeological data, and the advances in linguistic studies and science, to make a different view of what the Bible is, and what is saying.
I can go along with the liberal view up to a point. The point being, 1. God has a law that still applies, 2. Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the law. On those two points, I am a fundamentalist.
I am not attempting to argue that I am somehow exempt from the criticism of using special pleading. If being of a limited fundamentalism make me a fundamentalist, then I will accept that, but I am not like the people that ORUgrad describes and I feel he was right to get away from them and to the best of his ability, he should decontaminate his thinking that is influenced by them. I wish him good luck in that endeavor. I am working on my own understanding by reading the works of recognised scholars in the field, namely, F. M. Cross, and Mark S. Smith.

[Ethnikos]

can you tell me next, was your upbringing from when you do remember it filled with christian thought provided by your parents too ?

;)I remember certain events in my life but I don't have clear memories of a religious nature from probably before I was around six.
I do remember talking with my sister about what we remembered from before we were born, and I would guess that it would have been at the time that I first was able to talk well enough to hold a conversation. My sister is very close to my age and older. She could have been articulate enough to describe her own memories, before I was able to articulate my own, but I do not remember that ever happening.

[BobTheDonkey]

I remember certain events in my life but I don't have clear memories of a religious nature from probably before I was around six.
I do remember talking with my sister about what we remembered from before we were born, and I would guess that it would have been at the time that I first was able to talk well enough to hold a conversation. My sister is very close to my age and older. She could have been articulate enough to describe her own memories, before I was able to articulate my own, but I do not remember that ever happening.

Let me burst that little bubble for you...

See, memories are stored in the form of words (this is why you need a context to visualize the memory). In order to be able to remember "a computer," you have to know the word to label it. "goo-ga-goo" isn't a language you speak any longer (at least, I don't think so) and isn't really a proper language. So, when you state that she wasn't articulate enough to describe her own memories before you were articulate, you really mean to say "I wasn't articulate enough to know whether she could recall her memories before I could."

[Marduk]

I remember certain events in my life but I don't have clear memories of a religious nature from probably before I was around six.
I do remember talking with my sister about what we remembered from before we were born, and I would guess that it would have been at the time that I first was able to talk well enough to hold a conversation. My sister is very close to my age and older. She could have been articulate enough to describe her own memories, before I was able to articulate my own, but I do not remember that ever happening.

you stated elsewhere that your parents were fundies
are you saying that they never talked about religion with their own children
like whos in denial now then ?
:D

[Ethnikos]

you stated elsewhere that your parents were fundies
are you saying that they never talked about religion with their own children
like whos in denial now then ?
:DThey probably did, but I don't remember a specific instance, other than my father would every Saturday at sundown, read to us out of the Bible. I think when I began to have a concept of religion was in church, in the kid's class before the main service.

[Marduk]

They probably did, but I don't remember a specific instance, other than my father would every Saturday at sundown, read to us out of the Bible. I think when I began to have a concept of religion was in church, in the kid's class before the main service.

ok heres how that sounds in the real world

we have a child
who was preached to about God by his parents from the moment he was born, and then once a week theyd take him away and put him in the care of someone who preaches religion to kids professionally before they took you into a religious service to enforce the conditioning that they had started

and really, you still wanna pretend that you have always known about God without any outside help, go ahead, but you need to address the fact at some point that you were brainwashed to think that way from a very early age

and then maybe you could understand the way people who arent brainwashed react to some of the things you say
;)

[Cynic]

The striking thing about that is "how it looks in the real world" is virtually identical to "how he actually stated it". It's amazing how conditioning can prevent us from seeing what everyone else does to the point where it doesn't even need to be altered.

[ORUgrad]

Heresy, according to who?

According to every mainline Christian denomination.

Sinning is not making mistakes. It is knowingly placing your own judgment before God's judgment.

Maybe you could do a search for the Hebrew word "Het" or the Greek word "Hamartia". You have created your own definition. It means to err, to miss the mark. It does not mean to willfully do evil. But I'm sure you will not accept this etymology because it goes against what you have decided to believe. I have given you Bible verses you claimed did not exist and you still keep your beliefs even when your own Bible contradicts you! Continuing to believe things in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is the mark of someone brainwashed. I can't be to hard on you, though. This described me for years.

That's what Adam did in the Garden. God judged that it would be bad for Adam to eat from the tree. Adam decided he could use his own judgment, overriding God's.

Really? Why do you suppose God put the tree there then? And since Adam did not know what good and evil were, how did he know disobeying god would be considered evil? And why did God not want him to know this? And why did God not take the knowledge away from him or prevent his offspring from having it? One would think if Adam had been smart, he would have cut the tree down and made a shed or firewood or something out of it. Can't eat from a dead tree right?

YHWY decides eating from a particular tree is bad but rape, genocide, and forced abortions are just fine. Ok sure. Come on Eth, you worship a god who came up with the idea of eternal torture and who commanded mass genocide and well over a dozen more of the most horrific crimes imaginable. THINK man! THINK! You are looking in the face of evil and are calling it good! Your mind is warped.


Jesus decided to always follow God's decisions, all the way to the cross.

Well I guess it's easy to do if you ARE God right? Isn't that a bit like me saying "Please admire me, I followed all my own decisions."

[Ethnikos]

. . .and really, you still wanna pretend that you have always known about God without any outside help, go ahead, but you need to address the fact at some point that you were brainwashed to think that way from a very early age. . .

;)I had a knowledge of God that was not at all from what I was taught, and I understood a long time before I ever understood the religion of the church, or the Bible.

[Marduk]

I had a knowledge of God that was not at all from what I was taught, and I understood a long time before I ever understood the religion of the church, or the Bible.

you would believe that, so did most of the peoples temple
right before the flavour Aid

you have been brainwashed into believing it to the point that you need to believe it or you won't think you live a valid existence

can you even imagine living your life without God now ?

[Ethnikos]

According to every mainline Christian denomination. Wikipedia, in the article on Christology says:
The sinless nature of Jesus Christ involves two elements according to MacLeod, “First, Christ was free of actual sin.” Studying the gospels there is no reference to Jesus praying for the forgiveness of sin, nor confessing sin. The assertion is that Jesus did not commit sin, nor could he be proven guilty of sin; he had no vices. In fact, he is quoted as asking, "Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?" in John 8:46. “Secondly, he was free from inherent sin (or "original sin").”It would seem a little odd for Wikipedia to be making these declarations about the beliefs in Jesus, if it was only some tiny fringe group who believed he was really sinless.
Maybe you could do a search for the Hebrew word "Het" or the Greek word "Hamartia". You have created your own definition. It means to err, to miss the mark. It does not mean to willfully do evil. But I'm sure you will not accept this etymology because it goes against what you have decided to believe. I have given you Bible verses you claimed did not exist and you still keep your beliefs even when your own Bible contradicts you! Continuing to believe things in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is the mark of someone brainwashed. I can't be to hard on you, though. This described me for years.Job 1:22 "In all this Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with moral impropriety"
Here's a verse that uses the word you recommended I look up, chata'.
Here's what part of the translator's notes from NetBible, concerning the word here translated as, impropriety: "It is possible that “folly” would capture some of what Job meant here."
Here Job does not sin because he trusts in God's good judgment.
Really? Why do you suppose God put the tree there then? And since Adam did not know what good and evil were, how did he know disobeying god would be considered evil? And why did God not want him to know this? And why did God not take the knowledge away from him or prevent his offspring from having it? One would think if Adam had been smart, he would have cut the tree down and made a shed or firewood or something out of it. Can't eat from a dead tree right? Funny how quick everyone seems to be to take the side of the Serpent. It does not say that God put the tree there. It just says, in the midst of the Garden was this tree. And the knowledge was of death, and Hell, where the tree grew up from, hungry to lure unsuspecting mortals to its abode in the earth.
YHWY decides eating from a particular tree is bad but rape, genocide, and forced abortions are just fine. Ok sure. Come on Eth, you worship a god who came up with the idea of eternal torture and who commanded mass genocide and well over a dozen more of the most horrific crimes imaginable. THINK man! THINK! You are looking in the face of evil and are calling it good! Your mind is warped. Eternal torture was an invention of Dark Ages clerics. The Bible does not condone rape and God Destroyed Sodom for it. The people who you claim to be victims of genocide were people who had the opportunity to repent of their idolatry and accept the God of Moses and Joshua.
The Bible says David was a man after God's heart. When he was fleeing Saul, he took refuge in a certain city. When someone notified Saul of his whereabouts, and he came to attack the city, David told the people he did not want them to suffer for protecting him, and chose to make his escape from the city. That shows a spirit of self sacrifice and love for others. David being like God in this respect shows how good God is.
Well I guess it's easy to do if you ARE God right? Isn't that a bit like me saying "Please admire me, I followed all my own decisions."No.
Jesus was operating as an independent person and subjected himself to a higher authority.

[Ethnikos]

can you even imagine living your life without God now ?Nor have I ever.

That's a ridiculous question.

I would not be alive, if not for God.

[BobTheDonkey]

Nor have I ever.

That's a ridiculous question.

I would not be alive, if not for God.

http://www.funnycorner.net/funny-pictures/4796/face-palm.jpg

[Marduk]

Nor have I ever.

That's a ridiculous question.

I would not be alive, if not for God.

ha totally brainwashed
proved my point perfectly thanks
:p

[Ethnikos]

ha totally brainwashed
proved my point perfectly thanks
:pNo.
When I was in Heaven, and with God and the angels, I chose to come to this planet as a person and to retain the knowledge of where I came from, in order to be a witness to God's goodness.

[Cynic]

When I was in Heaven, and with God and the angels, I chose to come to this planet as a person and to retain the knowledge of where I came from, in order to be a witness to God's goodness.

Seriously? *backs away slowly and resigns from the thread*

[Ethnikos]

Seriously? *backs away slowly and resigns from the thread*
I am sure there has to be lots of people like that. I can't be the only person like that. Like I said, my sister is the same as I am (as far as having a memory of God). People think she is an angel and everyone loves her. People believe that she is without sin.
I say, I can't imagine her ever sinning. Well, I know I have, so I have to be a little suspicious.
Here's a pic of my sinless angelic sister:
http://forums.randi.org/picture.php?albumid=216&pictureid=1708

[Brainache]

No.
When I was in Heaven, and with God and the angels, I chose to come to this planet as a person and to retain the knowledge of where I came from, in order to be a witness to God's goodness.

So, did you have a list of options and you chose late twentieth century Earth as a birthplace?
Could you have chosen life on a planet orbiting a different star with reptoid slugs for parents?
Could you have chosen Earth, but at a different time, say a century from now?

I see this "being a witness to God's goodness" involves making whacky internet posts, anything else?

[ORUgrad]

Wikipedia, in the article on Christology says:
It would seem a little odd for Wikipedia to be making these declarations about the beliefs in Jesus, if it was only some tiny fringe group who believed he was really sinless.
Job 1:22 "In all this Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with moral impropriety"
Here's a verse that uses the word you recommended I look up, chata'.
Here's what part of the translator's notes from NetBible, concerning the word here translated as, impropriety: "It is possible that “folly” would capture some of what Job meant here."
Here Job does not sin because he trusts in God's good judgment.
Funny how quick everyone seems to be to take the side of the Serpent. It does not say that God put the tree there. It just says, in the midst of the Garden was this tree. And the knowledge was of death, and Hell, where the tree grew up from, hungry to lure unsuspecting mortals to its abode in the earth.
Eternal torture was an invention of Dark Ages clerics. The Bible does not condone rape and God Destroyed Sodom for it. The people who you claim to be victims of genocide were people who had the opportunity to repent of their idolatry and accept the God of Moses and Joshua.
The Bible says David was a man after God's heart. When he was fleeing Saul, he took refuge in a certain city. When someone notified Saul of his whereabouts, and he came to attack the city, David told the people he did not want them to suffer for protecting him, and chose to make his escape from the city. That shows a spirit of self sacrifice and love for others. David being like God in this respect shows how good God is.
No.
Jesus was operating as an independent person and subjected himself to a higher authority.

WOW. Well, I was going to respond more completely to this until I read your post about being with God and the angels to witness god's goodness and just realized that as of now, you are unreachable. You go on saying things like "the Bible does not condone rape" when I have shown clearly from the Bible (just scroll up) that YHWH absolutely does. All of your points have been refuted many times before. We are arguing in circles now. Who do you think put the tree there? Did Satan have the power to put the tree there? If so, why did God allow it to stay. Your arguments are smoke screens. I've thrown up a lot of them in my delusional past. Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan which was a baptism of repentance. I suppose Jesus was just play acting like when he asked god why he had forsaken him. He was just quoting Psalms right? More play acting. Do you consider impatience, insults, cursing, lying, beating people, disobeying and disrespecting one's mother to be sins? Because Jesus did all those things in the Bible. The orthodox Christian teaching is that Jesus was fully god and fully man. You cannot be fully man if you are not born under the same conditions as all men are. Original sin is a ridiculous doctrine. But if you believe in it, then Jesus must have been born under it as well, otherwise his "sacrifice" was meaningless. But please don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs. The Bible clearly shows Jesus "sinning". I do feel for you- as you will never be a whole person while living under such delusions. Perhaps this is the fate of all of us. We just have different delusions. However, there is something to be said about reviewing evidence and changing one'e beliefs to reflect the facts.

I'm sure you will write back and say Jesus never did those things to which I will privide the Bible references to which you will claim "context" or the Bible doesn't mean what it says, etc. etc. Or you will ignore it and throw up another smoke screen. The hardest bonds to break are the chains we place on ourselves.

[Marduk]

WOW. Well, I was going to respond more completely to this until I read your post about being with God and the angels to witness god's goodness and just realized that as of now, you are unreachable. You go on saying things like "the Bible does not condone rape" when I have shown clearly from the Bible (just scroll up) that YHWH absolutely does. All of your points have been refuted many times before. We are arguing in circles now. Who do you think put the tree there? Did Satan have the power to put the tree there? If so, why did God allow it to stay. Your arguments are smoke screens. I've thrown up a lot of them in my delusional past. Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan which was a baptism of repentance. I suppose Jesus was just play acting like when he asked god why he had forsaken him. He was just quoting Psalms right? More play acting. Do you consider impatience, insults, cursing, lying, beating people, disobeying and disrespecting one's mother to be sins? Because Jesus did all those things in the Bible. The orthodox Christian teaching is that Jesus was fully god and fully man. You cannot be fully man if you are not born under the same conditions as all men are. Original sin is a ridiculous doctrine. But if you believe in it, then Jesus must have been born under it as well, otherwise his "sacrifice" was meaningless. But please don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs. The Bible clearly shows Jesus "sinning". I do feel for you- as you will never be a whole person while living under such delusions. Perhaps this is the fate of all of us. We just have different delusions. However, there is something to be said about reviewing evidence and changing one'e beliefs to reflect the facts.

I'm sure you will write back and say Jesus never did those things to which I will privide the Bible references to which you will claim "context" or the Bible doesn't mean what it says, etc. etc. Or you will ignore it and throw up another smoke screen. The hardest bonds to break are the chains we place on ourselves.

you know you are far more eloquent than I am, I was just going to say he was deluded, ridicule him a little and leave it at that
you totally rock
thanks
:)

[Ethnikos]

So, did you have a list of options and you chose late twentieth century Earth as a birthplace?
Could you have chosen life on a planet orbiting a different star with reptoid slugs for parents?
Could you have chosen Earth, but at a different time, say a century from now?
It's not like I was given an option that everyone doesn't get.
It is not necessarily a reflection of any special quality in myself.
And I was not given a special task to accomplish by God. It was something I decided I wanted to do. So I don't necessarily have the force of the whole host behind me to inflict harm on all who oppose me.
I had a choice; go, or don't go. Evil Planet, or good planet.
Next choice, since I am going into the realm of spiritual darkness; a memory of the light, or no memory or temporary memory.
That's about it, then it is up to God to direct you specifically.
I don't see how anyone would think this whole thing is odd. If I said this at church, no one would really take any special notice of it.
I see this "being a witness to God's goodness" involves making whacky internet posts, anything else?Edit religious books and print them up, is mainly what I do. Research religious topics and compile them into pamphlets.