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When I was a believer, a Christian, I could have answered all these questions with total confidence and complete honesty, including the simple fact that I couldn't always explain what God was up to. Nothing dishonest about any of that. No more dishonest than anything I try to explain in the way of my beliefs now as an atheist. The reasons we have these differences are simply not reconcilable with facts, reason, and logic. It's that simple really.
I think it was coming to this understanding that also forced me to become an atheist now that I think about it...
I agree with the bold. When I was an atheist, it is the exact situation I faced after my encounter. It is what prompted my decades-long search for answers. The difficulty of acquiring facts and reconciling them with sound reasoning and logic is what places any answers out of the reach of most.
Such a situation would be a bad design plan which is why I resist the idea that our Reality is the result of God's Will or Grand plan. Most believers in the OmniGod resist or reject an impotent God with respect to ANYTHING making it even more irreconcilable with our experienced Reality. I accept Him as I experienced Him and place no such grandiose demands on God. He is how He is, period.
The Christians seem to have cut and run. I would just like to cap off their desertion by asking them:
The Bible describes Yahweh as saying to the israelites, "I the Lord your god am a JEALOUS god, visiting punishment to the 4th generation of those that sin against me bla bla". Someone please explain to me how a god who supposedly created the universe...I mean this guy can literally hold a dozen galaxies in the palm of his hand....how this god can be bigger than our universe yet he acts like an immature adolescent girl when a guy she has a crush on makes goo-goo eyes at another girl.
I mean has anyone ever heard anything more ridiculous than a god acting like a spoiled little brat?
YOU ran.
I answered on their behalf...but YOU have done what you accuse others of and "cut & run".
Because the answer defeats all your arguments...so you hafta hide from it.
The Christians seem to have cut and run. I would just like to cap off their desertion by asking them:
The Bible describes Yahweh as saying to the israelites, "I the Lord your god am a JEALOUS god, visiting punishment to the 4th generation of those that sin against me bla bla". Someone please explain to me how a god who supposedly created the universe...I mean this guy can literally hold a dozen galaxies in the palm of his hand....how this god can be bigger than our universe yet he acts like an immature adolescent girl when a guy she has a crush on makes goo-goo eyes at another girl.
I mean has anyone ever heard anything more ridiculous than a god acting like a spoiled little brat?
So much for me wasting more of my time. Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the exit sign. I needed that...
I agree with the bold. When I was an atheist, it is the exact situation I faced after my encounter. It is what prompted my decades-long search for answers. The difficulty of acquiring facts and reconciling them with sound reasoning and logic is what places any answers out of the reach of most.
Such a situation would be a bad design plan which is why I resist the idea that our Reality is the result of God's Will or Grand plan. Most believers in the OmniGod resist or reject an impotent God with respect to ANYTHING making it even more irreconcilable with our experienced Reality. I accept Him as I experienced Him and place no such grandiose demands on God. He is how He is, period.
Your encounter seems to suggest God is up to something having to do with us, and I think it's that something that Thrill wants to know more about. Even if Thrill wants to pretend to be an atheist...
You have had contact! So you are far better to offer a clue than I can. About this too, even if it was a message of "agape love," the implications are profound and also hard to reconcile with much we might otherwise simply call reality. Reality or the lack of agape love all around us.
Let me not hold up my exit, however. I've got encounters of a different kind to attend to now...
YOU ran.
I answered on their behalf...but YOU have done what you accuse others of and "cut & run".
Because the answer defeats all your arguments...so you hafta hide from it.
I wouldn't say Thrill is hiding. He just doesn't like grappling with facts, reason and logic that don't fit his agenda here. Whatever that agenda is exactly, I'm not too sure, but it is not the sort of thing that squares too well with the thinking or arguments of an atheist. Nor with theists it would seem, so I think that makes Thrill something like a Pantheist. Generically nebulous and beyond definition!
Cheers. Here's to another round tomorrow! That's if I want to engage in more of this dizziness that is...
We too have the solar panels on our roof and an EV. Haven't had much the problem of the grid going down other than very short power outages on rare occasions. That a more common problem for you?
Roof solar and EV here as well. Very satisfying to make a 2 hour round trip to a nearby city without using a drop of gasoline -- especially since power generation here from coal is long gone and on sunny summer days leaving the car on the charger comes from the panels anyway, which are sized a little bigger than our typical energy needs.
Starting to see a little more of outages as we have seen more extreme weather events. Not all that consequential yet, but I think the trend is not heading in the Right Direction. Since I am 100% dependent on technology for my livelihood, I tend to be a little more concerned about it. Besides, there's the collateral advantage of saving $ on purchased electricity by taking some of our stuff routinely off-grid, and the extra protection from power surges from things like lightning strikes. During a bad storm I can quick-disconnect from the panels and everything powered by the solar generators is completely internal to the house.
And it helps that I enjoy messing with the gadgets!
I wouldn't say Thrill is hiding. He just doesn't like grappling with facts, reason and logic that don't fit his agenda here. Whatever that agenda is exactly, I'm not too sure, but it is not the sort of thing that squares too well with the thinking or arguments of an atheist. Nor with theists it would seem, so I think that makes Thrill something like a Pantheist. Generically nebulous and beyond definition!
Cheers. Here's to another round tomorrow! That's if I want to engage in more of this dizziness that is...
Hmmmmm...I sense a little different vibe to your posts very recently.
What's up?
First rule of debate is "Never put forth a hypothesis for which you haven't got an adequate defense if someone should challenge it." I ask what possible spiritual growth could occur in a stillborn or an infant dying a horrible senseless murder. Mystic obviously cannot answer such a question because the premise God is concerned solely with the spiritual growth of a human who didn't even have a chance at spiritual growth is therefore ridiculous on its face. Just one more example of Christians not thinking through a premise its own absurd conclusion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Why do Christians always cut and run when you ask them a question they aren't capable of answering? Can't they at least man up and admit, "You ask a question I can't answer, sorry"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Okay, bad choice of words. Let's say discussion. So let me run the question by you since Mystic has apparently put me on ignore and taken a powder, which doesn't make a bit of difference to me frankly, but I'd still like to get the question answered, preferably by a Christian but you'll have to do :
what possible spiritual growth could occur in a stillborn or an infant dying a horrible senseless murder?
You are a very impatient man, Thrill. I have been cutting back my participation here primarily because of the intransigence or what LearnMe would call the "cement" of the views here. My views are hard-come-by and detailed reflecting a serious effort to reconcile the myriad contradictions and inconsistencies in extant God-belief. It seems that few to none here are willing to do the same or even engage the results rigorously. However, I find just bemoaning the inadequacies or irrationalities of extant viewpoints as you do to be unproductive. Pointing them out is useful, the rest is pointless.
The primary issue that confronts current believers in God is their physical (carnal) mindset. This physical existence is NOT the important one. It is only the beginning. The fact that our Spiritual existence is only beginning means that there will be continued existence after our physical demise, whenever or however it happens. Everything we know or can know about life from our experiences here indicates that it proceeds from the "seed" through definite stages to maturity. Why you would think that our spiritual existence would be any different is beyond me.
Are we not paying attention or is this another case of very selective attention? AKA confirmation bias...
As explained before, "those fleeting nano-seconds of existence can be felt to be entire life times when considered in the realm of divinity. During that period of time that is frankly unlimited and immeasurable, anything is possible." No matter whether it's a fetus or an infant or a young child. Or why in God's name not?
In the realm of the divine, time is not an issue or factor, and NO ONE can possibly guess let alone say what Yahweh is up to! Give it up, Thrill. This game of playing both sides to the middle is simply not logical, reasonable or tenable in this arena you want to suggest might exist but refuse to accept how. In the realm of divinity, truly anything is possible! Beyond even YOUR comprehension!
First of all I have no need to get into all the pseudo-theosophical new age mumbo-jumbo in the 2nd paragraph. I don't care what I can or cannot comprehend on God's level of understanding because it has no relevance to me here on this physical plane of understanding.
I made a simple proposition: infants have no level of spiritual development going on in their undeveloped minds. Mystic's statement of fact--that his pagan god is only concerned with spiritual development and not physical development, to me and to any rational thinking adult is a red herring. In short, absolutely nothing good came out of the slaughter of the children in Uvalde, and indeed any child who dies in such a manner. It's a ridiculous ruse made by Christians who have to find some kind of way to whitewash their god of all responsibility for such a tragedy.
But there's no need for them to make excuses for their god period. All they have to do is acknowledge the truth: the reason millions of children die so horribly every year has absolutely NOTHING to do with any kind of a god, pagan Christian god or otherwise because whatever idiot god runs this universe has totally abandoned it. It's a senseless crime that's been happening since the world was formed. I don't try to make sense of it because no sense CAN be made out of it. I say the REAL entity that started all this muck and then dumped the human race to fend for itself is responsible for it, but it won't own up to it. That's a reality I and Christians have to come to accept.
You are a very impatient man, Thrill. I have been cutting back my participation here primarily because of the intransigence or what LearnMe would call the "cement" of the views here. My views are hard-come-by and detailed reflecting a serious effort to reconcile the myriad contradictions and inconsistencies in extant God-belief. It seems that few to none here are willing to do the same or even engage the results rigorously. However, I find just bemoaning the inadequacies or irrationalities of extant viewpoints as you do to be unproductive. Pointing them out is useful, the rest is pointless.
The primary issue that confronts current believers in God is their physical (carnal) mindset. This physical existence is NOT the important one. It is only the beginning. The fact that our Spiritual existence is only beginning means that there will be continued existence after our physical demise, whenever or however it happens. Everything we know or can know about life from our experiences here indicates that it proceeds from the "seed" through definite stages to maturity. Why you would think that our spiritual existence would be any different is beyond me.
I think you have unreasonable expectations for people to spend a lot of time on what is just one person's personal and very individualistic viewpoints.
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