51. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #74146 by GoneGolfing on September 27, 2007 at 12:11 pm

Revcort-

""He was preaching in this particular sermon on Romans 12:1-2 on presenting your body as a living sacrifice. In this sermon, he spoke about a great many things, but the thing that strongly stood out to me this morning had to with the infinite nature of God. He illustrated very well, by the grace of God, that knowing God is our primary aim and that we know so little of Him in this life. As I prayerfully pondered that thought, I realized how little I know about the Lord.""

Once again you prove that you base your entire belief system on the scriptures alone. You hear a sermon based on Rom. 12 and then generate this whole new thought process on how weak, arrogant, and unenlightened of the scriptures you are, and then go on to attribute God with revealing these faults to you, when in fact it was Washer that stimulated your brain to produce these thoughts in your mind.

Of course we know very little of God ! How can a finite being know much about an infinite being at all? How can an imperfect being ever know anything about a perfect being at all? Who can understand perfection? How is it possible for an infinate perfect being to create a finite imperfect being in the first place ! ? Perfection can only beget perfection and thats the sobering truth of the ability of a perfect infinite being. So please understand that truth. God can't create something that is imperfect!. Humans are not, and at birth are not, and never were perfect. We're imperfect therefore you know what this means.

To me it would be impossible for God to even "think" of an imperfect creation plan and therefore couldn't have followed through with the imperfect one that we see.

Theists just refuse to get their heads around the fact that this so called infinate and perfect nature of God made it utterly impossible for him to have created the imperfect world in which we live. God simply cannot go against his own nature and therefore can't do what his nature won't allow him to.

Theist says:

"But God repented, changed his mind' etc. etc etc."

^^Sorry, that's not a perfect God. A perfect God after creating is unable to repent, change his mind etc. Once again we're back to the Iron age texts for that statement above and once again I say "religion poisons everything"

Eve eating the apple does not negate this either, as God forseeing the future would have seen that this plan was imperfect and therefore couldn't have gone ahead. "But what about Jesus ! doesn't he make it perfect again?" ..The bible may say so but, sorry, remember, God can't create anything imperfect from the get go, so the existance that we see could not have been created by him, so thats out to.

A perfectly infinite and selfsufficient being has need of nothing, absolutely nothing, and therefore it is this natural need of nothing that makes it impossible for this being to create anything at all which would go against this natural need. To create would show need of something and something perfect has need of nothing so this being in fact would never create anything.

Are you getting this Rev ? You love to go on endlessly with bible discussions and that's cool :-), but are you wrapping your head around this ?

A Perfect, Infinite, All powerful, All knowing being is unable to create this mess we see.

"But what if God sees this creation as perfect?"

Nonsense! It would be less than himself, in being mortal and finite, and therefore imperfect, and therefore impossible for him to create. God can create no more or no less than what he is, that being perfection.

Answer then ? I'll go with the current and best theories that being the Big Bang and Evolution, as they are quite capable of creating imperfection :-)

GG

BTW: ""What brother john is doing is watering the lawn while the house is on fire.""

Careful now Rev !

52. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #74101 by GoneGolfing on September 27, 2007 at 8:33 am

Billy-

""I also found that you started believing god's absence was because you did something wrong.""

So so true mate ! . You go into this torturous and unneccesary bout of flagellation thinking: its me, its me !. And at the same time your rational mind is yelling: Its Not you! and please Stop this nonsense! your killing me !

I remember all those pitiful trips to the altar thinking it was me and the only way to correct my struggle was to confess and make known this weakness in me. "Confess thy faults one to another"......You could feel all eyes on you as you made the trek down the aisle and just knew all the folk were thinking "The poor bloke, hope he gets it all right". You'd then go home after your sob and come to Jesus moment and realize within 24 hrs. that all was still not well and nothing had changed..... God was still absent.

GG

53. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #74079 by GoneGolfing on September 27, 2007 at 7:08 am

Revcort,

I can empathize with you. As a former Sunday school teacher/deacon/bible study leader I thought I knew it all when it came to the word and would defend it fervently. Then one day I realized that not only did I not know it all about the word, but that the word itself was hard to explain, hard to validate, and..well..hard to believe. I seriously questioned its usefulness for us in this day and age, as it was conceived by iron age thinkers with iron age intellegence knowing very little about the realities of this world.

After reading it for all those years I never thought that I would see so many unanswered questions, unanswered prayers, unfulfilled promises and unfulfilled prophecies, to name a few.

You say that God revealed your shortcoming to you in prayer........I could have only wished for that in my case. As I struggled with my faith, God didn't show up. I didn't hear his voice. I didn't see him. I didn't sense him. He didn't send anybody along with a direct message about me . The bible brought no relief or answers either. I felt nothing of God. His absence became a great disappointment. I was left only with my own mind to sort things out and come to the realizations that I have.

I believe that your above stated feelings of sorrow and guilt are through feedback of the beliefs that you hold and not by divine revelation as you think.

Trust us, we're not offened as much by the dogmatic delivery of your beliefs, as we are with your insistance that these beliefs are utterly true and verifiable.

I don't know what you were expecting when you came to this site, but this is not an easy place to defend beliefs in, and I'm not just speaking of religious ones either. No one gets off the hook easy here with any type of belief, and rightly so. That's why I enjoy this site so much. Your not the first person to apologize and won't be the last either as I know how frustrating it gets to be humiliated by the voice of reason. But this is a good thing because the wonderful ability to be humble, among other things, will help to ensure our survival.

So don't be too hard on yourself.

GG :-)

54. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73837 by GoneGolfing on September 26, 2007 at 10:03 am

Revcort-

""So, it only leaves us at one point. I can't absolutely prove He DOES exist, and neither can you absolutely prove He DOESN'T exist.""

Exactly !! You can't, so please stop trying to!

And for goodness sakes! Get it through your thick skull that we do not have to prove that he doesn't exist! Your making the claim, not us, and so the onus is entirly on you to prove that he does ! Hard, CURRENT!!!!!, reasonable evidence is all we ask for. Please.

You strike me as the kind of person that would now say " Even if I could provide evidence you heathens wouldn't listen anyways".... Horsepuckey!! You provide it and we'll see!

Yes, I'll admit that I'd have some intense discussions with God about his ways, but one couldn't avoid belief in God if the evidence was there and clear. Whether I could love a God or even go as far as to worship a God based on what we know of him and his ways, is another question. It's a fantastic mess that he's created and allowed to happen, so he'd have much explaining to do before I could possibly love and even think! of worshipping such a being, especially one who has kept us under such constant threat if we don't.

All the personal convictions, cliches, rhetoric, and evidence that you have provided have been successfully refuted now... It's time for you to pack up and go home.

GG

55. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73819 by GoneGolfing on September 26, 2007 at 9:10 am

Comment #73797 by BillySands

I've not seen that one before..hmmmm is right.


:-) Stowaway perhaps ?.....Math not Moses best subject ?..... Noah and Gramps didn't get along so to hell with him! ?....Here's one that's highly unlikely though...No Flood ?

;-)

56. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73606 by GoneGolfing on September 25, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Exactly, Walk #640

As I've stated before he is driven on by fear.

Revcort....When you began to debate with us you were cordial..... When you began to see what you were up against you became intense....When you realized you were making no headway you started to become belligerent.....Now with your responses to CHeard it has been confirmed to me that you are an incoherent bigot.

Can you make Kool-Aid ? For goodness sakes man !!

Ezekiel 23:19-21...Revcort I want you to explain this passage for us, as it is not often touched by biblical expositors and expert theologians. You seem to think that every verse is God inspired, so what was God really saying with this most unusual and perplexing reference.....In it God is denouncing Samaria and Jerusalem, calling them she, for their idolotries and harlotry with the Egyptians, and at the same time inserts a rather bizzare deriding of Egyptian men saying in verse :20 "" For she lusted after their men whose cocks were the size of donkeys and whose ejaculations were as those of horses.""....

Er..What! ? Like ask us if we care ! Geeee God thanks for that info! Or was it really Gods info ? Perhaps it was simply Ezekiels' own twisted misconception of Egyptian men ? Don't you find it a bit uncanny that God would want all generations to come to know that little tid-bit of info ? Don't you find it a bit freakish for God to deride his own creation for something that he created them with ? We all know that God refers to himself as a Jealous God , but surely he wouldn't ridicule these men because of that would he ? Some have tried to pass this off as a metaphor but I don't think so, as it says at the beginning of the chapter that ""The word of Lord came unto Ezekiel"", but even if it were , is it not still a very strange insertion into the passage ? I found the passage quite understandable without Gods (Ezekiels?) injection of a comparative description of the Egyptian mens genitalia and its capabilities.

Please Expound

GG

BTW: I apologize to anyone who may have been offended by the explicit interpretaion of the bronze age text, or content of this post, but it is what it is. :-)

57. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73137 by GoneGolfing on September 24, 2007 at 8:41 am

This should be good :-)

CHEARD....response to that ?

BTW: Thx for all your open and honest posts :-)

58. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72519 by GoneGolfing on September 21, 2007 at 12:12 pm

CHeard #558

Man ! I appreciate your honesty...seriously :-) It's a refreshing change from the Revster :-(

One word comes to mind though when reading that post.......Cherrypicking.

Your guilty of the same crime as almost 100% of religites, and that is picking the "best" parts of the teachings that will suit your emotional needs. I believe Bertrand Russell was right in saying that adherance to religion boils down to two things; Fear and emotions.

It truly is curious to hear one admit that their belief is irrational but then they somehow rationalize the need to continue in it. I agree that there is a "good-as-gold" heart beating at the core of the JC tradition and its' called "morality". Lets not forget that morality came before religion and, as you stated, was overlayed or injected with some nasty baggage.

So as all others who cherrypick, I believe that you cling to your beliefs because the morality in them satisfies your emotional needs, and perhaps out of fear you hold to the metaphysical aspect of belief..."Now I wouldn't want God mad at me!"

Perhaps I'll take a look at your site sometime, I like your style.....Do you share any ideas on Gods pre-creation cerebrations? (like: why the frig would I go ahead with that mess!!?) :-)

Regards,

GG :-)

59. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72463 by GoneGolfing on September 21, 2007 at 7:10 am

I sat stunned after reading Post # 484 by Rev.

BTW; Does your flock know that you are spending all this time here at this site ? Do they know that you are bashing them here at this site ? Wouldn't you be better off to go and spend this time in prayer and study to in some way help those poor hell bound souls you bash ?

I have serious doubts now that Rev is a pastor at all, and that he even has a flock. You can't be all that of a compassionate man when you would bash your own sheep and deem them going to hell like he has. I think its highly likely that he is simply here as a fence sitting doubter of his current beliefs and needs debate on helping himself to decide on which way to go.

It's obvious to me by the almost innumerable amount of times you've mentioned hell in your posts that you are driven in your faith by the fear of it.

I know what your going through as you struggle with both the fear of it and believing the disgusting possibility of it being real, saying "how could it be?"

But it does drive you on. You simply can't bear the thoughts of going to such a place. You'll take the risk of devoting your whole life to this belief if it means not being tormented for all eternity. How God could even dream of creating a place like this is irrelevent to you because you simply tremble at the thought of being fuel for an unquenchable fire.

I know how you feel. I've been there.

Hell..the believers prod.

GG :-)

60. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #72058 by GoneGolfing on September 20, 2007 at 8:30 am

Russell Blackford Comment #71892

Interesting thoughts and I always enjoy your posts.

Perhaps you could expound a tad further on the following point, as I would like to read what you think the exact problems and contentions would be:

RB: ""Perhaps science rests on methodological naturalism, but even that would create problems, and would in any event be controversial.""

Regards,

GG :-)

61. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71302 by GoneGolfing on September 18, 2007 at 10:18 am

Wow ! Still at it I see :-)

revcort may I give you 4 tips that may help you ? Cool.... Thanks.

1. Using personal convictions and experience, which are very very poor allies, is not good when coming here to debate.

2. Using outdated, contradictory, and in many ways extremely controversial bronze aged texts and denfending the itellect that inspired those texts, is even worse when coming here to debate.

3. Using hard, preferably current, sensible, and well presented "evidence" is what works best when coming here to debate.

4. Since your coming to this site, have the integrity to at least read "The God Delusion", out of respect for literature and it's author RD, and to somewhat try to understand why we should be debating you at all.

Hope that helps,

GG :-)

62. Religious education

Comment #71262 by GoneGolfing on September 18, 2007 at 8:38 am

IA said:

"Have these ignorant halfwits no real idea of what genies they are releasing from their bottles? Or do they just not care as long as they keep the collective nutters happy and voting for them?"

Exactly ! And not to mention the fact that most of the brains of the people in power are still strongly gripped by this "fear of God" that they most likely were indoctrinated with as children themselves and now feel our innocent children must adhere to as well.

Fear ? Yes, fear of a just and vengful God, whom without this fear, surely these children would all eventually lead lives of sin, debauchery, and evil. And we all know where that would lead them !
Teaching a child about a place like hell is utterly disgusting and mentally abusive.

I sometimes wonder if governments are implementing these types of mandatory programs believing that they will somehow act as "preventative medicne " so to speak, thus instilling a better or stronger morality in its children for the future by forcing them to be exposed to religiosity now.

Politicians discussing the matter:

"Hey, who cares what religion or faith they cling to as long as they lead moral and good lives what does it matter?...We'll just get that fear into them and let the rest work itself out"

Grrrr

GG :-)

63. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71240 by GoneGolfing on September 18, 2007 at 6:32 am

Ok, where did he go ?

Perhaps he's taken the Doc's advice ? LOL

I truly wish I could have been a fly on his wall watching him run to and fro from his books to his bible to his computer thinking he's armed, fully dangerous, and going to tune up the crew here!

Revcort: Relax Pal ! The only thing you'll accomplish by coming here is to realize that you have some serious thinking to do. That would be my challenge to you. Think. Think for yourself. Get some courage and read some of the recommended books here at this site and then... Think.

Good Luck,

GG :-)

64. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #70952 by GoneGolfing on September 17, 2007 at 10:09 am

Bonzai wrote:

"I wonder if Stanford has a problem that most religious believers believe without reading up on Leprechology."

I'm sure he has no problem though that most believers believe without reading up on Theology as well !

I was a Christian for probably two years and had read perhaps 3 full books of the new testament...Duh! My tardiness in not reading the whole book immediately and seeing the problems within it kept me in the pews for much longer than I should have. grrrr

It's laughable when I read the comments of people who claim to have read all the top atheist works and then pass exhaustive judgments on them and at the same time probably couldn't quote 10 scripture verses.

Pitiful

GG :-)

65. A Table for One

Comment #70931 by GoneGolfing on September 17, 2007 at 9:26 am

Funny Stuff !

It's obvious to me that Colbert may be a Catholic by name but certainly not by experience. His hilarious hooks, jabs and uppercuts in this interview show that more than likely any theistic beliefs he may have are truely weak and superficial.

GG :-)

66. Censoring Sir David

Comment #69939 by GoneGolfing on September 13, 2007 at 8:26 am

This doesn't surprise me at all.

The Theists have been plagiarising the hard works and awesome discoveries of Science for a long time now saying "see this is what our God has done !", and at the same time doing the sneaky snipping likes of what we read above.

Sir David's wonderful efforts deserve more respect and consideration than this, but, I must also remember who it is he is dealing with and therefore highly doubt that he'll get it.

67. Griffin's 'offensive' Emmy speech to be censored

Comment #69925 by GoneGolfing on September 13, 2007 at 7:37 am

Geeez Fanusi ! I had just nicely finished my breakfast when I read this >>Not this kind of petty, childish nihilism. Thanks, but I'll take an honest believer over the likes of Kathy Griffin any day.<<

Now THAT gave me indigestion...Thank You Very Much !

Sigh...