@Jear77
Hmmmm, now I’m thinking, maybe our harshest realities are a bootcamp before the God leads us on a march into Hell to slay Satan & his demons……..
@Jear77
It’s certainly possible, but any assertion for or against can only be opinion.
And then the next question has to be, opinion driven by . . . what?
My opinion is driven by the reality that there are still a myriad of things we cannot yet understand about objective physical reality — and even more things we cannot even detect.
So the proposition that we know enough spiritual realms, that are still just proposed, to make concrete assertions about them just seems absurd.
@griz science. Theories abound about alternate universes… but most fictional versions seem to follow the selfsame rules as this one does, except we have magic or high technology or vampires.
I’m curious what scientific evidence beyond anecdotal, exists for any kind of spiritual reality? Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in the very great possibility of such a thing existing. But science giving us scientific insights into something science is specifically designed NOT to see??
@griz the bible itself. “My father’s house is has many mansions (rooms)”… So, everything this reality has… except with large places to live, and from various parables weeping and gnashing of teeth for people outside the gates. Even with streets of gold, gates of gems doesn’t sound too pleasant!
Were you expecting a literal room in a literal mansion, and literal streets of literal gold?
Even using our likely inadequate understanding of what “a spirit” is, what use would a spirit have for a room or a house or a street? Could these be, oh, I don’t know, analogies likening spiritual concepts to things corporeal beings could understand?
And why do you think someone might wail and gnash their teeth? Perhaps to realize something was within grasp but they passed it up to occupy themselves with silly stuff of no lasting value?
@griz sounds bad nonetheless, as anyone should have to realize that they were / may have been wrong and simply knock, requesting entrance. But this is not so.
@Jear77
You are mixing your versus up to maintain a self-righteous rage construct.
The Covenant is a two-way deal and not a child’s gimme-gimme. The gift of Grace is just the spiritual parts of it that we could never do ourselves.
Our part of the equation is to deal with our stubborn stiff-necked self-righteous ego-centric self-defeating foolishness. even if just for long enough to get the process of spiritual regeneration started.
Anyone and everyone can do this if they want: if they “knock” at that specific door here and now.
The preordained Lottery as you want to call it, is simply God’s foreknowledge of those who will choose to exclude themselves for only the reasons mentioned above.
And hell may simply be full-on fettered eternal nagging omni-awareness of just how foolishly we chose; and every single moment played over and over and over again where we could have so easily chosen differently.
@Jear77
I think the Roman Catholics might have substituted “crappy” for “challenging”
The Bible makes it clear that climbing a higher path will be far more challenging that sliding down a lower one.
But as I look back on my life so far the things that proved the most meaningful and provided the greatest growth and most valuable lasting insights . . . were not the things that I came by through ease and convenience.
@griz challenge I can deal with… as long as I have a degree of control over the situation. Example: with my system being… unstable, I have learned that I (really) can’t eat before going to work when I’m at the museum… or if it’s TOO late at night. But sometimes it’s: choice: eat SOMETHING or have NOTHING, as the bananas I blend for shakes are gone, and it’s too late to go out to get more. Well.. guess I’ve gotta bite the bullet, and be sick. (note that when I have nothing but a banana shake, I’m good for the most part). Some control, based on past decisions of myself and others.
Yet this higher path you speak of, I have no control, no influence, no ability to see where I’m going. It’s like having a million piece puzzle… in a single color… without the ability to figure out where the edges are. Furthermore, once I stick two pieces together, they can’t be separated (i.e. the time is already gone). I need a more stable, more adroit other than “fail” when something doesn’t work system.
@griz actually we don’t have control, ultimately. Who the fuck chooses to die. perfect control would allow us to live forever, should we choose… and most would choose never-ending life
@Jear77
Start by controlling emotions, and feelings of meaningless.
Even abandoned children in the Bogata garbage dump manage this, with a fraction of our comfort, security and even opulence. (I watched a documentary on them the other day)
Fret about death is something that people with the smallest fraction of our means and wealth seem to manage; in far tougher spots than we are in.
You are a recreational anguished. A pleasure-fretter.
It’s wiped out anything good in your life — any positive meaning — and just left you with the negatives that you cannot wipe out in your own mind.
@griz not what i meant. Or at least not how you’re thinking. Do i constantly think about my mortality? No. But do i have aches and pains while working that make my life… unpleasant. I simply need to get stronger.
In regards to meanings, there really are the none given we are mortal. Even if there is a god, there’s nothing to say that our meaning needs to be derived from the service of such a being. I tried the whole discarding self – such to the point that i was a collection of biblical memes… feeling like trash, begging for forgiveness, seeking grace, doing what i thought was right and 2nd guessing myself – literally every action, studying the bible, having no real life. I can’t go back to that.
@Jear77
There are ways of living that provide sufficient meaning to offset the suffering.
Provided we haven’t systematically despoiled them in our own mind. It’s far far easier to sabotage something good . . . than make something bad go away by just raging against it as unfair. Because try as we might, that bad thing will just not go away and will probably get worse in our own mind . . .
. . . and we’ll have no good meaning left to balance it out.
There is a progression beyond just “serving” the Grand Narrative of Life . . . and participating with it. Perhaps even being valued by it.
You were exposed to a bad religious ideology.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Welcome to the club. (Club as in “group”; not as in something to keep hitting oneself in the head with).
@griz if i can’t do what i want (i.e. roleplaying) as i’m not rich enough not to work,because my schedule won’t allow me to do, there’s nothing in it for me to add something more to my life that will take even a second more time, give more rules that i have an infinite amount of objections to follow. At least with if i didn’t have to work, it’d more than make up for the time.
@Jear77
There is absolutely nothing good that can be said about the process of holding ourselves hostage until manifest reality pays what we think is a fitting tribute,
@griz there is plenty evil with saying “do and i’ll give you rewards” when the time frame for getting such rewards is 100% uncertain… or if they’ll come through at all.
@luftballooneyegouge
There is no doubt that primitive cultures used psychoactive botanicals in their quest for and worship of the transcendent.
The naturally occurring plants they used were far less potent than the ones we have cultured today. And most cultures wisely limited them to special Sacred occasions, and for specific ceremonies of worship of transcendent (objective) ideals. there were abundant safeguards in place to help keep people from becoming addicted casual users.
But I think we see the breakdown of this process in our society where we have ludicrously potent varieties of the plants, and most people having abandoned the idea of the Transcendent to just worship themselves as the next best thing.
But at least most still limit themselves to very special occasions such as days that have the letter Y in them!
@griz
Did you ever explain what the hell you mean by hold oneself hostage?
or
What the hell are you talking about with this hold-yourself-hostage nonsense?
@griz needless rules hold you hostage; i’m free to do literally anything i want, as i can firmly say the worse that is able to happen to me is death. And when that happens, it’s not really a big deal, as my mortality is known to me. I have said it before, in the grand scheme of things, no one’s existence, including christ makes… or has the ability to make any difference in any iteration, as the outcome was preknown, and the one that knew it willingly chose to do nothing about it.
@Jear77
There is a Piagetian theory, confirmed by 50 years of Behavioral Studies, that marks a standard human progression from having to obey the rules, to resenting the rules, to conforming to the rules and recognizing their utilitarian nature, to making the rules.
And that many people like to fancy themselves makers of the rules while they are still firmly stuck in stage 2 of resenting the rules. This is borne out in the insistence that the rules are “useless”. (All rules have uses).
Trying to alter or create new rules while our process is still selfish cannot end well.
One of the greater manifestations of bravery is to recognize our mortality but still act as if things we do have meaning. Because history has shown that they clearly do for those who are brave enough to be more than just Instinct-driven animals awaiting compost.
Society (or the race in general) does not favor the cowardly but rather, the brave. It is the bones of such brave individuals that the cowardly build their structures of indifference on top of.
@griz whrn the universe ends… the earth is nothing but dust and all its inhabitants are long gone… do they matter? When the outlook ultimately is nonexistence, i’d say they don’t
@Jear77
The salient point however, is that first we have to live through today before we can . . . uhm . . . look forward to the dust of tomorrow; I suppose?
So are we adopting a life-stance that celebrates the Life that is this moment . . . or goes all droopy Sad-Sack invalid over the looming dust? Perhaps to the point that it becomes ALL we can see unto ripping all of the joy, peace, and meaning out of Life just to support the lie?
One can choose to make themselves miserable believing the lie that this moment doesn’t matter. But that doesn’t change the fact that it does.
All it proves is that one can drop out if they choose; but that they will suffer for it. It’s psychological recklessness at best.
But getting off the kick of “pending doom”, there are real-time consequences either in the now or the short-term future of not taking proper care of “the machinery”.
Why do we bother doing rountine maintenance and necessary repair on vehicles? Because there is value and meaning in maintaining them in a functionally reliable condition for as long as possible.
Using them up and tossing them out the moment we have to put something back into them is a toxic mindset.
@griz
These were studies on how children aged around 5yrs old to 10yrs old develop morals. You’re misapplying them to make a case for an adult’s morality by replacing ‘children’ with ‘people’.
That’s obfuscation.
All rules might have uses, but that doesn’t mean all rules are universally useful to everybody.
Society favors conformity. Conformity takes zero courage.
@luftballooneyegouge
While Jean Piaget’s theories centered on children, he was a psychologist who’s practice also treated adults. He was profoundly interested in how children developed . . . into adults.
So no. I’m not misapplying them. Nor are the many of researchers who built upon them.
Have I suggested that all rules are universally applicable to everyone? You said something about obfuscation? What I said is that there are very very few (if any) truly “useless” rules. (Which BTW is very different from the category of rules we just don’t like but are still good for us!).
Recognizing this is part of the process of going from rote obedience of them to resenting them to understanding them to making them.
The conservative aspect of society values conformity and same-ness. The liberal aspect, creativity and chaos. Both are essential aspects of a healthy enduring society. (Stability vs Adaptability).
Even the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians got this right . . . and before they developed the ability to articulate it as more than just mythology!
So we SHOULD be able to get it right and then some!
@griz
Just wondering if @luftballooneyegouge dislikes a psychological theory cited and supported by scientific peer-review; the observation that society favors the brave over the cowards; or just me in general!
@griz
Your reading comprehension fails you again & again.
I didn’t criticize the study.
I called bullshit on you stretching it to back up your bullshit.
I intensely dislike your nauseatingly repetitive bullshit.
Those of this world are children of Satan, not God. This was made explicit in the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles.
The Father is a mask God wears, after all, God is the Father of the entire cosmos, which was born from him and is sustained by him. Down to even caring for the beasts of the fields, and even insects. Plants, even.
The immortal age is already upon the earth. As Jesus returns with the dead in new bodies which can not perish.
Seasons change slowly enough, aeons change much more slowly. But, eventually, the snow falls, when one can say ‘winter has truly come’.
Human beings are made in the image of God, but that does not mean people of earth are the equivalent of people of Heaven.
@five2one
Do you think Stan Lee’s favorite line “WITH GREAT POWER THERE MUST ALSO COME –GREAT RESPONSIBILITY!” doesn’t apply to the God in the form of self-responsibility?
But even in human experience one can have parents who are behaving in an entirely loving and responsible way towards their children by all societal standards . . . yet the children may feel entirely differently about the whole scenario because their short-term desires and wishes haven’t been met in some regard — trivial in society’s eyes, but absolutely monstrous in the eyes of the child.
@griz
There’s the gimme gimme aspect, but I’m more bothered by why & how can the God let awful things happen to children.
The God could intervene & the vast majority would still have free will, and even if that was governed with a limitation, there are other limitations on free will so it’s never been an absolute thing.
If he can destroy a city with divine fire & flood the planet, why can’t he give pedophiles erectile dysfunction and an allergy to boner pills?
Maybe that needs to be added to more people’s prayers?
@luftballooneyegouge
We’ve struggled with that one for God knows how long. There are no easy answers, other than to look at the example I gave of a child thinking the parents are letting something awful happen to them (dentist, surgery, not getting a pony for Christmas).
I know there is no more comfort in that for us than for the child being dragged off to the dentist, being stuck with needles and wrestling with the — or finding just socks and underwear under the Christmas tree.
Like yourself and @jear77 there’s times I’ve fancied that I could come up with a better plan than the one currently playing out.
But as I got older I started to see the loving necessity of many of the things I was so sure were monstrous through my kid’s eyes. I also wonder if most adults lose these keen remembrances of how they were as a child without a series of traumatic events to burn a snapshot in the brain of what they were like when they were young?
That’s a good one about the erectile dysfunction and severe viagra allergy! You should phone that one in to the prayer-lines of 100 Huntley Street, the 700 Club!
@luftballooneyegouge
The idea is less about subjective comparison and more about objective association.
I’ll type slowly.
The reminder of how physically/mentally/emotionally immature understanding of physical reality left me feeling great injustice was being done when it really was not . . . brings understanding of how a spiritually immature understanding of spiritual reality might leave me feeling great injustice was being done when it really was not.
The need for virtue-signalling is greatly reduced if not eliminated. And humility in remembering just how wrong I could be yet still fully assured of my self-righteousness tempers reactions today to things I might want to feel very self-righteous about.
But again, I may be “advantaged” in having so many tragedy-snapshots of what I was truly like at certain ages to be able to make this association.
BTW, nice addition of “eaten”. Not sure I want to know where that one came from!
But it’s interesting how you might want to point out these things now (actual or imagined?) . . . yet still resist accepting that the Nuremburg Trials established legal precedent once-and-for-all, for the existence of objective evil (not excusable by assertion of subjectivity superceding objectivity), in the separation of children from parents for torture, medical experimentation, murder and vivisection. Few informed and intelligent people refuse to acknowledge that this is an actual part of our History — or that it was an objective evil/wrong.
@griz
The Nuremberg trials were trying crimes based on previous hearings and judicial precedent. It wasn’t needed or necessary or used to figure out killing children is evil with whatever wild-goose-chase-label you want to put in front of it. You have the worst habit of assigning anything you wish to things to reinforce other ideas. You’ve gone on about Nuremberg for quite some time.
One would think in all that time you’d have learned to spell it.
@luftballooneyegouge
Their global effect was to instantiate the concept of objective evil as solid legal precedent. This was not just a culture trying its own by their own standards.
Without this there would have been no Authority for the trials to continue.
Any precedent for species-wide objective evil that could be punishable by law regardless of subjective cultural or temporal morality was either spotty or non-existent.
As I pointed out I am not alone in this assessment. Some of them like Solzhenitsyn are heavy hitters, having staggering fisrt-hand experience with objective evil.
So riddle me this. How could the trials have proceeded if “evil” and “wrong” are merely subjective assessments?
@luftballooneyegouge My point is simply that God should be approached with humility. We can not say we know God so well as to judge him in regards to the evil that happens on earth. That is basically the response in Job, where this question was well examined.
We know that because human beings refused to worship God, a celestial being with a “depraved mind” was put over us all. That is Satan, who is called “the prince of this world”.
We also know that salvation and good deeds come from trust. Faith, yes, but the word “trust” is what people often forget.
In this environment, we have to trust God, despite how everything looks.
We also know good or bad, God makes people both. One could ask, ‘why does God create bad people’. That alone is very difficult to understand. We do know that when the tables turn and all who have feasted in the old age, the meek will have their turn. And the children of Satan will be exposed for who they were and who they are.
By any standard on earth, all of these are very strange matters.
The Lord’s prayer points out God’s will does not yet happen on earth as it should, and the Lord’s Kingdom has not yet come or be revealed from heaven.
We also know that in this age to come knowledge of God will flood the earth as the waters cover the seas. And we know all of the bad will be forgotten. It will be no more.
God’s answer to Job was, basically, “you do not know what I know”, or “you do not know everything”.
I do not know about you, but for me, in my everyday life, there are enormous numbers of people whom I do not understand. I have never been in their shoes. How could I know. From bad to good, and all points in between, I do not presume to know how they do what they do. I do not critique a medical doctor or understand how to fly a 747. At a certain point, you just have to trust people and trust God.
At a certain point, when it comes to the majesty of God, ‘God lives in light too terrible for either men or angels’.
One thing that can easily and strongly be deduced is that there is a lot of opportunities for trust in God in this world. This goes far beyond simply criminality, it goes into the entire planet and countless layers. Earth is dreadfully constructed in this way, so that the author of it all is so deeply hidden.
@five2one said, “The Lord’s prayer points out God’s will does not yet happen on earth as it should, and the Lord’s Kingdom has not yet come or be revealed from heaven.”
that’s swell but
A deadbeat dad is someone who created another but isn’t there taking responsibility for that creation.
I don’t really care what the fan-club wrote when the bodies and shattered lives are thrown on the scale.
A con-man is always coming up with the excuse of one needing just to wait.
Throw that on the scale.
Religion is if not entirely a scam, shown to be an easy path to low hanging fruit by an endless parade of hucksters.
@luftballooneyegouge So you don’t trust God. Where the earth is currently in a state where there is very much which makes that trust impossible to do. This is how faith is a thing. Technically, you become bonded to someone when you trust them through a fog or cloud. So, for instance, the israelites trusted Moses to lead them through the water and the cloud. Bonding them forever to the body of Moses.
Your honesty is good here, as there are very many who claim to trust, believe in, Jesus… but actually do not. They think they do, so they would never say what you are saying.
Another technical comment on humans is that the state we find ourselves in is such that we believe we understand quite fully what we are. And we are wrong. Human beings are in a stage, not entirely unlike how it is with worms – caterpillars – where we will all change. But we do not really comprehend this.
ie, things are not as they seem, even on a fundamental level of how we consider our own bodies.
We all pretty well accept that we have an inner self and an outer self. But we do not consider that this inner self is what, ultimately, we will be.
@luftballooneyegouge My statement on judging was in regards to judging a being who created and sustains the universe. It was not a statement that we judge all the time (as the Apostle Paul pointed out already).
Your arguments mirror the book of Job content, would be a good idea to read the Bible fully before judging God.
Jesus pointed out that we can learn nothing when we think we know already.
As for fan club, God is family. God is who ties saints and elect angels together as a singular family.
I am not attempting to persuade you as I can not do so. I can point out that evil in the world sends the message there is no God. And, secondly, God is the one who made everyone and everything. He cares about them as a Father. This is not just the elect God cares about, but all. Good example of that is in the Book of Jonah, where God used Jonah to save a pagan Nineveh.
I could point out that all the evil is but temporary, and this evil age has been very quick and set to be gone. But you have to imagine what this appears to someone who sees even millenia as minutes.
When God had Peter say ‘one thousand years to God is as one day and a day for God is as a thousand years’, that was just using a typical frame of reference for the age. The reality certainly must be very much more.
ie, your sense of time is typical for human beings, and deeply effects your judgments here. It is as a child can think an hour is so painfully long, whereas an adult might have that very hour very quick.
Being pained for a second is very, very different then being pained for years. So, the sense of time is really a key way to understand how God is not an absent father.
@five2one said, “Being pained for a second is very, very different then being pained for years. So, the sense of time is really a key way to understand how God is not an absent father.”
The rape & murder of children & adults too goes a bit further than being pained for a second.
You seem to be saying pain to mortals isn’t pain to the God, but you’re still left with suffering being allowed by one with the power to end it.
Reading a book doesn’t change this.
Contradictions in one’s excuses are the smoke from error’s fire.
@luftballooneyegouge I liked the scene in the Watchman where Rorschach has an epiphany while taking vengeance on a serial killer pedophile: “it isn’t God that does this, it is men”.
@luftballooneyegouge No, I am not saying “pain to mortals is pain to God”. I am saying this will “all be over soon and forever forgotten”. Right now, we are here, and it hurts.
“Reading a book doesn’t change this.
Contradictions in one’s excuses are the smoke from error’s fire.”
Arguing is not of use. Seeming contradictions surround us.
We are on a planet, going at 44,000 mph umpteen whatever speed, hanging on thin air, and we can say “we are moving” and “we are are still” and both are true.
It is just arguing, fighting, struggling.
Light can be a particle, or light can be a wave. It depends on the observer.
At the thesis of what? That God is a man. God can be a man. Or, a woman. Or, a fire burning in a bush. Whatever it takes to reach people.
Anthropomorphizing God will only confuse you. It is a contradiction. Seemingly.
You don’t want God, fine. But, you are refusing God. And no, I am not God. What I am saying is God is in your heart. Not a book. You have those choices. To do what?
Simply to believe.
You can’t know what other people’s experiences are. Yet you can. You can’t. Point is: you can really only speak for your own self.
You don’t want to know God? Everybody wants to know God. You want to be God? That is what you are acting like. Guess what? You are “made in the image of God”. Of course you want to be like your daddy.
There is no trick in it. It is your nature. You are angry and so lashing out. You want to disprove your own existence, the source of it anyway, but you can not. Or, hey, maybe you just want to not hear about God anymore.
Though starting a subject and passionately debating it seems like an odd way to do that. Look at Trump et al, they definitely believe there is no God.
As for assuming you speak for everyone on the planet, what good is that? It does you no good. Speak for your own self. Has God helped you? Are you innocent?
You don’t strike me as someone who is very guilty.
When I say “don’t judge”, I mean don’t be so judgmental. Narrow minded.
You do not know me. I have met God. I have evidence, a lot. I hear from God all the time. I am never alone.
So we are “talking about two different things”. How can you talk about God without having ever met God? You just have heard of him from a distance. (According to what you are claiming here, anyway.)
I mean, you live inside God.
Best concept I can tell you is: look at your dreams. You are the main character in your dreams, yet also are all the other characters in them — and even the entire world the dream encompasses! You are amazing that you do that all the night long.
I have no idea where you get your concept of God. I really do not. I mean, from the world? The one God put Satan in charge of? (Not even to begin on that subject…)
Focus.
What do *you* want? Do you feel that God is your father, and where is he?
I think, that is exactly what I am hearing here.
The whole father role can be daunting. A father has to be a father. Do you have kids? Do you have a dad? There are buddy dads and then there are drunk, mean dads. There are dad’s helping you walk the path they know, from age and experience and knowing exactly how you tick.
God is a little bit more then *just* a dad. God is the good in everyone you ever loved.
But, all such things, how to explain? You have to have an open mind first, because the story is way, way more stranger then what you hear down here.
@luftballooneyegouge Is this how you think about your IRL dad? (And hey, maybe you should.)
Look, you only can speak for your own self, stick to that. You are not some crack addict whore in the throes of misery, staving it off with brief but all too expensive puffs of smoke. That, to quote Velvet Underground, “makes me feel like Jesus’ son”…
Complaining on behalf of all the poor on the earth really?
I passed a homeless guy today in the rain. I drove right past him, went home, jumped on a forum and then complained about what a rough time he is having!
First part true. Last part, no.
What is *your* complaint. Not everyone else’s.
Or anyone else’s.
If you don’t have a complaint, then what is the big fuss? Someone somewhere somehow might be behind the good times that is not you. If you want more and WAY better, you can go to God. If not, go to the source you think it is.
Cut out the middle man.
I don’t have any complaints with God. I am a nobody in this world. People ignore me. The world ignores me. I don’t have complaints about invisibility from assholes.
I don’t have complaints about them, don’t have complaints about God putting me in this situation. I had questions, I asked, I got answers. Nothing to brag about because God told me to do this, while others he does not. Why? So I can help others with this particular matter… if they need it.
If not, then *shrug*, someone else does.
Unfortunately, in your case, you see that there is some potential gain from struggling with me. I can wrestle.
I am not God, but I do know where he is and how to find him.
I think god is something humans made up to comfort themselves. They fashioned him in the image of father’s here on earth, because we live in a patriarchal society. It would only make sense that since humans made “Him” up that he would have all
The qualities of man, good and bad.
@Scarlett
Do you think nowadays we might deny the possibility of a creepy peeping God to comfort ourselves?
We don’t worry so much about crops, weather, and being hacked to death by people we’ve never heard of, so maybe it’s just not as comforting today so people look for some other way to deal with uncomfortable thoughts.
Old Marvel comics and Star Trek portrayed pagan gods as powerful aliens that humans worshipped. They sort of frame it like they helped humans get through the times before technology with direct interaction and guidance, & once we reached a certain point they left us to other matters.
What do you think humans have now for this comfort?
How would you rate its comforting power versus the God?
@luftballooneyegouge oh sure we do. We humans are addicted to comforting ourselves and to the reduction or elimination of what we see as suffering. Buddhists believe these and other attachments are why we will not be free of suffering.
You raise good points, and in fact, I heard something just the other day about people who didn’t believe in religion turning to philosophy. Are religion and philosophy the same in that regard?
@Scarlett
I’m not a huge fan of the terror management theorist’s God.
Did our ancestors create God for comfort . . . or were they, newly meta-conscious, trying to make sense of the fundamental processes around them that brought order out of the primordial Chaos? And perhaps how they might use a similar process to carve out a little order from the local chaos for themselves?
Consider that most aspects of the Old Testament God are not exactly that “comforting” . . . and some aspects of the New Testament God are not either. And the gods of various other earlier cultures were downright heinous, beastly, despotic, treacherous by comparison to the Judeo-Christian model. If it was pure ease and comfort (or management of terror), why not create something more congenial to our wishes and certainly our laziness and love for ourselves! Why bother instantiating the negative aspects, if the main purpose is our comfort?
That’s why I think there was much more going on that just “comfort” or even terror-management.
@griz said, “If it was pure ease and comfort (or management of terror), why not create something more congenial to our wishes and certainly our laziness and love for ourselves! Why bother instantiating the negative aspects, if the main purpose is our comfort?”
Dionysus fits that bill, & you’ve undoubtedly have come across people lumping him & Christ together. Jesus has that comforting sin now, ask for forgiveness later deal that appeals greatly to people who fuck up their lives, and have no choice but to re-build.
Religions do tend towards ye olde good cop/bad cop scheme. The Comforter(s) vs The Monster(s).
@luftballooneyegouge
Dionysus certainly falls into the “ease and comfort” category! The only god born of a Human mother also. So there’s that similarity, and the one you point out about “sin now, repent later”.
Although the latter is more a religious add-on. Jesus frequently said “Your sins are forgiven. Go, and sin no more”. I understand the magnitude of this without spiritual assist. But the important thing to take from it is that he was not proposing an endless cycle of sinning just on the assurance one could simply repent from it. I think Catholicism popularized this, along with the “plenary indulgence”.
Mythology played out similarly. In ancient Egyptian mythology Osiris was “the father” (the culture) that grew increasingly self-blinded to the corruption in places of power (and was chopped up for it and the parts distributed all over Egypt by the protesting demi-gods). Isis was kind of chaotic and unpredictable, so Seth (the bad cop uncle) took over. Isis hunted around Egypt for Osiris’ phallus and impregnated herself (hey, he was a god!) and Horus resulted. He was the good cop. He grew up in exile (analogous to Jesus) and returned to confront his evil-cop uncle. Horus was renowned for his ability to see the bigger picture and his avatar was the falcon that flew above and saw all things. Seth ripped out his eye in the battle but Horus eventually won (youthful, strong, attentive, able to adapt, left-wing!). He collected his eye and traveled to the underworld where Osiris’ spirit languished (the ancient culture, the right-wings) and gave him his eye so he could see the corruption and do something about it through Horus.
It’s a mythological model from a very ancient culture that managed to survive for a very long time by constantly re-vivifying itself out of self-blinding corruption.
@griz oh sure, a lot of it was about control because back then humans weren’t controlling their base instincts.
I look to Socrates conversation with Euthyphros to see that most people just attached to whatever god or gods they believed in whatever was convenient at the time.
@Scarlett
Just “back then”?! As a social worker I would be very surprised if you’ve not encountered a few people not controlling their base instincts. (Probably just this week!).
I also see people attaching themselves to existing gods; but I was speaking more of the original instantiation of those gods into mythological narratives — that late-comers then attached themselves to.
From my studies it seems more like divinity archetypes were pre-existing constructs that people came to attach articulated narrative to over time. . . than pure creative constructs designed by some insightful artisan as a way to control negative emotions.
@griz those base instincts will always be there and they serve their purpose. over time, the hope is we evolve our brains. This usually takes some type of trauma. we have to first see it, and then purposefully decide to rewire our brains. here in america, the trump presidency may be just the trauma we need to shake something loose and begin to heal. in any case, humanity has always been built up on stories. I guess the stories are ok as long as they don’t hurt anyone.
@Scarlett
But didn’t you just say that growth involves trauma? Even if just the normal “growing pains” of childhood!
While we are not to run around carelessly inflicting malicious harm, I would advise sober caution with the “so long as nobody gets hurt” mindset.
That’s the toxic femininity that coddles, spoils and invalidates children (and now the society) in horrendous ways.
We have to be stressed to grow. This is an evolutionary axiom.
87 responses to “If the God is as ADveRTiSeD and is the Father & We are His Children,….”
Cute… but true
No child support
An inheritance only after our death.
Disease
Poverty
War
Death
@Jear77
Hmmmm, now I’m thinking, maybe our harshest realities are a bootcamp before the God leads us on a march into Hell to slay Satan & his demons……..
@luftballooneyegouge 1st law of thermodynamics: energy can’t be created or destroyed
@Jear77
Not natural processes as we currently understand them.
@griz it applies no matter where you are, even in so called spiritual realms.
@Jear77
It’s certainly possible, but any assertion for or against can only be opinion.
And then the next question has to be, opinion driven by . . . what?
My opinion is driven by the reality that there are still a myriad of things we cannot yet understand about objective physical reality — and even more things we cannot even detect.
So the proposition that we know enough spiritual realms, that are still just proposed, to make concrete assertions about them just seems absurd.
What drives your opinion?
@griz science. Theories abound about alternate universes… but most fictional versions seem to follow the selfsame rules as this one does, except we have magic or high technology or vampires.
@Jear77
Fiction sometimes predicts reality.
But one cannot always count on this.
I’m curious what scientific evidence beyond anecdotal, exists for any kind of spiritual reality? Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in the very great possibility of such a thing existing. But science giving us scientific insights into something science is specifically designed NOT to see??
Well, let’s start with your sources.
@griz the bible itself. “My father’s house is has many mansions (rooms)”… So, everything this reality has… except with large places to live, and from various parables weeping and gnashing of teeth for people outside the gates. Even with streets of gold, gates of gems doesn’t sound too pleasant!
@Jear77
A question then.
Were you expecting a literal room in a literal mansion, and literal streets of literal gold?
Even using our likely inadequate understanding of what “a spirit” is, what use would a spirit have for a room or a house or a street? Could these be, oh, I don’t know, analogies likening spiritual concepts to things corporeal beings could understand?
And why do you think someone might wail and gnash their teeth? Perhaps to realize something was within grasp but they passed it up to occupy themselves with silly stuff of no lasting value?
@griz sounds bad nonetheless, as anyone should have to realize that they were / may have been wrong and simply knock, requesting entrance. But this is not so.
@Jear77
You are mixing your versus up to maintain a self-righteous rage construct.
The Covenant is a two-way deal and not a child’s gimme-gimme. The gift of Grace is just the spiritual parts of it that we could never do ourselves.
Our part of the equation is to deal with our stubborn stiff-necked self-righteous ego-centric self-defeating foolishness. even if just for long enough to get the process of spiritual regeneration started.
Anyone and everyone can do this if they want: if they “knock” at that specific door here and now.
The preordained Lottery as you want to call it, is simply God’s foreknowledge of those who will choose to exclude themselves for only the reasons mentioned above.
And hell may simply be full-on fettered eternal nagging omni-awareness of just how foolishly we chose; and every single moment played over and over and over again where we could have so easily chosen differently.
@griz foreknowledge that he did nothing to alleviate
@Jear77
I’m unable to understand the connection. Help me out….
@luftballooneyegouge angels, demons, etc aren’t physical, they are energy
@Jear77
Then why do they have wings to fly?
@luftballooneyegouge very funny. That’s people’s interpretations. Do you also think they have literal halos?
@Jear77
Don’t we all?
@luftballooneyegouge we’re all angels…with horns and a tail!
@Jear77
A lot of it depends upon who’s advertising you’ve been listening to and taking as gospel!
@griz actually the bible says that (paraphrased) to expect your life to be crappy.
@Jear77
I think the Roman Catholics might have substituted “crappy” for “challenging”
The Bible makes it clear that climbing a higher path will be far more challenging that sliding down a lower one.
But as I look back on my life so far the things that proved the most meaningful and provided the greatest growth and most valuable lasting insights . . . were not the things that I came by through ease and convenience.
@griz challenge I can deal with… as long as I have a degree of control over the situation. Example: with my system being… unstable, I have learned that I (really) can’t eat before going to work when I’m at the museum… or if it’s TOO late at night. But sometimes it’s: choice: eat SOMETHING or have NOTHING, as the bananas I blend for shakes are gone, and it’s too late to go out to get more. Well.. guess I’ve gotta bite the bullet, and be sick. (note that when I have nothing but a banana shake, I’m good for the most part). Some control, based on past decisions of myself and others.
Yet this higher path you speak of, I have no control, no influence, no ability to see where I’m going. It’s like having a million piece puzzle… in a single color… without the ability to figure out where the edges are. Furthermore, once I stick two pieces together, they can’t be separated (i.e. the time is already gone). I need a more stable, more adroit other than “fail” when something doesn’t work system.
@Jear77
The only thing we have any degree of control over is our self.
The LIE of religion is that we can leverage things around us by Good Works.
This is not the higher path that I speak of. and giving what the Bible says, should we feint surprise that such a path would not work?
@griz actually we don’t have control, ultimately. Who the fuck chooses to die. perfect control would allow us to live forever, should we choose… and most would choose never-ending life
@Jear77
Start by controlling emotions, and feelings of meaningless.
Even abandoned children in the Bogata garbage dump manage this, with a fraction of our comfort, security and even opulence. (I watched a documentary on them the other day)
Fret about death is something that people with the smallest fraction of our means and wealth seem to manage; in far tougher spots than we are in.
You are a recreational anguished. A pleasure-fretter.
It’s wiped out anything good in your life — any positive meaning — and just left you with the negatives that you cannot wipe out in your own mind.
@griz not what i meant. Or at least not how you’re thinking. Do i constantly think about my mortality? No. But do i have aches and pains while working that make my life… unpleasant. I simply need to get stronger.
In regards to meanings, there really are the none given we are mortal. Even if there is a god, there’s nothing to say that our meaning needs to be derived from the service of such a being. I tried the whole discarding self – such to the point that i was a collection of biblical memes… feeling like trash, begging for forgiveness, seeking grace, doing what i thought was right and 2nd guessing myself – literally every action, studying the bible, having no real life. I can’t go back to that.
@Jear77
There are ways of living that provide sufficient meaning to offset the suffering.
Provided we haven’t systematically despoiled them in our own mind. It’s far far easier to sabotage something good . . . than make something bad go away by just raging against it as unfair. Because try as we might, that bad thing will just not go away and will probably get worse in our own mind . . .
. . . and we’ll have no good meaning left to balance it out.
There is a progression beyond just “serving” the Grand Narrative of Life . . . and participating with it. Perhaps even being valued by it.
You were exposed to a bad religious ideology.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Welcome to the club. (Club as in “group”; not as in something to keep hitting oneself in the head with).
When are you going to accept this and let it go?
@griz it comes back to wealth. I need to be rich enough to look into those ways. Otherwise, it’s useless.
@Jear77
Uselessness with money is just rich uselessness.
@griz if i can’t do what i want (i.e. roleplaying) as i’m not rich enough not to work,because my schedule won’t allow me to do, there’s nothing in it for me to add something more to my life that will take even a second more time, give more rules that i have an infinite amount of objections to follow. At least with if i didn’t have to work, it’d more than make up for the time.
@Jear77
There is absolutely nothing good that can be said about the process of holding ourselves hostage until manifest reality pays what we think is a fitting tribute,
@griz there is plenty evil with saying “do and i’ll give you rewards” when the time frame for getting such rewards is 100% uncertain… or if they’ll come through at all.
@Jear77
Maaaaaaaaaaan, the rewards have been givin’, but people said noooooooo until most believed it maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!
@luftballooneyegouge
There is no doubt that primitive cultures used psychoactive botanicals in their quest for and worship of the transcendent.
The naturally occurring plants they used were far less potent than the ones we have cultured today. And most cultures wisely limited them to special Sacred occasions, and for specific ceremonies of worship of transcendent (objective) ideals. there were abundant safeguards in place to help keep people from becoming addicted casual users.
But I think we see the breakdown of this process in our society where we have ludicrously potent varieties of the plants, and most people having abandoned the idea of the Transcendent to just worship themselves as the next best thing.
But at least most still limit themselves to very special occasions such as days that have the letter Y in them!
@Jear77
For now think less of “the fitting tribute (by our estimation), and more about “the holding ourselves hostage”
@griz
Did you ever explain what the hell you mean by hold oneself hostage?
or
What the hell are you talking about with this hold-yourself-hostage nonsense?
@griz
Oh for the love of all that’s unannoying:
It’s self-help culture jargon.
Please disregard my questions.
@luftballooneyegouge
In the absence of self-help are we expecting others to rise up to help us? (Very “entitlement generation).
That self-help is based on sound psychological and philosophical principles is probably a good thing.
It means that rather than ideologuing to gurus, anyone can go to the base precepts and help themselves.
@griz
Helping oneself is a base ground-floor endeavor as ubiquitous as getting something to eat.
Self-help-culture is simplistic advice sold for economic gain to desperate vulnerable people, most-often to their disadvantage.
@luftballooneyegouge
But it can only be economically viable, if people perceive a genuine need.
So by-pass the economic “machine” and go right to the base precepts.
For those who are brave enough.
@griz needless rules hold you hostage; i’m free to do literally anything i want, as i can firmly say the worse that is able to happen to me is death. And when that happens, it’s not really a big deal, as my mortality is known to me. I have said it before, in the grand scheme of things, no one’s existence, including christ makes… or has the ability to make any difference in any iteration, as the outcome was preknown, and the one that knew it willingly chose to do nothing about it.
@Jear77
There is a Piagetian theory, confirmed by 50 years of Behavioral Studies, that marks a standard human progression from having to obey the rules, to resenting the rules, to conforming to the rules and recognizing their utilitarian nature, to making the rules.
And that many people like to fancy themselves makers of the rules while they are still firmly stuck in stage 2 of resenting the rules. This is borne out in the insistence that the rules are “useless”. (All rules have uses).
Trying to alter or create new rules while our process is still selfish cannot end well.
One of the greater manifestations of bravery is to recognize our mortality but still act as if things we do have meaning. Because history has shown that they clearly do for those who are brave enough to be more than just Instinct-driven animals awaiting compost.
Society (or the race in general) does not favor the cowardly but rather, the brave. It is the bones of such brave individuals that the cowardly build their structures of indifference on top of.
@griz whrn the universe ends… the earth is nothing but dust and all its inhabitants are long gone… do they matter? When the outlook ultimately is nonexistence, i’d say they don’t
@Jear77
The salient point however, is that first we have to live through today before we can . . . uhm . . . look forward to the dust of tomorrow; I suppose?
So are we adopting a life-stance that celebrates the Life that is this moment . . . or goes all droopy Sad-Sack invalid over the looming dust? Perhaps to the point that it becomes ALL we can see unto ripping all of the joy, peace, and meaning out of Life just to support the lie?
One can choose to make themselves miserable believing the lie that this moment doesn’t matter. But that doesn’t change the fact that it does.
All it proves is that one can drop out if they choose; but that they will suffer for it. It’s psychological recklessness at best.
@griz haha. Cute. Is that why we need to cover the fact that we are corpses waiting to be with soap, deodorant, perfume/ cologne, and toothpaste?
@Jear77
Ha! That could be part of it.
But getting off the kick of “pending doom”, there are real-time consequences either in the now or the short-term future of not taking proper care of “the machinery”.
Why do we bother doing rountine maintenance and necessary repair on vehicles? Because there is value and meaning in maintaining them in a functionally reliable condition for as long as possible.
Using them up and tossing them out the moment we have to put something back into them is a toxic mindset.
@griz
These were studies on how children aged around 5yrs old to 10yrs old develop morals. You’re misapplying them to make a case for an adult’s morality by replacing ‘children’ with ‘people’.
That’s obfuscation.
All rules might have uses, but that doesn’t mean all rules are universally useful to everybody.
Society favors conformity. Conformity takes zero courage.
@luftballooneyegouge
While Jean Piaget’s theories centered on children, he was a psychologist who’s practice also treated adults. He was profoundly interested in how children developed . . . into adults.
So no. I’m not misapplying them. Nor are the many of researchers who built upon them.
Have I suggested that all rules are universally applicable to everyone? You said something about obfuscation? What I said is that there are very very few (if any) truly “useless” rules. (Which BTW is very different from the category of rules we just don’t like but are still good for us!).
Recognizing this is part of the process of going from rote obedience of them to resenting them to understanding them to making them.
The conservative aspect of society values conformity and same-ness. The liberal aspect, creativity and chaos. Both are essential aspects of a healthy enduring society. (Stability vs Adaptability).
Even the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians got this right . . . and before they developed the ability to articulate it as more than just mythology!
So we SHOULD be able to get it right and then some!
@griz
Just wondering if @luftballooneyegouge dislikes a psychological theory cited and supported by scientific peer-review; the observation that society favors the brave over the cowards; or just me in general!
@griz
Your reading comprehension fails you again & again.
I didn’t criticize the study.
I called bullshit on you stretching it to back up your bullshit.
I intensely dislike your nauseatingly repetitive bullshit.
I got to say, you have a point there.
@ladybarbara
Thanks for noticing my point!
Those of this world are children of Satan, not God. This was made explicit in the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles.
The Father is a mask God wears, after all, God is the Father of the entire cosmos, which was born from him and is sustained by him. Down to even caring for the beasts of the fields, and even insects. Plants, even.
The immortal age is already upon the earth. As Jesus returns with the dead in new bodies which can not perish.
Seasons change slowly enough, aeons change much more slowly. But, eventually, the snow falls, when one can say ‘winter has truly come’.
Human beings are made in the image of God, but that does not mean people of earth are the equivalent of people of Heaven.
@five2one
Do you think Stan Lee’s favorite line “WITH GREAT POWER THERE MUST ALSO COME –GREAT RESPONSIBILITY!” doesn’t apply to the God in the form of self-responsibility?
If so, …how come?
@luftballooneyegouge
I think it does.
But even in human experience one can have parents who are behaving in an entirely loving and responsible way towards their children by all societal standards . . . yet the children may feel entirely differently about the whole scenario because their short-term desires and wishes haven’t been met in some regard — trivial in society’s eyes, but absolutely monstrous in the eyes of the child.
@griz
There’s the gimme gimme aspect, but I’m more bothered by why & how can the God let awful things happen to children.
The God could intervene & the vast majority would still have free will, and even if that was governed with a limitation, there are other limitations on free will so it’s never been an absolute thing.
If he can destroy a city with divine fire & flood the planet, why can’t he give pedophiles erectile dysfunction and an allergy to boner pills?
Maybe that needs to be added to more people’s prayers?
@luftballooneyegouge
We’ve struggled with that one for God knows how long. There are no easy answers, other than to look at the example I gave of a child thinking the parents are letting something awful happen to them (dentist, surgery, not getting a pony for Christmas).
I know there is no more comfort in that for us than for the child being dragged off to the dentist, being stuck with needles and wrestling with the — or finding just socks and underwear under the Christmas tree.
Like yourself and @jear77 there’s times I’ve fancied that I could come up with a better plan than the one currently playing out.
But as I got older I started to see the loving necessity of many of the things I was so sure were monstrous through my kid’s eyes. I also wonder if most adults lose these keen remembrances of how they were as a child without a series of traumatic events to burn a snapshot in the brain of what they were like when they were young?
That’s a good one about the erectile dysfunction and severe viagra allergy! You should phone that one in to the prayer-lines of 100 Huntley Street, the 700 Club!
@griz
So you feel better to think about children being raped, killed, and eaten like a trip to the dentist? That’s not going to work for me.
@luftballooneyegouge
The idea is less about subjective comparison and more about objective association.
I’ll type slowly.
The reminder of how physically/mentally/emotionally immature understanding of physical reality left me feeling great injustice was being done when it really was not . . . brings understanding of how a spiritually immature understanding of spiritual reality might leave me feeling great injustice was being done when it really was not.
The need for virtue-signalling is greatly reduced if not eliminated. And humility in remembering just how wrong I could be yet still fully assured of my self-righteousness tempers reactions today to things I might want to feel very self-righteous about.
But again, I may be “advantaged” in having so many tragedy-snapshots of what I was truly like at certain ages to be able to make this association.
BTW, nice addition of “eaten”. Not sure I want to know where that one came from!
But it’s interesting how you might want to point out these things now (actual or imagined?) . . . yet still resist accepting that the Nuremburg Trials established legal precedent once-and-for-all, for the existence of objective evil (not excusable by assertion of subjectivity superceding objectivity), in the separation of children from parents for torture, medical experimentation, murder and vivisection. Few informed and intelligent people refuse to acknowledge that this is an actual part of our History — or that it was an objective evil/wrong.
@griz
The Nuremberg trials were trying crimes based on previous hearings and judicial precedent. It wasn’t needed or necessary or used to figure out killing children is evil with whatever wild-goose-chase-label you want to put in front of it. You have the worst habit of assigning anything you wish to things to reinforce other ideas. You’ve gone on about Nuremberg for quite some time.
One would think in all that time you’d have learned to spell it.
@luftballooneyegouge
Their global effect was to instantiate the concept of objective evil as solid legal precedent. This was not just a culture trying its own by their own standards.
Without this there would have been no Authority for the trials to continue.
Any precedent for species-wide objective evil that could be punishable by law regardless of subjective cultural or temporal morality was either spotty or non-existent.
As I pointed out I am not alone in this assessment. Some of them like Solzhenitsyn are heavy hitters, having staggering fisrt-hand experience with objective evil.
So riddle me this. How could the trials have proceeded if “evil” and “wrong” are merely subjective assessments?
@luftballooneyegouge My point is simply that God should be approached with humility. We can not say we know God so well as to judge him in regards to the evil that happens on earth. That is basically the response in Job, where this question was well examined.
We know that because human beings refused to worship God, a celestial being with a “depraved mind” was put over us all. That is Satan, who is called “the prince of this world”.
We also know that salvation and good deeds come from trust. Faith, yes, but the word “trust” is what people often forget.
In this environment, we have to trust God, despite how everything looks.
We also know good or bad, God makes people both. One could ask, ‘why does God create bad people’. That alone is very difficult to understand. We do know that when the tables turn and all who have feasted in the old age, the meek will have their turn. And the children of Satan will be exposed for who they were and who they are.
By any standard on earth, all of these are very strange matters.
The Lord’s prayer points out God’s will does not yet happen on earth as it should, and the Lord’s Kingdom has not yet come or be revealed from heaven.
We also know that in this age to come knowledge of God will flood the earth as the waters cover the seas. And we know all of the bad will be forgotten. It will be no more.
God’s answer to Job was, basically, “you do not know what I know”, or “you do not know everything”.
I do not know about you, but for me, in my everyday life, there are enormous numbers of people whom I do not understand. I have never been in their shoes. How could I know. From bad to good, and all points in between, I do not presume to know how they do what they do. I do not critique a medical doctor or understand how to fly a 747. At a certain point, you just have to trust people and trust God.
At a certain point, when it comes to the majesty of God, ‘God lives in light too terrible for either men or angels’.
One thing that can easily and strongly be deduced is that there is a lot of opportunities for trust in God in this world. This goes far beyond simply criminality, it goes into the entire planet and countless layers. Earth is dreadfully constructed in this way, so that the author of it all is so deeply hidden.
@five2one said, “The Lord’s prayer points out God’s will does not yet happen on earth as it should, and the Lord’s Kingdom has not yet come or be revealed from heaven.”
that’s swell but
A deadbeat dad is someone who created another but isn’t there taking responsibility for that creation.
I don’t really care what the fan-club wrote when the bodies and shattered lives are thrown on the scale.
A con-man is always coming up with the excuse of one needing just to wait.
Throw that on the scale.
Religion is if not entirely a scam, shown to be an easy path to low hanging fruit by an endless parade of hucksters.
Throw that on the scale.
I don’t travel by air or see doctors.
Throw me on the scale.
@luftballooneyegouge So you don’t trust God. Where the earth is currently in a state where there is very much which makes that trust impossible to do. This is how faith is a thing. Technically, you become bonded to someone when you trust them through a fog or cloud. So, for instance, the israelites trusted Moses to lead them through the water and the cloud. Bonding them forever to the body of Moses.
Your honesty is good here, as there are very many who claim to trust, believe in, Jesus… but actually do not. They think they do, so they would never say what you are saying.
Another technical comment on humans is that the state we find ourselves in is such that we believe we understand quite fully what we are. And we are wrong. Human beings are in a stage, not entirely unlike how it is with worms – caterpillars – where we will all change. But we do not really comprehend this.
ie, things are not as they seem, even on a fundamental level of how we consider our own bodies.
We all pretty well accept that we have an inner self and an outer self. But we do not consider that this inner self is what, ultimately, we will be.
Making judgments and such are premature.
@five2one
I don’t trust humans.
I think God should help innocents when nobody else will.
Maybe if more of his creation called foul, a being outside of mortality might see something it was overlooking. Kissing ass hasn’t worked.
We constantly judge.
You just did it there.
@luftballooneyegouge My statement on judging was in regards to judging a being who created and sustains the universe. It was not a statement that we judge all the time (as the Apostle Paul pointed out already).
Your arguments mirror the book of Job content, would be a good idea to read the Bible fully before judging God.
Jesus pointed out that we can learn nothing when we think we know already.
As for fan club, God is family. God is who ties saints and elect angels together as a singular family.
I am not attempting to persuade you as I can not do so. I can point out that evil in the world sends the message there is no God. And, secondly, God is the one who made everyone and everything. He cares about them as a Father. This is not just the elect God cares about, but all. Good example of that is in the Book of Jonah, where God used Jonah to save a pagan Nineveh.
I could point out that all the evil is but temporary, and this evil age has been very quick and set to be gone. But you have to imagine what this appears to someone who sees even millenia as minutes.
When God had Peter say ‘one thousand years to God is as one day and a day for God is as a thousand years’, that was just using a typical frame of reference for the age. The reality certainly must be very much more.
ie, your sense of time is typical for human beings, and deeply effects your judgments here. It is as a child can think an hour is so painfully long, whereas an adult might have that very hour very quick.
Being pained for a second is very, very different then being pained for years. So, the sense of time is really a key way to understand how God is not an absent father.
@five2one said, “Being pained for a second is very, very different then being pained for years. So, the sense of time is really a key way to understand how God is not an absent father.”
The rape & murder of children & adults too goes a bit further than being pained for a second.
You seem to be saying pain to mortals isn’t pain to the God, but you’re still left with suffering being allowed by one with the power to end it.
Reading a book doesn’t change this.
Contradictions in one’s excuses are the smoke from error’s fire.
@luftballooneyegouge I liked the scene in the Watchman where Rorschach has an epiphany while taking vengeance on a serial killer pedophile: “it isn’t God that does this, it is men”.
@luftballooneyegouge No, I am not saying “pain to mortals is pain to God”. I am saying this will “all be over soon and forever forgotten”. Right now, we are here, and it hurts.
“Reading a book doesn’t change this.
Contradictions in one’s excuses are the smoke from error’s fire.”
Arguing is not of use. Seeming contradictions surround us.
We are on a planet, going at 44,000 mph umpteen whatever speed, hanging on thin air, and we can say “we are moving” and “we are are still” and both are true.
It is just arguing, fighting, struggling.
Light can be a particle, or light can be a wave. It depends on the observer.
At the thesis of what? That God is a man. God can be a man. Or, a woman. Or, a fire burning in a bush. Whatever it takes to reach people.
Anthropomorphizing God will only confuse you. It is a contradiction. Seemingly.
You don’t want God, fine. But, you are refusing God. And no, I am not God. What I am saying is God is in your heart. Not a book. You have those choices. To do what?
Simply to believe.
You can’t know what other people’s experiences are. Yet you can. You can’t. Point is: you can really only speak for your own self.
You don’t want to know God? Everybody wants to know God. You want to be God? That is what you are acting like. Guess what? You are “made in the image of God”. Of course you want to be like your daddy.
There is no trick in it. It is your nature. You are angry and so lashing out. You want to disprove your own existence, the source of it anyway, but you can not. Or, hey, maybe you just want to not hear about God anymore.
Though starting a subject and passionately debating it seems like an odd way to do that. Look at Trump et al, they definitely believe there is no God.
Maybe you just can not.
Hard to believe, but either you can or can not.
@luftballooneyegouge Yes I do, we all judge, as we all perceive.
As for assuming you speak for everyone on the planet, what good is that? It does you no good. Speak for your own self. Has God helped you? Are you innocent?
You don’t strike me as someone who is very guilty.
When I say “don’t judge”, I mean don’t be so judgmental. Narrow minded.
You do not know me. I have met God. I have evidence, a lot. I hear from God all the time. I am never alone.
So we are “talking about two different things”. How can you talk about God without having ever met God? You just have heard of him from a distance. (According to what you are claiming here, anyway.)
I mean, you live inside God.
Best concept I can tell you is: look at your dreams. You are the main character in your dreams, yet also are all the other characters in them — and even the entire world the dream encompasses! You are amazing that you do that all the night long.
I have no idea where you get your concept of God. I really do not. I mean, from the world? The one God put Satan in charge of? (Not even to begin on that subject…)
Focus.
What do *you* want? Do you feel that God is your father, and where is he?
I think, that is exactly what I am hearing here.
The whole father role can be daunting. A father has to be a father. Do you have kids? Do you have a dad? There are buddy dads and then there are drunk, mean dads. There are dad’s helping you walk the path they know, from age and experience and knowing exactly how you tick.
God is a little bit more then *just* a dad. God is the good in everyone you ever loved.
But, all such things, how to explain? You have to have an open mind first, because the story is way, way more stranger then what you hear down here.
@luftballooneyegouge Is this how you think about your IRL dad? (And hey, maybe you should.)
Look, you only can speak for your own self, stick to that. You are not some crack addict whore in the throes of misery, staving it off with brief but all too expensive puffs of smoke. That, to quote Velvet Underground, “makes me feel like Jesus’ son”…
Complaining on behalf of all the poor on the earth really?
I passed a homeless guy today in the rain. I drove right past him, went home, jumped on a forum and then complained about what a rough time he is having!
First part true. Last part, no.
What is *your* complaint. Not everyone else’s.
Or anyone else’s.
If you don’t have a complaint, then what is the big fuss? Someone somewhere somehow might be behind the good times that is not you. If you want more and WAY better, you can go to God. If not, go to the source you think it is.
Cut out the middle man.
I don’t have any complaints with God. I am a nobody in this world. People ignore me. The world ignores me. I don’t have complaints about invisibility from assholes.
I don’t have complaints about them, don’t have complaints about God putting me in this situation. I had questions, I asked, I got answers. Nothing to brag about because God told me to do this, while others he does not. Why? So I can help others with this particular matter… if they need it.
If not, then *shrug*, someone else does.
Unfortunately, in your case, you see that there is some potential gain from struggling with me. I can wrestle.
I am not God, but I do know where he is and how to find him.
The confusion of this dark night.
I think god is something humans made up to comfort themselves. They fashioned him in the image of father’s here on earth, because we live in a patriarchal society. It would only make sense that since humans made “Him” up that he would have all
The qualities of man, good and bad.
@Scarlett
Do you think nowadays we might deny the possibility of a creepy peeping God to comfort ourselves?
We don’t worry so much about crops, weather, and being hacked to death by people we’ve never heard of, so maybe it’s just not as comforting today so people look for some other way to deal with uncomfortable thoughts.
Old Marvel comics and Star Trek portrayed pagan gods as powerful aliens that humans worshipped. They sort of frame it like they helped humans get through the times before technology with direct interaction and guidance, & once we reached a certain point they left us to other matters.
What do you think humans have now for this comfort?
How would you rate its comforting power versus the God?
@luftballooneyegouge oh sure we do. We humans are addicted to comforting ourselves and to the reduction or elimination of what we see as suffering. Buddhists believe these and other attachments are why we will not be free of suffering.
You raise good points, and in fact, I heard something just the other day about people who didn’t believe in religion turning to philosophy. Are religion and philosophy the same in that regard?
@Scarlett
I’m not a huge fan of the terror management theorist’s God.
Did our ancestors create God for comfort . . . or were they, newly meta-conscious, trying to make sense of the fundamental processes around them that brought order out of the primordial Chaos? And perhaps how they might use a similar process to carve out a little order from the local chaos for themselves?
Consider that most aspects of the Old Testament God are not exactly that “comforting” . . . and some aspects of the New Testament God are not either. And the gods of various other earlier cultures were downright heinous, beastly, despotic, treacherous by comparison to the Judeo-Christian model. If it was pure ease and comfort (or management of terror), why not create something more congenial to our wishes and certainly our laziness and love for ourselves! Why bother instantiating the negative aspects, if the main purpose is our comfort?
That’s why I think there was much more going on that just “comfort” or even terror-management.
@griz said, “If it was pure ease and comfort (or management of terror), why not create something more congenial to our wishes and certainly our laziness and love for ourselves! Why bother instantiating the negative aspects, if the main purpose is our comfort?”
Dionysus fits that bill, & you’ve undoubtedly have come across people lumping him & Christ together. Jesus has that comforting sin now, ask for forgiveness later deal that appeals greatly to people who fuck up their lives, and have no choice but to re-build.
Religions do tend towards ye olde good cop/bad cop scheme. The Comforter(s) vs The Monster(s).
Religion is the main comforter at funerals.
@luftballooneyegouge
Dionysus certainly falls into the “ease and comfort” category! The only god born of a Human mother also. So there’s that similarity, and the one you point out about “sin now, repent later”.
Although the latter is more a religious add-on. Jesus frequently said “Your sins are forgiven. Go, and sin no more”. I understand the magnitude of this without spiritual assist. But the important thing to take from it is that he was not proposing an endless cycle of sinning just on the assurance one could simply repent from it. I think Catholicism popularized this, along with the “plenary indulgence”.
Mythology played out similarly. In ancient Egyptian mythology Osiris was “the father” (the culture) that grew increasingly self-blinded to the corruption in places of power (and was chopped up for it and the parts distributed all over Egypt by the protesting demi-gods). Isis was kind of chaotic and unpredictable, so Seth (the bad cop uncle) took over. Isis hunted around Egypt for Osiris’ phallus and impregnated herself (hey, he was a god!) and Horus resulted. He was the good cop. He grew up in exile (analogous to Jesus) and returned to confront his evil-cop uncle. Horus was renowned for his ability to see the bigger picture and his avatar was the falcon that flew above and saw all things. Seth ripped out his eye in the battle but Horus eventually won (youthful, strong, attentive, able to adapt, left-wing!). He collected his eye and traveled to the underworld where Osiris’ spirit languished (the ancient culture, the right-wings) and gave him his eye so he could see the corruption and do something about it through Horus.
It’s a mythological model from a very ancient culture that managed to survive for a very long time by constantly re-vivifying itself out of self-blinding corruption.
@griz oh sure, a lot of it was about control because back then humans weren’t controlling their base instincts.
I look to Socrates conversation with Euthyphros to see that most people just attached to whatever god or gods they believed in whatever was convenient at the time.
@Scarlett
Just “back then”?! As a social worker I would be very surprised if you’ve not encountered a few people not controlling their base instincts. (Probably just this week!).
I also see people attaching themselves to existing gods; but I was speaking more of the original instantiation of those gods into mythological narratives — that late-comers then attached themselves to.
From my studies it seems more like divinity archetypes were pre-existing constructs that people came to attach articulated narrative to over time. . . than pure creative constructs designed by some insightful artisan as a way to control negative emotions.
@griz those base instincts will always be there and they serve their purpose. over time, the hope is we evolve our brains. This usually takes some type of trauma. we have to first see it, and then purposefully decide to rewire our brains. here in america, the trump presidency may be just the trauma we need to shake something loose and begin to heal. in any case, humanity has always been built up on stories. I guess the stories are ok as long as they don’t hurt anyone.
@Scarlett
But didn’t you just say that growth involves trauma? Even if just the normal “growing pains” of childhood!
While we are not to run around carelessly inflicting malicious harm, I would advise sober caution with the “so long as nobody gets hurt” mindset.
That’s the toxic femininity that coddles, spoils and invalidates children (and now the society) in horrendous ways.
We have to be stressed to grow. This is an evolutionary axiom.
The first question would have to be . . . which advertiser is one listening to?
@griz
The Bible:
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”-Matt 6:9
@luftballooneyegouge
I would categorize Jesus as a good advertiser to listen to!
@griz
JEEEESUS,….. Griz JUST CALLED YOU A MARKETING ASSOCIATE!!!!
@griz You are so busted!
@luftballooneyegouge
Shit!
There’s a special spot reserved in hell . . . oh, hell! I’ll just cancel my reservation!