Are You A Lukewarm Christian?

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Are You A Lukewarm Christian?
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 Bahamut.Ravael
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By Bahamut.Ravael 2014-01-31 03:12:31
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Cerberus.Tikal said: »
The evidence is personal?

Sounds weird, but yes. It'll make more sense when I have time to explain. Very hard to pull that off at work though.
 Bismarck.Ihina
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By Bismarck.Ihina 2014-01-31 03:20:18
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Interesting. Well, how do you get from that, a master intelligence who created the universe, to christianity and jesus? Why couldn't it have been one of the other gods?
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 Shiva.Onorgul
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By Shiva.Onorgul 2014-01-31 03:21:28
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Valefor.Endoq said: »
Bismarck.Ihina said: »
Just curious, why did you pick Jesus instead of the other dozen gods? Did you find proof that he exists and the others gods don't?
I wish I had a short answer for this but it's something that took me years to figure out. My faith did not come to me quickly or easily. It wasn't until many years of seeking answers even if I afraid of what I found I still took all things objectively and without bias. and in my search for infallible truths what I found is not what I expected to find, I found God in this and his sons teachings to be true and virtuous where all others have fallen short.
You found their ascribed teachings to be true and virtuous. And yet you started a topic where the premises offered detail the many contradictions of those same teachings. I know that wasn't actually your intent -- you just wanted to shame some other Christians for not doing it right (your way, of course), but it does highlight the almost infinite flexibility of human thought when approaching the inherently irrational.

Incidentally, you said that it took years to finally find faith. Was Christianity forced into your brain while your skull was still soft? If not, which religion was? I'd be genuinely surprised if you come from an atheist background, but it would at least jive with the scholastic approach of actually reading the Bible (something that the clergy have historically been explicitly opposed to).

Valefor.Endoq said: »
I could go more deeply into the reasons I now have faith but it would likely come across as bragging about what God has done for me...
Considering what you have told me of your health problems, I think you have a legitimate grievance to take up with the Grand Celestial Bureaucrat.

It's a very strange habit of humans that they gain more faith directly as a result of having fewer things to reinforce it. Religious fervor regularly increases when things get bad. Outside of football players, almost no rich person gets down on his knees and thanks Jesus when they make another million. In fairness, most millionaires aren't risking severe injury and death the way NFL players do every day they work or train. But find someone living in poverty, hand-to-mouth, and battling a host of medical problems and their faith tends to increase exponentially.

Although, I can only say that is true of the Religions of the Book, that is, the inheritors of Zarathrustra: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The major monotheistic death cults that formed in a volatile desert region seem to do best when telling their believers that martyrdom is a virtue. Go figure.



Personally, I don't understand the universe but hope to live long enough that I shall. Which means I would need to live longer than time, which I'm not sure my ape mind can handle, so ask me again in 500 years. What I find incredible in followers of Neo-Zoroastrianism is the belief that the deity who watches over each of their individual lives is also the deity who produced the universe. The sheer hubris is phenomenal.

If some one thing created time, matter, and the rest, it would either love everything regardless of its behavior or be thoroughly disinterested by everything. Lesser deities like Jehovah, Yahweh, YHVH, Yeshua, Jesus, Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, Amaterasu, Brahma, etc. etc., would be the ones to worry that some small subset of particles in the unfashionable arm of the Milky Way are conforming to arbitrary strictures like that list of what makes a Christian not a real Christian.
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 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 04:11:47
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Bismarck.Ihina said: »
Interesting. Well, how do you get from that, a master intelligence who created the universe, to christianity and jesus? Why couldn't it have been one of the other gods?
Because there is only 1 God, and through his only son Jesus Christ I found my way to this. I find it hard to believe the all mighty God would use his time to miss lead me and give me false answers and false knowledge.

These 2 verses are true and have changed my life

Matthew 7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you:

James 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

In the hopes of reaching those like me weak in faith like I was at the time and saving them the torment that a life of half-faith brings, I asked out of blind faith for knowledge of Gods works and to understand him in this same way he already knows us all, I started to ask very personal questions trying to understand him on a personal level, the things I learned were amazing and even overwhelming at times. Things of the scientific nature that came to me I at first dismissed as delusions or my wild imagination because they seemed impossible, but in recent years I am seeing on TV the exact same things that I knew of over 15 years ago being presented as "brand new" science discoveries... needless to say I was blown away when this started to happen as all my theories that I gave up on talking about 15 years ago are popping up everywhere... things I knew were dangerous in the wrong hands and vowed to not share with the world, but it seems that those abstract concepts are now on paper and being used to build some frightening technology. I know I did not "think" of these things because the concepts came in entirety complete, things I couldn't have possibly known were made known to me and in total completion. I can't explain these away with chance and coincidence. But all who seek his wisdom with pure intentions will be given wisdom liberally just as it is written.
 Bismarck.Ihina
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By Bismarck.Ihina 2014-01-31 04:19:26
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Neat. Does that mean that you know of technology that will be created 15 years from now? Future tech is very valuable and can make someone quite wealth and quick. If what you're saying is real... I know some people, I'm sure we can work something out if you want to share some of your secrets with me.
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 Bahamut.Ravael
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By Bahamut.Ravael 2014-01-31 04:21:57
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Bismarck.Ihina said: »
Neat. Does that mean that you know of technology that will be created 15 years from now? Future tech is very valuable and can make someone quite wealth and quick. If what you're saying is real... I know some people, I'm sure we can work something out if you want to share some of your secrets with me.

I lol'd. You're trying so hard to veil your sarcasm.
 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 04:24:49
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Bismarck.Ihina said: »
Neat. Does that mean that you know of technology that will be created 15 years from now? Future tech is very valuable and can make someone quite wealth and quick. If what you're saying is real... I know some people, I'm sure we can work something out if you want to share some of your secrets with me.
No it's not like that lol and if I misused anything from God then I really fear how that would end... not only that but what I know is very abstract and I lack the ability to really translate it into egghead scientist jargon equations that would fit on paper
 Bismarck.Ihina
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By Bismarck.Ihina 2014-01-31 04:24:59
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I don't know man. What do you think about Endoq's story, Ravael? Do you it's legit? Has god ever told you about future scientific discoveries and technologies?
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 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 04:27:51
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Bismarck.Ihina said: »
I don't know man. What do you think about Endoq's story, Ravael? Do you it's legit? Has god ever told you about future scientific discoveries and technologies?
All I meant are the concepts I understood are now being used for some of our technology in the present. for example many of todays popular theories of physics are all old news to me
 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 04:35:06
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Anyways this is getting off topic again, this isn't about me.
 Bahamut.Ravael
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By Bahamut.Ravael 2014-01-31 04:36:19
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Bismarck.Ihina said: »
I don't know man. What do you think about Endoq's story, Ravael? Do you it's legit? Has god ever told you about future scientific discoveries and technologies?

Nope. I dunno, it's obvious Endoq is trying to sum up a lot in a few sentences, so I have a hard time figuring out what to make of it. No offense, Endoq.
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 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 04:36:37
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I was just asked for some anecdotes about my past, and I have a really hard time explaining without sounding stupid because words were never my strong suit and I'm prone to being misunderstood
 Bismarck.Ihina
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By Bismarck.Ihina 2014-01-31 04:37:22
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Well no one's asking you to be specific. Even if you don't have the exact formula or know exactly how to make it, you'll still end up with some of the credit. For instance, Leonardo da Vinci is widely credited with designing the first submarine, even though they were centuries away from being able to achieve it. His greatness is far beyond his time, maybe god told him about things several hundred years into the future, whereas you only have about 15 years.

Listen, Da Vinci has a huge hand in shaping the world as it is today. I'm assuming you're just shy. What if he was shy and decided not to share his knowledge with the world? That would have set the world maybe a hundred years back. If god himself gave you this knowledge, it has to be for a reason. I think you a responsibility to share this with the world.
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 Asura.Jkun
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By Asura.Jkun 2014-01-31 04:41:08
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Playing games that include magic and occult practices, murder, and let you impersonate scantily dressed female avatars? Last I checked this is not the kind of activity that improves your relationship with "your God". What a bunch of hypocrites.
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 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 04:42:42
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I cannot take any credit nor do I want any. I believe that people who thoughtlessly share their dangerous knowledge to the world is much like handing a toddler a loaded hand gun to help them, but that is going to end badly every time.
 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 04:44:39
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Asura.Jkun said: »
Playing games that include magic and occult practices, murder, and let you impersonate scantily dressed female avatars? Last I checked this is not the kind of activity that improves your relationship with "your God". What a bunch of hypocrites.
Actually I quit ffxi almost a year ago now to pursue Gods will, I linger on these forums in hopes of reaching my friends I left behind...
The only reason I can feel comfortable about talking the talk is because I have earnestly dedicated my life to walk the walk
 Bismarck.Ihina
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By Bismarck.Ihina 2014-01-31 04:58:06
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Are you even listening to yourself? This knowledge will eventually become public knowledge anyways. If you're not protecting anything. You're just sitting on your hands, letting someone else discover what you already know. How can you be sure that they will use that discovery responsibly? If this technology really is dangerous, wouldn't you want full control of it rather than some potentially crazed lunatic?

And if this does come to pass and some massive disaster did happen, how would you live with yourself knowing that you could have stopped it and saved thousands(millions?) of lives?
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 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 05:04:32
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Bismarck.Ihina said: »
Are you even listening to yourself? This knowledge will eventually become public knowledge anyways. If you're not protecting anything. You're just sitting on your hands, letting someone else discover what you already know. How can you be sure that they will use that discovery responsibly? If this technology really is dangerous, wouldn't you want full control of it rather than some potentially crazed lunatic?

And if this does come to pass and some massive disaster did happen, how would you live with yourself knowing that you could have stopped it and saved thousands(millions?) of lives?

I don't see how something like being able to explain exactly what gravity is or the geometric structure of the universe could do to help humanity, I can only see potential for misuse. people that understand these things should take that knowledge to the grave. It's bad enough that they are starting to understand there is no "particles" or "matter"
 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 05:05:28
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way off topic, sorry. -________-
 Valefor.Endoq
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By Valefor.Endoq 2014-01-31 05:11:44
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3am here good night :)
I hope this thread stays on topic without me here to keep the peace... Anyways, I'll come back in the morning and sift through the aftermath lol
 Bismarck.Ihina
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By Bismarck.Ihina 2014-01-31 05:18:49
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Let me tell you a story. About, what was it, 50 or so years ago, a man found a way to run an electric current through a wire, and control it. He was pretty excited about it and called his investor friend over and showed it to him. His friend looked at his invention, rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah? Well, how is that going to make me any money?". The present world now operates entire on this man's invention and we would all be lost without it. Imagine if this man was as shy as you're being right now.

Even if you, or all your friends, or even everyone presently on Earth right now; even if no one knows how to use your knowledge to benefit humanity, are you certain that no one ever will? The path you have decided to go down is the path where that man decided not to share his invention because he's afraid that it will be misused. And of course it has been heavily misused, but there are also upsides to it, and if you ask me, the benefits by far outweigh the risks involved.
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 Remora.Brain
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By Remora.Brain 2014-01-31 06:38:11
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Quote:
Science has found no reason for the many laws of physics and chemistry, and for the many precise values and relationships, to have come into existence exactly as they are.

Looking for reasons the way our physical laws are the way they are is stupid. It simply is this way. We could look for "reasons" as in what caused it to be this way, and scientists will likely eventually find it if given enough time, but the the way many use "reasons" on this topic is as a synonym for purpose. Purpose is a human construct that we can assign arbitrarily, meaning there are no concrete answers, and in the end it has literally no effect on how things work in physics.

Science is for finding causes and effects, not assigning purpose.

Quote:
From a mathematical point of view, the odds against our universe having just the right laws to sustain life are astronomical.

To say the odds against the universe having the "right" laws to sustain life as astronomical is quite frankly f*cking HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

First of all, life as we know it developed to work within the laws of physics we have. Physics didn't have to be this way to support life, life had to be this way to exist within the laws of physics in this universe.

Next, to say that the odds against our set of laws being the way they are is astronomical because there are infinite variations of what could have been is, again, stupid. The odds against any single set of physical laws being the way they are, are themselves all equally astronomical. The added requirement of the laws being able to "sustain life" is pointless. There are infinite possibilities of what could have been, and by extension an equally infinite amount of forms of life that could have arisen in the altered states of these infinite realities.

The whole argument is akin to me building a specific house on a good firm foundation and you telling me that this specific house wouldn't stand if I had build it on sugar sand. No f*cking sh*t? That's why I f*cking built it this way here and not there.
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 Leviathan.Comeatmebro
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By Leviathan.Comeatmebro 2014-01-31 06:42:53
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Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. If they did, there would be no religious people.
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 Valefor.Sehachan
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By Valefor.Sehachan 2014-01-31 06:45:31
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Bahamut.Ravael said: »
Endoq, kudos for trying to do good. You're going to end up with trolls who hate that people believe in something they don't, though. They salivate at the very idea of mocking the religious.
Posts like this are the reason why non religious people often say it's not pleasing to chat with a religious person. Like Sparth said multiple times no one was hating, trolling or attacking anyone, they were just expressing opinions(including Jet which you perceive as an enemy). If you believe everyone disagreeing to be a hater that's the kind of close-mindedness that makes debating pointless, because you don't even want to hear what others have to say.
(I quote this specific post, but Ravael has had this behaviour pretty much throughout the entire thread...)

I will gladly talk about philosophy or esoterism with anyone, agreeing or not, as it's interesting...as long as it comes from their mind. What's the point though if you just go on quoting dogmas instead?

Of course close-mindedness is annoying both ways, a scientist that refutes any new idea is no scientist at all(how dare you say the Earth orbits around the sun?), some kind of flexibility is always needed.
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 Ragnarok.Ashman
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By Ragnarok.Ashman 2014-01-31 07:49:27
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On the opposite side of the coin: This site is grossly left leaning (almost militantly). It's also composed primarily of the "i just signed up for militant atheism" age group too.

I won't even normally post in these threads anymore because it's tiring. It's like accidentally walking into a fanatical feminist rally, or wearing a veteran uniform to hiroshima.

The worst part is it's usually the same ones crying about how they're always accosted by the religious. These religious tyrant's who constantly push their beliefs on you. Hyperbole, hypocrisy, etc.

I haven't been to church in 2 years. I'm probably the definition of lukewarm christian. It's not that i don't believe; I just don't care and frankly i'm relatively jaded (not getting into it due to


lost interest. thank god it's friday. enjoy your weekends guys.
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 Carbuncle.Anesthesia
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By Carbuncle.Anesthesia 2014-01-31 08:08:49
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Valefor.Endoq said: »
Because there is only 1 God, and through his only son Jesus Christ I found my way to this. I find it hard to believe the all mighty God would use his time to miss lead me and give me false answers and false knowledge.

You start with an unsupported assertion:

Valefor.Endoq said: »
Because there is only 1 God,

Your reasoning:

Valefor.Endoq said: »
I find it hard to believe the all mighty God would use his time to miss lead me and give me false answers and false knowledge.

assumes your original statement must be true.

Before you can reason off of a premise, you first need to show the original premise is correct.
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 Shiva.Onorgul
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By Shiva.Onorgul 2014-01-31 08:24:38
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Valefor.Sehachan said: »
Bahamut.Ravael said: »
Endoq, kudos for trying to do good. You're going to end up with trolls who hate that people believe in something they don't, though. They salivate at the very idea of mocking the religious.
Posts like this are the reason why non religious people often say it's not pleasing to chat with a religious person.
Just to expand slightly on this:

Excessively religious/mystical people assert that scientists and others who focus on confirmable facts and repeatable data are irritatingly smug because they claim to have the world all figured out. This is classic projection; the last thing a rational person claims is to have understood the universe, whereas it is practically the first thing a mystic claims, though often using the dodge of saying that their imaginary friend is the one who knows all.

Hey, Endoq, you want to get back on topic when you wake up, how about you briefly summarize the topic you wanted to make? Because, as I said earlier, I suspect that it goes something on the lines of "Christians who aren't doing it the same way as me are doing it wrong." The Bible, even if we ignore the problems of translation from half a dozen dead languages, is internally self-contradictory, especially when comparing the Hebrew Scriptures to the Christian Scriptures (and let's nevermind the various apocrypha that some sects embrace and others don't). To suggest that someone isn't adequately Christian because they don't hop on one foot while reciting the Apostle's Creed backwards is... damnit, what's the word that always comes to mind when I think of Christians? Self-righteous smug arrogance! Or just hubris. God bless the Greeks for that word.

Or we could go back to debating whether Christians are still being fed to the lions in the Western world (funny how Western Christians never talk about the legitimate abuses their brothers-in-faith suffer in places like China...) or the existence of I-Am-Who-Am or whatever other nonsense inevitably crops up when someone starts preaching.

Mind you, like one of my favorite atheists, Penn Jilette, I actually promote the idea of evangelism. If you really believe what you're saying. If you really believe there's an eternity of punishment for all but a few people, because G-d is loving and wonderful like that (I could mention a sermon my old priest liked to dust off that never sat well with the congregation), you should be shouting about it constantly. It's like knowing someone is going to get run over by a train and just idly watching if you don't, after all. So I guess I'm a hypocrite for being annoyed by the smugness of evangelism while supporting the premise behind evangelism... or I would be if I thought that more than .01% of evangelizers actually believe their own ***.

Oh, and live by it. You can't have faith, promote it verbally, and then spend your nights doing blow off a hooker's penis.
 Valefor.Sehachan
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By Valefor.Sehachan 2014-01-31 08:34:46
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Honest question but what is the purpose behind continously add words like "mighty" and "great" to god and Jesus? Why this reinforcement?
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By fonewear 2014-01-31 08:40:10
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Bismarck.Ihina said: »
Are you even listening to yourself? This knowledge will eventually become public knowledge anyways. If you're not protecting anything. You're just sitting on your hands, letting someone else discover what you already know. How can you be sure that they will use that discovery responsibly? If this technology really is dangerous, wouldn't you want full control of it rather than some potentially crazed lunatic?

And if this does come to pass and some massive disaster did happen, how would you live with yourself knowing that you could have stopped it and saved thousands(millions?) of lives?

Worst troll I've ever seen.
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By fonewear 2014-01-31 08:41:21
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Leviathan.Comeatmebro said: »
Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. If they did, there would be no religious people.

Second worst troll. Bro
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