Summer means no religion or politics?

[Vince Twelve]

Wise advise on how to deal with 'the bible":

1. Don't read the bible, ever! Just put the little pieces of knowledge you have in your memory together to get your very own "biblical text". This is a profound basis for arguing about how this book makes no sense at all.

2. Take presumptions for facts. Believe everything anybody tells you about the bible, as long as it fits your image that it's been written by a bunch of brainamputated monkeys on dope. The most absurd interpretation of the text is always the best one to go with.

3. Assume you already know everything about the bible there is to know. You will not be surprised to hear that the primary objective in a conversation should always be to not getting a potentially wrong view corrected. There is no truth, there only is your truth.

4. If you're not very familiar with the bible that's no problem. Just make sure to let everyone know how much of a "believer" you are (whatever it is you believe). Remember, you have all the answer to all questions, you just need to think hard enough.

Just to be clear, were you talking to Jim here?  Because with his statements about the ten commandments without even knowing that killing was one of them, and his statements that people tell him he can heal via prayer only if he gets paid to do so, and other such statements about god and the bible that I doubt you would agree with, it sounded like these applied (with exaggeration, obviously) to him.

And since atheist vs believer always desintigrates as it has into a boring see-saw, I would much rather hear you set Jim right on his beliefs and Jim set you right on yours.

[Jim Reed]

Prayer healing works only if the man who prays to God is a true believer. True belief is not me saying: "yeah, there is God", or such, but is a matter of a much bigger importance.

Yes, I called God to help me many times and He helped me every time. I don't believe in coindence, and who ever believes in it doesn't know enough.

Praying for healing is asking God for the release of sins. Exactly, -...forgive us for our depts, as we forgive the ones who are in depted to us...-, or however the wording in english prayer is, (Our father, who art in heaven...)

A bullet is not a sin.

There are people who can remove it from a body, but I cannot do it, as that is not a matter of faith/belief, but something else which I don't have (I hope I will some day). I know a man who can do it, though.

The reasearch is wrong because it tried to make prayer healing work, using people who are not believers, to pray.

[Misj']

To the literalists in here:
Do you think that the earth is flat, immovable, has four ends and four corners?

In Dutch we have an expression: 'iemand de hoeken van de kamer laten zien' (jemanden die Ecken des Zimmers sehen lassen/show somebody the corners of a room). This expression does not mean that walk from corner to corner with somebody, and it can even be done in a (round) room without corners. The expression means that when you're in a discussion with somebody you wipe the floor with him (incidentally that's also a Dutch expression: met iemand de vloer aanvegen). Now, we both know that this expression too doesn't mean that I hold you by the legs and use your hair to clean up the dust.

So can one still be a literalist when correctly (according to it's original meaning but not according to you literally) reading these expressions of speech? - Yes. Of course one can. Many of such expressions still exist, and none of us considers anyone using them to be an idiot. Of course certain people claim (without much reason) that language (particularly concerning expressions) is much more complex and richer nowadays than it was thousands of years ago in the East.

Next thing you tell me is that because there's an English saying: "Walls have ears" that this means that those who use this expression think of literal ears, rather than the meaning of the expression.

Ps. This logic is about equal to that of someone claiming that Maria from the West Side Story was a lesbian because she sings 'I feel pretty Oh so pretty I feel pretty and witty and gay'.

Pps. Lack of understanding makes it easy to find errors that aren't there...lack of the will to understand is often the reason to search for errors in the first place (this is true for both sides by the way, and not an attack on you personally).

EDIT:

Ppps. This is a general remark...not proving a point for either side. Just something I thought when reading many of the arguments of the site linked by Kris...richness of language (as well as its limitations) are often forgotten during such discussions.

[Jim Reed]

Wise advise on how to deal with 'the bible":

1. Don't read the bible, ever! Just put the little pieces of knowledge you have in your memory together to get your very own "biblical text". This is a profound basis for arguing about how this book makes no sense at all.

2. Take presumptions for facts. Believe everything anybody tells you about the bible, as long as it fits your image that it's been written by a bunch of brainamputated monkeys on dope. The most absurd interpretation of the text is always the best one to go with.

3. Assume you already know everything about the bible there is to know. You will not be surprised to hear that the primary objective in a conversation should always be to not getting a potentially wrong view corrected. There is no truth, there only is your truth.

4. If you're not very familiar with the bible that's no problem. Just make sure to let everyone know how much of a "believer" you are (whatever it is you believe). Remember, you have all the answer to all questions, you just need to think hard enough.

Just to be clear, were you talking to Jim here?  Because with his statements about the ten commandments without even knowing that killing was one of them, and his statements that people tell him he can heal via prayer only if he gets paid to do so, and other such statements about god and the bible that I doubt you would agree with, it sounded like these applied (with exaggeration, obviously) to him.

And since atheist vs believer always desintigrates as it has into a boring see-saw, I would much rather hear you set Jim right on his beliefs and Jim set you right on yours.

Yes, paying is obligatory to me.
That doesn't mean that it's a must for other people who can pray to heal, also.

I personaly wish that this is not the case, and that I can do this for free.
As I stated, the rules I follow when doing prayer healing are the ones that were given to me while I was granted the licence to do prayer healing. If I choose to do it for free, I fear that would nullify my licence, so I would not do it.

So don't think that are people who can do healing via prayer are the same as me, or are ruled by the same rules as me.

On another note, trying to heal somebody who doesn't aprove of your meddling will lead to illnes on your part, from my personal expirience.

[Nacho]

I don't say that the church is all bad, there must be some good people in there, too.

Who here said that church is all bad? I say, and I' ve been saying it during the whole thread, is that is has good and bad things, pros and cons... AS ANY OTHER HUMAN ASPECT OF LIFE. Cause "God", "Religion" and "Church" is human created, not the opposite. If "God" created humans, things "purely" related to "God" should be perfect, don't you think so? But no... His church is corrupted, as corrupted as any other human terrenal organisation, and his "books", the original ones, the ones that are supposedly "closest" to Him, are misogynist, homophobic, racist and contradictory.

As bad as any other bad human-source book in earth.

I am giving you evidences that all this stuff has a human source. Give me evidences of the contrary. Till then, for me, God and Unicorns will remain in the same "bag". The "bag" of "fantasy stuff".

[Jim Reed]

Yes I agree about the church statement. I said it so, so you can see that following the church is not the same as believing in Him.

Yes, the bible was writen by humans, who may wrote errors in it. So what? You don't have to even know about the bible to believe in the existence of God.

[Vince Twelve]

Jim, where did you get your license from?  Is there some kind of organization that oversees this kind of thing?  Do they have a website?  Any claim to legitimacy?  Did you have to take a test? What would happen if you were to heal someone without a license?

Seriously interested.  Forgive me if it's been covered in this long thread.

[Jim Reed]

Jim, where did you get your license from?  Is there some kind of organization that oversees this kind of thing?  Do they have a website?  Any claim to legitimacy?  Did you have to take a test? What would happen if you were to heal someone without a license?

Seriously interested.  Forgive me if it's been covered in this long thread.

Where? In the house of the man who gave it to me. From whom? From the above-memtioned man. He has a church licence.

Yes. The church gives away theese kind of licences. Go to a church and ask.

Test? Well the man who gave it to me checked if I have the ability to do it, before he gave it to me.

What would happen? I don't know. I have performed something similar to it once, before I had the licence, and ended up really sick. That may have been the result of not having the approval of the person wich I was doing it to, and I am in favor of the latter(no approval)

[guitar_hero]

Wise advise on how to deal with 'the bible":

1. Don't read the bible, ever! Just put the little pieces of knowledge you have in your memory together to get your very own "biblical text". This is a profound basis for arguing about how this book makes no sense at all.

2. Take presumptions for facts. Believe everything anybody tells you about the bible, as long as it fits your image that it's been written by a bunch of brainamputated monkeys on dope. The most absurd interpretation of the text is always the best one to go with.

3. Assume you already know everything about the bible there is to know. You will not be surprised to hear that the primary objective in a conversation should always be to not getting a potentially wrong view corrected. There is no truth, there only is your truth.

4. If you're not very familiar with the bible that's no problem. Just make sure to let everyone know how much of a "believer" you are (whatever it is you believe). Remember, you have all the answer to all questions, you just need to think hard enough.

Just to be clear, were you talking to Jim here?

I was talking to Jim as much as I was talking to you and everyone else.

guitar_hero:
I've just read the first two books, and they flat out contradict each other on several issues. Please explain what I must have gotten wrong.

I don't think I need to anything much to Misj's last post. It's a good reminder for us all. KhrisMUC, if you have a specific question about something you find contradtictory feel free to ask.

If "God" created humans, things "purely" related to "God" should be perfect, don't you think so?

Wrong axioms lead to wrong conclusions.

[Khris]

Misj':
I do see your point, but it doesn't apply to people considering themselves a literalists. Those people don't see figures of speech everywhere, those people do believe that Adam & Eve were the first humans, that Jesus walked on water and that there was a talking snake. (Otherwise, the concept of taking the bible literal looses all meaning. I'm sure at least e.g. Ken Ham would harshly put you in your place after reading how you see his understanding of the bible.)
Furthermore, there are tons of statements in the bible you'd have to interpret extremely freely to read as figures of speech. How do you interpret Jesus turning water into wine as a figure of speech? Or raising Lazarus from the dead?
Was he just dead tired and really just sleeping? Come on.

(And btw, you keep addressing the secular arguments here. Why don't you try to rip into the believers' posts for a change?)

I don't think I need to anything much to Misj's last post. It's a good reminder for us all. KhrisMUC, if you have a specific question about something you find contradtictory feel free to ask.

I think you do, very much so.
In the very first chapter of the bible, God creates all the animals, then man and woman (at the same time, it seems).
In the next chapter, he creates man, then a woman out of his rib, then all the animals.
So in what order did it actually happen? And why did at least one account get the order wrong? We're talking about the inspired word of god here, describing how the universe came into existence, right?

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect you to be able to deliver a satisfying answer here; I'm merely curious how you're gonna weasel out of this one and I'm going to base my decision whether discussing with you is worth my time on that.

[Misj']

If "God" created humans, things "purely" related to "God" should be perfect, don't you think so? But no... His church is corrupted, as corrupted as any other human terrenal organisation

Couldn't that just as well be an argument that church isn't purely related to god (or at least affected by non-godly things)? - That would of course be a discussion as to whether the church represents god (or just claim to do), or whether 'organized religion' is not by definition corrupt because it seeks power...but even if god created everything, then the weakness of the church isn't necessarily a representation of the weakness of god. Just like the weakness of men isn't necessarily a weakness of it's creator (so over-simplify it: I can create a character in a book who cheats on his wife, even though I don't, nor agree with it...I know, it's a huge over-simplification, but you get the idea)

...and his "books", the original ones, the ones that are supposedly "closest" to Him, are misogynist, homophobic, racist and contradictory.

As bad as any other bad human-source book in earth.

Of course one would now have to ask: "what books are closest to him?" - And I'll stick to the the Judeo-Christian situation (because that's easiest to discuss for most here)...is it a collection of human writers between two covers, or is it the text that he - according to bible - wrote himself? - Yes, I know I put the 'according to the bible'-phrase in there, which makes it easy to react by 'and where's the credibility in that?' - but bear with me for argument's sake. The latter seems preferable to the former (at least, that would be the logical assumption, I think)...

Someone once told me that this implies that 'the closest to god' brings us back to the text on the stone tables (exodus 20): the ten commandments.

So that would bring the question to 'could you accept the ten commandments as being a general description of a good life' (independent of of question whether they are original or created by god or men). And since one of the arguments given against godly influence of the ten commandments was that they were plain logical and that any human would have figured that out eventually, my guess would be that most people here agree with them (otherwise that argumentation would be flawed).

Personally I think that the whole not-killing, not-stealing, not-cheating, not-bearing-false-witness (which is not the same as not lying!), not-wanting-what-is-your-neighbour's (which is not the same as not being jealous, or not wanting something similar) is quite a nice one. And if everyone decided to keep that (and many of us do, I'm sure; independent of whether or not they believe in god) I think life wouldn't be too bad.

And that brings me back to an earlier statement that I made: I don't care why you do it, as long as you try to be a good person.

I do see your point, but it doesn't apply to people considering themselves a literalists. Those people don't see figures of speech everywhere, those people do believe that Adam & Eve were the first humans, that Jesus walked on water and that there was a talking snake.

I've read a book once by a literalist (a Jewish rabbi) who claimed that Jesus walking over water could be interpreted differently from the text (walking through the water if I remember correctly, but I'm not sure anymore). A talking snake is not necessarily a problem...animals have a language (chickens have about 25 words for danger depending on where it comes from, and our cat clearly has different sounds depending on what she wants to say)...so it would make sense to assume that humans may have lost the ability to understand them rather than them having lost the ability to speak. As always: I'm not saying this is true, but it is in agreement with our understanding of 'the animal languages'. And for Adam & Eve being the first humans...well somebody had to

Furthermore, there are tons of statements in the bible you'd have to interpret extremely freely to read as figures of speech. How do you interpret Jesus turning water into wine as a figure of speech? Or raising Lazarus from the dead?

Many of such miracles are - at least theoretically - possible according to quantum physics (well...turning water into whine at least). But if - again for the sake of the argument - we assume that this god-being has a full understanding for quantum mechanics (which according to the current views is impossible, I know) and would be able to manipulate the quantum world in detail (which is possible according to our current understanding)...well, let's just say that such a being would be powerful enough to do all all things described in the bible (including the 'he spoke and it was').

I know there are a bunch of if's in there, but from what we know of the universe, a creature with such capabilities would have most properties attributed to god. Whether such a being actually could or does exist is of course a whole different question


Ps.

(And btw, you keep addressing the secular arguments here. Why don't you try to rip into the believers' posts for a change?)

- I thought about that (actually had a post about that a while back, but decided to remove that part; because if there's anything I learned from warfare then it's: never start a battle on two fronts) - I actually wanted to switch sides today and start questioning certain of their theological ideas...but I didn't want to hijack the thread (yet).

[Vince Twelve]

@Jim,

But the license.  What does it say on it?  Does it reference some overseeing licensing committee?  Even better, could you scan/take a picture of the card and show it to us?  I'm just interested in who decides who can and can not heal someone using prayer, and what kind of processes they support.



@Guitar_hero,

I'm interested to know what you think of Jim's faith healing and other beliefs that he's laid out here.  Are you in agreement?

[Jim Reed]

Hey, Vince, just noticed what you said.

I do know that killing is a sin and that there is a commandment about it, but it looks like you missunderstud me.

''Thou shall not kill, it's bad'' is not the comandement. I stated it that way, so you can see that is a forgivable sin.

Refering to what Jesus said...that the sins against the holy spirit will not be forgiven... somewhere in the bible. A sin against the holy spirit is another matter.

"Thou shall not kill" is the commandment, so that we don't missunderstand each other again.

I hope this resolves the missunderstanding.

Edit: Vince: the licence is a verbal one.

[Vince Twelve]

I see, I just interpreted:

I can't seem to rember that it says: Thou shall not kill, it's bad.

as you not knowing that it was in the commandments.  Along with

I can't say that I read the bible

I see now what you meant way back then.  I apologize for suggesting that you didn't know that killing was in the 10 commandments.

As for your verbal license, that doesn't really help me learn about what you claim to do, unfortunately, or provide any kind of legitimacy...  And since I'm not interesting on going around in circles about how I don't believe that prayer healing works, I'll just bow out of the thread again.  Have fun! 

[Khris]

Misj':
I wasn't talking about whether it's possible to turn water into wine using quantum mechanics.
What I was saying is that literalists believe that Jesus turned water into wine. Because your argument seemed to be that everything supernatural or wrong the bible mentions, they consider as expressions of speech.
So let me repeat what I was saying: they don't.
Again: you seemed to be defending the literalist viewpoint by saying that they don't consider the really absurd stuff (by our standards of what is possible and impossible, true/false) to be literally true.
But yes, they indeed do.

Walk up to one of them and ask them, it seems you'll be in for a surprise.
They won't be telling you that Jesus used a not yet invented device that directly rearranges atoms or something.
Sure, they explain it by attributing supernatural powers to God/Jesus. That doesn't get rid of the contradictions though.

My point here is that believing in the Christian god and taking the bible literally are two very different things, as the overwhelming majority of Christians will confirm because they do the former but most certainly not the latter.
The reason is simple: most people recognize it as fact that interpreting the bible as the literal truth isn't possible without shooting all reason and logic to hell.

I'm still curious by the way why you're almost exclusively attacking the rationalist/scientific viewpoint.
Would you mind stating what your religious convictions are? Everybody else did, iirc.

[Jim Reed]

Yeah, Vince, but that doesn't mean that other people like me don't have their licences on paper. Who knows? Maybe you'll find someone who has it on paper.

[Vince Twelve]

Ooh paper!  Like the bible!

Kidding.

I just meant that it doesn't help me investigate the process that you went through for licensing more.  I'm not really interested in seeking out others who claim the same as you, because, like you, I've already made up my mind on the subject, and unless you were to provide some kind of real, tangible, verifiable proof or data for me to look at, I'm not going to be swayed by someone stating beliefs and anecdotes.  It just doesn't do it for me.  Just as you aren't going to be swayed by the complete lack of real, tangible, verifiable proof or data and the leap in logic which that leaves you with.

So I guess we're even.  Except for me.  I'm right.

[Jim Reed]

And what would that leap be?
That God doesn't exist because he cannot be proven?

And for KrisMUC and MisJ':
Jesus could walk on water. And not just him.
You don't have to believe me, and probably won't =D, but I would bet that it's quite possible, judging from my knowledge of how things work.

[Khris]

Where did you get your knowledge of how things work from? Out of your ass? Not a basic physics course it seems.

I can fly, btw. I'm actually way up in the air above my city, typing this on a netbook.

And you are just a troll, as far as I'm concerned.

Also, you "would bet that it's quite possible"? How much exactly? I'm eager to take you on that bet. =D

[Nacho]

@Jim's statement: "You don' t need to believe in Bible to believe in God". Then, you are not a trully christian... You can call yourself an mystic, or a spiritual person or whatever, but not a christian. "Mystics" can take zillion of different shapes, from looneys to virtually atheistics, so, explain exactly which are your beliefs before we can go on.

@Guitar's statement: "Wrong axioms take to wrong conclussions". Okay... I was trying to find an evidence of the existence of God... I thought that maybe a God inspired book, flawless, could be a good evidence. I think we agree here Bible is not that.

So, what do we do? Go on looking for evidences? Some "believers" tell me: "You see things. Things must have a creator. There you have the evidence" I reply "Then, if everything must need a creator, who is God's daddy?" They reply "God is the only thing that didn't need a creator".

My reply: "No, the Great Universal Unicorn is the only thing that doesn't need a creator".

My arguments for that statement? Well... at the moment, exactly the same you gave to me to support your statement. A big, round, nice and bright CERO.

Some of them tell me that there is no need to look at the things around bike to believe in God... The way He makes them feel, how joyfull they are when then think on Him is proof enough.

My reply: "The same way Aria Giovanni makes me feel".

Their reply is a quite angry one, telling that you can't compare a deity with a nude model... my reply is easy: "How can you tell? Do you have an empathy machine that makes you know how I feel and you can compare both feelings that way?"

I am quite aware that their reasoning is actually quite simplier: "I am a believer and I know that I am better than you. I won't recognise it, because it's politically uncorrect, but we believers are better, that's why I dare to say that what I feel for God is stronger to anything you can feel".

My reply to those zealots? I can't type it here, this forums are moderated.