shovelhead
Active member
cLavain said:
What RELIGION are you?
- Thread starter Zipper
- Start date
freakalmightee
Banned
i think i'd just quite like a dose of moral fibre thats all. dont you guys ever just feel horribly empty? i do. i feel dirty and empty and i wish that Jesus could make me feel good and clean, i WANT to believe but it just either doesnt happen or happens but doesnt seem to last very long before i think of something 'bad' i want to do :? i gave my life to Jesus but it just didnt, somehow fix things very well at all. i dont know. i think you should all pray over me but no laying on of hands if thats okay. im going to keep praying anyway and see what happens. even a few days of comfort would be a miracle just now.
Zipper
Well-known member
GIOLANDA said:
What evidence would be enough to convince you of the Christian theological view that God shall punish non-believers for the violation of his law -- punish them in a manner that does not have their correction as its end?
What evidence would be enough to convince you that the Bible is true when it states that the operation of divine judgment shall have human destruction as its goal rather than human transfiguration?
You say there is proof, but what proof is there connecting the Bible to the transcendent creator of this universe? The Bible alone cannot be evidence of the Bible's connection to God.
When you trust that God's judgment is pedagogical, how many Bibles, or resurrections, or prophecies come true or angels, or threats, or authorities, or miracles, or wonders or witnesses shall be sufficient to bring you to the Christian conclusion that the operation of God's wrath does not have correction as its end?
The ONE is our refuge, and let not any fancy tricks turn us away from asking him to transfigure us by the operation of unmitigated divine judgment.
cLavain
Well-known member
freakalmightee said:
We're all dirty and empty monkeys, and praying to a deaf god isn't going to change that. Just take a shower and do something you feel is meaningful! Maybe it'll help, maybe not. In my opinion, nothing debases humanity like groveling before a tyrannical god.
It is interesting that you imply that only religion can give a person moral fiber. Many Christians assume to hold the moral high ground, which is funny considering their behaviour throughout history. Wearing a cross around your neck doesn't make you a better person.
Reholla
Well-known member
to post above mine ^^^
Thats a very cynical reason not to believe in religion.
and FYI no body showed interest in messaging me about more religion talk/ how the universe was created!!
I guess none of you have AIM?? But if you do let me know! or PM me. This is a never ending subject im always up for discussing
Thats a very cynical reason not to believe in religion.
and FYI no body showed interest in messaging me about more religion talk/ how the universe was created!!
I guess none of you have AIM?? But if you do let me know! or PM me. This is a never ending subject im always up for discussing
freakalmightee
Banned
yes they did someone posted a big bang article.
but anyway. this thread is very interesting and it occurs to me that we will get nowhere through this kind of light-hearted (??) debate.
last night i was praying and i can FEEL the peace and love available to me. i cant discover it through dry philosophical debate or intellectual speculation. you have to feel it then you know it. or dont feel it. its up to you.
but anyway. this thread is very interesting and it occurs to me that we will get nowhere through this kind of light-hearted (??) debate.
last night i was praying and i can FEEL the peace and love available to me. i cant discover it through dry philosophical debate or intellectual speculation. you have to feel it then you know it. or dont feel it. its up to you.
Zipper
Well-known member
There is something very comforting about praying, just to say God, help me, carry me, comfort me, be with me. I love to pray, and I believe that God hears our prayers.
But the Christian explanation of the meaning of Christ's death on the cross is very silly and immoral. I might pursue the follies and absurdities of this delusion much farther; but time forbids, and I must therefore forbear.
But the Christian explanation of the meaning of Christ's death on the cross is very silly and immoral. I might pursue the follies and absurdities of this delusion much farther; but time forbids, and I must therefore forbear.
shovelhead
Active member
Zipper said:
LOL, well this thread is rather civil considering, how these kinds of threads often go online... so you could say we are getting along quite well...
MarCPatt
Well-known member
Sad, very Sad. Look at the results of hate. Look at the results of trying to take from others their freedom to believe in what they want to believe.
Neighbors Are at a Loss Over Students' Arson Arrest
'This is so out of the bounds of what we deal with here,' says one Alabama professor.
By Richard Fausset, Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2006
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.— "BSC theater students Russ DeBusk and Ben Moseley are on the road to stardom," said the story in the campus newspaper at Birmingham-Southern College.
A few days ago, many students here would have said that was a fair prediction. The two sophomores were creative, popular products of Birmingham's comfortable suburbs. Benjamin Nathan Moseley, the son of a Jefferson County constable, sang baritone in the college choir. Russell DeBusk Jr. had been chosen to star in a local director's feature film, with Moseley playing his comic foil.
They were being molded by one of Alabama's most prestigious private schools — a Methodist-affiliated college where 70% of students take part in organized volunteer work.
Yet when the biweekly paper hit the racks this week, DeBusk and Moseley — both 19 — were in federal custody, charged in a string of church fires in poorer, rural communities to the south and west of here.
A third man, Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20, also was arrested and charged in connection with the fires. Cloyd, a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the son of a doctor and was an honor student in high school.
In the suburbs of Birmingham this week, people were perplexed. "They were smart kids, middle class," said Lane Graham, 57, a resident of DeBusk's hometown, Hoover. "You don't know if it's stuff they read, stuff they learned in school or what."
"These kids were not some huckleberries from the South," said Renee Sakaguchi, a parent in Indian Springs Village, a tony suburb of rolling hills and horse farms where Cloyd grew up. "I'm going to have my sons read the [newspaper] articles and say: 'Look at what these boys had in front of them — and now look at what they have to look forward to.' "
Birmingham is a city with pockets of wealth nourished by the old steel and iron industries and, more recently, healthcare and banking.
All three suspects in the church fires grew up in neighborhoods with median household incomes of more than $50,000. In Sumter County, where the students allegedly burned Galilee Baptist Church, the median household income is $18,911. Nearly 40% of Sumter County residents live below the poverty line.
The charges seemed particularly difficult to swallow at Birmingham-Southern. The small campus attracts the children of Alabama's elite. Its students are proud of their commitment to public service. They tutor in inner-city Birmingham, work in San Francisco homeless shelters and volunteer in Mozambique.
Some on campus sought Thursday to distance themselves from the arrests. A few dozen students had signed a resolution posted in the cafeteria and passed by the student government the night before. It stated that the crimes did not represent the school's principles of "positive community and civic engagement, honorable morals and global human dignity."
Others looked for words to describe their feelings about the suspects, young men they knew as friends or valued students and could still speak of warmly.
"I am overwhelmed by the immense immaturity of it," said Lester Seigel, the choir director and chairman of Birmingham-Southern's fine arts department. "There is a moral disconnect — this is so out of the bounds of what we deal with here."
Federal authorities allege that Moseley, DeBusk and Cloyd burned five churches in central Alabama during a night of hunting that started Feb. 2.
Moseley and Cloyd burned four more churches a few days later to throw investigators off their trail, according to an affidavit filed by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The document quotes Cloyd as telling a witness that the fires started as "a joke and it got out of hand."
DeBusk and Moseley were campus clowns, to some extent, but entertaining was something they took seriously. According to the student paper, they were thinking about moving to Los Angeles together to pursue careers in film. They spent much of 2005 honing their dramatic skills in campus plays, eventually attracting the attention of Brian Wilson, 25, an aspiring director who cast them in his movie "Work," a romantic comedy.
He said DeBusk and Moseley showed up in the audition in matching baseball shirts and pitched themselves as a team. He liked their rapport and their timing. He also liked their professionalism: The next day they showed up at his house in suits, with head shots and resumes in hand.
The small crew shot many of their scenes while the newspapers were full of stories about the church fires. Wilson said his director of photography brought the issue up one day but DeBusk and Moseley seemed uninterested.
"They were just like, 'Oh, that's crazy, whatever,' " he said.
Birmingham-Southern students recalled Thursday how Cloyd came around from time to time to hang out. He was a former Birmingham-Southern student and member of the Sigma Chi fraternity who had met DeBusk and Moseley in the dorms, students said. But he had transferred to the University of Alabama at the start of the current school year, where he was in the pre-med program.
Ian Cunningham, DeBusk's suitemate, said Cloyd could be bothersome. "He mocked everybody; he had no tact. It seemed like he didn't have a lot of selfesteem."
Something else disturbed Cunningham: DeBusk had come back from summer break talking about Satanism, and he had gotten Moseley interested as well. To DeBusk, Satanism was not a violent religion, but a peaceful means of self-actualization, Cunningham said. DeBusk had always kidded his churchgoing friends about their faith in Christianity, but Cunningham said it was a gentle sarcasm, not a bitter one.
He recalled DeBusk and Moseley having some strange weekends. "They'd show up at 7 in the morning covered in pine needles," he recalls. "They'd just have strange little hippie rituals in the woods."
The infatuation with the occult seemed to last about a month, Cunningham said. After September, he didn't hear either of them speak about it.
Wilson said he hadn't finished shooting his movie when his stars were arrested. On Thursday, he was trying to figure out what to do next — maybe recast and re-shoot, maybe sell some of the footage of the suspects to TV news stations.
On the Birmingham-Southern campus, students were still carrying around the campus paper with the story about DeBusk and Moseley. The last paragraphs discuss DeBusk's plan to one day write, direct and star in his own film.
Moseley said his friend "has the potential to do everything he wants to do."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times researcher Jenny Jarvie in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Neighbors Are at a Loss Over Students' Arson Arrest
'This is so out of the bounds of what we deal with here,' says one Alabama professor.
By Richard Fausset, Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2006
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.— "BSC theater students Russ DeBusk and Ben Moseley are on the road to stardom," said the story in the campus newspaper at Birmingham-Southern College.
A few days ago, many students here would have said that was a fair prediction. The two sophomores were creative, popular products of Birmingham's comfortable suburbs. Benjamin Nathan Moseley, the son of a Jefferson County constable, sang baritone in the college choir. Russell DeBusk Jr. had been chosen to star in a local director's feature film, with Moseley playing his comic foil.
They were being molded by one of Alabama's most prestigious private schools — a Methodist-affiliated college where 70% of students take part in organized volunteer work.
Yet when the biweekly paper hit the racks this week, DeBusk and Moseley — both 19 — were in federal custody, charged in a string of church fires in poorer, rural communities to the south and west of here.
A third man, Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20, also was arrested and charged in connection with the fires. Cloyd, a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the son of a doctor and was an honor student in high school.
In the suburbs of Birmingham this week, people were perplexed. "They were smart kids, middle class," said Lane Graham, 57, a resident of DeBusk's hometown, Hoover. "You don't know if it's stuff they read, stuff they learned in school or what."
"These kids were not some huckleberries from the South," said Renee Sakaguchi, a parent in Indian Springs Village, a tony suburb of rolling hills and horse farms where Cloyd grew up. "I'm going to have my sons read the [newspaper] articles and say: 'Look at what these boys had in front of them — and now look at what they have to look forward to.' "
Birmingham is a city with pockets of wealth nourished by the old steel and iron industries and, more recently, healthcare and banking.
All three suspects in the church fires grew up in neighborhoods with median household incomes of more than $50,000. In Sumter County, where the students allegedly burned Galilee Baptist Church, the median household income is $18,911. Nearly 40% of Sumter County residents live below the poverty line.
The charges seemed particularly difficult to swallow at Birmingham-Southern. The small campus attracts the children of Alabama's elite. Its students are proud of their commitment to public service. They tutor in inner-city Birmingham, work in San Francisco homeless shelters and volunteer in Mozambique.
Some on campus sought Thursday to distance themselves from the arrests. A few dozen students had signed a resolution posted in the cafeteria and passed by the student government the night before. It stated that the crimes did not represent the school's principles of "positive community and civic engagement, honorable morals and global human dignity."
Others looked for words to describe their feelings about the suspects, young men they knew as friends or valued students and could still speak of warmly.
"I am overwhelmed by the immense immaturity of it," said Lester Seigel, the choir director and chairman of Birmingham-Southern's fine arts department. "There is a moral disconnect — this is so out of the bounds of what we deal with here."
Federal authorities allege that Moseley, DeBusk and Cloyd burned five churches in central Alabama during a night of hunting that started Feb. 2.
Moseley and Cloyd burned four more churches a few days later to throw investigators off their trail, according to an affidavit filed by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The document quotes Cloyd as telling a witness that the fires started as "a joke and it got out of hand."
DeBusk and Moseley were campus clowns, to some extent, but entertaining was something they took seriously. According to the student paper, they were thinking about moving to Los Angeles together to pursue careers in film. They spent much of 2005 honing their dramatic skills in campus plays, eventually attracting the attention of Brian Wilson, 25, an aspiring director who cast them in his movie "Work," a romantic comedy.
He said DeBusk and Moseley showed up in the audition in matching baseball shirts and pitched themselves as a team. He liked their rapport and their timing. He also liked their professionalism: The next day they showed up at his house in suits, with head shots and resumes in hand.
The small crew shot many of their scenes while the newspapers were full of stories about the church fires. Wilson said his director of photography brought the issue up one day but DeBusk and Moseley seemed uninterested.
"They were just like, 'Oh, that's crazy, whatever,' " he said.
Birmingham-Southern students recalled Thursday how Cloyd came around from time to time to hang out. He was a former Birmingham-Southern student and member of the Sigma Chi fraternity who had met DeBusk and Moseley in the dorms, students said. But he had transferred to the University of Alabama at the start of the current school year, where he was in the pre-med program.
Ian Cunningham, DeBusk's suitemate, said Cloyd could be bothersome. "He mocked everybody; he had no tact. It seemed like he didn't have a lot of selfesteem."
Something else disturbed Cunningham: DeBusk had come back from summer break talking about Satanism, and he had gotten Moseley interested as well. To DeBusk, Satanism was not a violent religion, but a peaceful means of self-actualization, Cunningham said. DeBusk had always kidded his churchgoing friends about their faith in Christianity, but Cunningham said it was a gentle sarcasm, not a bitter one.
He recalled DeBusk and Moseley having some strange weekends. "They'd show up at 7 in the morning covered in pine needles," he recalls. "They'd just have strange little hippie rituals in the woods."
The infatuation with the occult seemed to last about a month, Cunningham said. After September, he didn't hear either of them speak about it.
Wilson said he hadn't finished shooting his movie when his stars were arrested. On Thursday, he was trying to figure out what to do next — maybe recast and re-shoot, maybe sell some of the footage of the suspects to TV news stations.
On the Birmingham-Southern campus, students were still carrying around the campus paper with the story about DeBusk and Moseley. The last paragraphs discuss DeBusk's plan to one day write, direct and star in his own film.
Moseley said his friend "has the potential to do everything he wants to do."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times researcher Jenny Jarvie in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Zipper
Well-known member
Zosima said:
The universe would be to me no more than a pasteboard scene, all surface and no deepness, on the stage, if I did not hope in God. I will not say believe, for that is a big word, and it means so much more than my low beginnings of confidence.
But a little faith may wake a great big hope, and I look for great things from him whose perfection breathed this cosmos out that it might be a transfigured thing one day -- that it will bring peace and joy to all the children of men, and that this poor earth on which we live, may be a perfect world — a world without a crime — without a tear. The more we trust, the more reasonable we find it to trust. 8)
But against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every grand and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The god who renders divine penalties for the violation of his law (upon the non-believing sinner or Christ as his substitute) should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A god who threatens grief should be hated, not loved; cursed, not worshipped.
It is not plausible that such a god exists, yet Christians still announce that "there are divine penalties for sin," "the Bible is true," and "only those who believe in the divinity of Christ unite with God in the eternal world."
Zipper
Well-known member
The more we believe in God, the surer we shall be that he will spare nothing that suffering can do to deliver his child from wrong. Because God is so altogether alien to wrong, because it is to him a heart-pain and trouble that one of his little ones should do the evil thing, there is no extreme of suffering to which, for the sake of destroying the evil thing in them, he would not subject them. :twisted:Zosima said:
The ONE is fire and for those in whom this fire ignites, it becomes a great flame, which arcs up into the divine life. this flame at first purifies us from the pollution of evil and then it becomes in us food and drink and light and joy, and renders us light ourselves because we participate in His light. The fire will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God.
Contrary to Christianity and the Bible, there is no divine penalty for the violation of God's law. Rather, it is the law-enforcement policy of God that all wrong shall be righted by operation of divine judgment. So, yield yourself to the operation of divine wrath, and do not seek to avoid divine judgment through a belief in the atonement of Jesus. (Isn't it funny how close this comes to psychologist recommended "exposure therapy" in order to be healed from social anxiety disorder"?!?) :twisted:
Zipper
Well-known member
The difference between what I recommend and "force flooding" is that I recommend that we willingly yield ourselves to the operation of divine judgment, and intentionally cooperate with it in order to allow it to correct us -- to deliver us from all meanness, all pretence, all falseness, all unfairness, all poverty of spirit, all cowardice, all fear, all anxiety, all forms of self-love, all trust or hope in possession; to make us merry as children.
This isn't force flooding, this is just deliberate reentry into God's community where he judges us, and we fear and suffer, but we don't avoid, because we trust that God is virtuous and that all suffering has meaning beyond the suffering. We don't avoid because we wish to be transfigured. The ONE is virtuous and does not punish for injury's sake. Anxiety is proper, but avoidance is not. Know why you fear, have the right reasons for fearing, but not the wrong reasons.
C.S. Lewis (another NeoPlatonist who worshipped the ONE but who tried to reconstruct Christianity to make it into another NeoPlatonist myth) put it this way in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe":
This isn't force flooding, this is just deliberate reentry into God's community where he judges us, and we fear and suffer, but we don't avoid, because we trust that God is virtuous and that all suffering has meaning beyond the suffering. We don't avoid because we wish to be transfigured. The ONE is virtuous and does not punish for injury's sake. Anxiety is proper, but avoidance is not. Know why you fear, have the right reasons for fearing, but not the wrong reasons.
C.S. Lewis (another NeoPlatonist who worshipped the ONE but who tried to reconstruct Christianity to make it into another NeoPlatonist myth) put it this way in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe":
Zipper
Well-known member
Force flooding.
Force Flooding would be when God's love catches up to you when you didn't know that it would be experienced by you as a consuming fire. When the flames rise up around you because the ONE is near, but you thought that the fire had as its purpose the pain and not the purification. Force flooding will be when the Christian experiences the care of God in the eternal world but never expected pain and correction, and thus interprets the care of God as mere cruelty -- convinced that God was rendering penalties upon him in the way the Christian imagined God would do to non-believing sinners.
The ones I worry most for in their encounter of the glory of God is Christians. Because, as you say, a force flood of love can be traumatic.
Force Flooding would be when God's love catches up to you when you didn't know that it would be experienced by you as a consuming fire. When the flames rise up around you because the ONE is near, but you thought that the fire had as its purpose the pain and not the purification. Force flooding will be when the Christian experiences the care of God in the eternal world but never expected pain and correction, and thus interprets the care of God as mere cruelty -- convinced that God was rendering penalties upon him in the way the Christian imagined God would do to non-believing sinners.
The ones I worry most for in their encounter of the glory of God is Christians. Because, as you say, a force flood of love can be traumatic.