What RELIGION are you?

[Nytro]

hmm neo-paltonism seems very good

ill look more into it, but i hope its not like scientology or anything like that,
lol, did you see the South Park episode with Tom Cruise? I think you can see it on yourtube (dot come) the whole episode!

Im still searching for the good God I bleive is the true creator, when ever Christianity comes into play, they always push sacrifice and become his servant and give you life up to him. If GOd was described in just a better way I would get into Christianity but sadly it isnt. Its that whole, you cant do anything without God, that I dont like. How is someone to have a beautiful garden, with prayer? No with actually taking the action to plant and care for the garden himself, its like 10% prayer and 90% action not the other way around.

"It's also funny how religious people don't mind using scientific evidence if it supports their own theory, but will happily use the old 'it's a matter of faith'-routine if the evidence contradicts it." ALL THE TIME!!!

 

[Zipper]

Neo-Platonism is about being very, very optimistic, and seeing the huge, raging fire of God peeking out from the cracks of existence. It is about synergistically participating in the light and setting this poor earth on fire. This fire turns about searching to find material — that is a disposition and an intention that is good — to fall into and to kindle; and for those in whom this fire will ignite, it becomes a great flame, which progressively arcs up into the eternal world. This flame at first painfully purifies us from 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.

No need to participate in any specific community (although communities are good), no need to participate in any ritualistic liturgy (although ritualistic liturgy is good). No threats of external penalties. No promise of external rewards. No empty talk of "living forever." No need to pay money to anybody, just read Plotinus "Enneads" and soak up the stabs of judgment, joy, and hope.

 

[cLavain]

It seems you have your first 'disciple', Zipper! You should quickly devise a scheme to earn money from this ASAP! :wink: "The complete set of instructional DVD's can be yours for only $499!" :twisted:

 

[Zipper]

It seems you have your first 'disciple', Zipper! You should quickly devise a scheme to earn money from this ASAP! :wink: "The complete set of instructional DVD's can be yours for only $499!" :twisted:

:lol:

This made me bust out laughing. But you are so right -- this is the means by which people forge mental fetters for one another and profit off of the ignorance and superstition of others. H L Mencken -- "The first priest was the first sly rogue who met the first fool."

The point I am making is that you should turn and look upon God himself who is the living Truth. He is the Master himself, of whom alone they can learn anything worth knowing, who will make them in themselves know what is true by the very seeing of it.

And you turn towards him and learn from him by yielding yourself to the operation of his infinite judgment which transfigures you.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. --HL Mencken.

 

[Zipper]

To be a thorough Neo-Platonist requires you to see everything optimistically, even things like Christianity whose doctrines you regard as obnoxious. We believe that everything is working towards the transfiguration of the cosmos, so there must be some reason known to God and unknown to us why he allows chain letters like the Bible to circulate speaking such horrible things about him. If we are prepared to see the reason for floods, lightning bolts, and plagues, then surely we ought to TRY to see hopeful reason for the Bible and missionaries.

Fear edifies simple people. So long as they are such as are capable of believing it, then the world is much better off that such as the likes of them believe it to be true than not. As Russell Kirk put it, "the common man tends to dislike abstractions." If Christians can be satisfied with religious ghost stories, then you must, ipso facto, be someone who should be left to the tender mercies of the Church.

 

[cLavain]

I remain an atheist, but I commend you for your effort in creating a more positive strain of belief, like deism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

I do not agree that 'simple' people should remain 'in the dark', if I understand you correctly (English is not my native language). I believe unbiased (fact-based) education is the way to go. Ignorance can so easily be exploited by those who seek power. It is not incidental that religious leaders want their dogmas to be taught to the young, when they will believe anything you tell them. If a Catholic school taught Fascisme instead of Catholicism, it would be called indoctrination.

 

[Zipper]

Eh. Atheism and materialism is too much of an insane simplicity. There's got to be stuff going on beyond the veil that stands before our eyes. Likely that stuff is fiery love that would peak through and break out while we turn, turn, turn. Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will. German Romantic Novalis said "We are closer to things invisible than to things visible."

But, contrary to what the Bible says, cruelty -- Christ died for our sins -- is not the axis about which the universe turns. When Christians finally take the rose-colored glasses off, the doctrines turn to ash in the mouth.

 

[Nytro]

Neo-Platonism is about being very, very optimistic, and seeing the huge, raging fire of God peeking out from the cracks of existence. It is about synergistically participating in the light and setting this poor earth on fire. This "fire turns about searching to find material" — that is a disposition and an intention that is good — to fall into and to kindle; and for those in whom this fire will ignite, it becomes a great flame, which progressively arcs up into the eternal world. This flame at first painfully purifies us from 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.

No need to participate in any specific community (although communities are good), no need to participate in any ritualistic liturgy (although ritualistic liturgy is good). No threats of external penalties. No promise of external rewards. No empty talk of "living forever." No need to pay money to anybody, just read Plotinus "Enneads" and soak up the "stabs" of judgment, joy, and hope.

Im sorry but who taught you that crap, its one thing to look at a ancient book with possible historically events tied into it. But its really foolish to take in what so author wrote and made up. Is their any proof of such an analogy, like where did this knowlege originate from? Im not taking sides of any religion right now but your sounding alot like a scientology convert believing what the sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard pulled out of his ass.

I wanna know what proof you have for your beleifs, cause if its only a made up opinion on how God should be, then that is just as bad as all the other religions. The whole way of explaining it by burning and stabing sounds just as primative as the Bible explains things. Im basing it on what exactly you wrote, but perhaps theres more to your beleifs.[/u]

 

[cLavain]

There's got to be stuff going on beyond the veil that stands before our eyes.

No one can disprove that, but until science can show it to be probable, I shall treat any theory as fiction or at best educated speculation. Many strange things are yet to be discovered, I'm sure, but I don't believe the universe holds anything that cannot be measured and tested in some way or other.

One by one, old superstitions are replaced by scientific theories that are equally fantastic in their own way. Lightning is not the work of Thor, it is the movement of charged particles between the clouds and the ground! And disease has fortunately little to do with evil spirits, it is caused by small lifeforms that infiltrate your body and trigger a microscopic war inside you!

That's the beauty of science. It will discard flawed theories as new evidence is brought forward, constantly improving our understanding of the world. Religion views new knowledge as a threat as it undermines its static world view. Hell, the Vatican grudgingly admitted that Galileo was right as late as in 1992!

And yet, many find the 'ordinary' world mundane and unsatisfying. I need a supreme being to make it all worthwhile, they shout, I need magic and unicorns! Oh, well...

 

[Nytro]

Or a Flying Spagetti Monster

 

[cLavain]

Or a Flying Spagetti Monster

:mrgreen: I forgot about that. Do you think the Spaghetti Monster will be angry with me?

 

[Zipper]

Why are you so deadset on shutting down Christianity ? :?:

In part because the doctrine of divine penalties for sin has driven many people nearly or completely insane. Christianity has created more insane people than it ever built asylums to hold them. This is the doctrine that brought cruelty and insanity into the world.

Especially for us Socially Anxious neurotic people, I believe that Christian theories about the moral structure of the universe contribute to our fears by making us fear divine judgment for all of the wrong reasons. Fear of judgment -- fear that it will injure us and thus we can't welcome it because we are afraid of losing precious things to us that we hold dear -- Does this sound familiar to you?

But I recognize that while Christians are capable of being satisfied with Christianity, there would be no advantage in their becoming intellectually convinced that such thoughts were wrong. I would not speak a word to persuade them of it. Success would be worthless. They would but remain what they were-children capable of thinking meanly of their father.

But when the heart recoils, discovering how horrible it would be to have such an unreality for God, it will begin to search about and see whether it must indeed accept such Christian statements concerning God; it will search after a real God by whom to hold fast, a real God to deliver them from the terrible idol. It is for those thus moved that I write, not at all for the sake of disputing with those who love the lie they may not be to blame for holding.

So long as a man is able to love a lie, he is incapable of seeing it is a lie. He who is true, out and out, will know at once an untruth; and to that vision we must all come. I do not write for the sake of those Christians who either make or heartily accept any lie. When they see the glory of God, they will see the eternal difference between the false and the true, and not till then. I write for those whom such teaching as theirs has folded in a cloud through which they cannot see the stars of heaven, so that some of them even doubt if there be any stars of heaven.

Let the person who can be so satisfied with Christianity be so satisfied; I have not to trouble myself with him. That he can be content with it, argues him unready to receive better. So long as he can believe false things concerning God, he is such as is capable of believing them-with how much or how little of blame, God knows. Opinion, right or wrong, will do nothing to save him. I would that he thought no more about this or any other opinion, but set himself to do the work of God. With his opinions, true or false, I have nothing to do.

It is because such as he force evil things upon their fellows-utter or imply them from the seat of authority or influence-to their agony, their paralysation, their unbelief, their indignation, their stumbling, that I have any right to speak. I would save my fellows from having what notion of God is possible to them blotted out by a lie.

 

[Zipper]

I wanna know what proof you have for your beleifs, cause if its only a made up opinion on how God should be, then that is just as bad as all the other religions.

The way to come to know God and discover his MO (as well as to learn anything else) is to yield yourself to the operation of his judgment which teaches you about him and transforms you to participate in his light. I know that this is the methodology of learning about God because I yielded myself to his judgment, and this is what he taught me. This is the circular reasoning that destroys all circular reasoning and sets you on a never-ending, constantly advancing path of transfiguration and union with God, fueled by the operation of his infinite judgment and wrath. :twisted:

 

[cLavain]

The way to come to know God and discover his MO (as well as to learn anything else) is to yield yourself to the operation of his judgment which teaches you about him and transforms you to participate in his light. I know that this is the methodology of learning about God because I yielded myself to his judgment, and this is what he taught me. This is the circular reasoning that destroys all circular reasoning and sets you on a never-ending, constantly advancing path of transfiguration and union with God, fueled by the operation of his infinite judgment and wrath. :twisted:

Methinks you are taking the piss, my good man...

Here's a thought:
Is it accidental that almost every religious person shares the same religion as their parents?

Here is another:
"If you believe in what makes you feel good, then you'll believe whoever makes you feel good." (Jaron Lanier)

 

[Zipper]

Well, my parents are Bible Translators, and so is my sis and Bro in law. I grew up in Africa with them, saving the heathens. I attended a Christian college and attended church all my life. I was well-satisfied with the ruminations "Jesus died for my sins" and I was happy to invite the words into my brain and hold them for the rest of my life. But I have totally and completely deconverted last year, so I am an exceptional dude, I guess.

 

[cLavain]

You sure are! I wasn't really talking about you anyway. How does your family view your conversion, btw?

 

[Zipper]

You sure are! I wasn't really talking about you anyway. How does your family view your conversion, btw?

I'm hella pissed, actually. Here I am doing something that is bringing me great anxiety and joy. I am on a difficult journey of discovery, But I don't get a word of encouragement from my parents.

At least they listen to me rant once in a while, and only leave when I go over the top and start using words like "mental plague," "public curse," and "enemy of mankind." But I wish they had the capacity to encourage me as I will encourage them when I have children.

 

[Nytro]

yea maybe you need an exorcism:twisted:, jp

but, you still havnt given me any proof of what lead you to think like this

 

[cLavain]

I guess they believe you have strayed from the pious flock.

Off topic: If we can keep this thread going for a while longer we will exceed 2000 views! In time we may topple the mighty sticky threads. Now that would call for a celebration! :lol:

...no, I have no idea where I get these silly thoughts from either... The Spaghetti Monster?

 

[MarCPatt]

God did give us free will, and you are very free to choose what you want to believe. God does not want anyone to feel forced to follow him. Just remember that everything in life has an outcome. If you choose something, you just have to accept the results, the outcome.