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A person who goes on a 7-year search for the truth about God by sacrificing much is SUPERIOR in their findings to someone who has not done such a thing.
You are not my peer when it comes to knowledge of God.
This should make you happy, because living a life where God can only remain a mystery is a meaningless life.
No family member can take the place of a living God.
Let’s say you found God. So what’s with the insults? Why do you say I would be happy with a meaningless life? Maybe it’s just your writing style, but it sounds like you are continually angry and spiteful. Maybe you see yourself as the fiery prophet, perhaps like Amos?
The way you come across drives people away rather than attracting them to your viewpoint. So what is your goal?
Hanna, you twisted my words backwards—you should be happy that it is possible to come to a certitude of the existence of God and a knowledge of him that is a true revelation, rather than just a mystery in which everyone has an equal opinion, because this will give life meaning beyond anything we could ever hope for.
And, my writing style is pure emotional appeal, because avowed atheists are idiots of mere opinion and self-centered thinking, so they would never consider that someone else actually discovered something they did not, which makes them incapable of an actual dialogue.
My post above is a good example.
Atheists cannot even understand the simple notion that the existence of omnipotent God WOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING FOR THE BETTER. Hell, they even think it is a “danger” to have God around.
Try to follow this simple progression of thought:
Our families provide us with love and companionship.
The living God insures us that this love, which is often imperfect, is part of a greater perfect love, and this companionship, which is often problematic, will be one day blissfully forever.
So, no family member can take the place of the living God.
Could you do it? Probably not.
You atheists do not love your families more than I do. In fact, by telling them your erroneous opinions about spiritual matters, which are extremely important for them to know and trust, you love your families much less. You are, in a very real way, their worse enemy, especially when they need answers to the big problems that will inevitably arrive.
Hanna, you twisted my words backwards—you should be happy that it is possible to come to a certitude of the existence of God and a knowledge of him that is a true revelation, rather than just a mystery in which everyone has an equal opinion, because this will give life meaning beyond anything we could ever hope for.
And, my writing style is pure emotional appeal, because avowed atheists are idiots of mere opinion and self-centered thinking, so they would never consider that someone else actually discovered something they did not, which makes them incapable of an actual dialogue.
My post above is a good example.
Atheists cannot even understand the simple notion that the existence of omnipotent God WOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING FOR THE BETTER. Hell, they even think it is a “danger” to have God around.
Try to follow this simple progression of thought:
Our families provide us with love and companionship.
The living God insures us that this love, which is often imperfect, is part of a greater perfect love, and this companionship, which is often problematic, will be one day blissfully forever.
So, no family member can take the place of the living God.
Could you do it? Probably not.
You atheists do not love your families more than I do. In fact, by telling them your erroneous opinions about spiritual matters, which are extremely important for them to know and trust, you love your families much less. You are, in a very real way, their worse enemy, especially when they need answers to the big problems that will inevitably arrive.
You’ll see.
I did not mean to twist your words, but it is how I read them. Perhaps you need to reread your posts to see if they come across as insulting.
My brother and sister have told me they experienced God via dreams or visions, and I accept that they had powerful, meaningful experiences. But, you’re right—unless it happens to me, I cannot completely accept it. In any case, their lives are very troubled, and they do not speak of God directly helping them. On the other hand, my brother has been greatly helped by various church friends, but he also is angry with God for creating him with debilitating mental illness. My sister feels hope (short of faith) that “things will get better,” some small comfort.
I don’t see how their acceptance of God has really helped their lives more than family ties. My husband and I have provided years of financial support and advice for my brother, and more recently, financial support for my sister as well. They are estranged from my mother, and we all get together only when I am in town, being a peacemaker.
I guess you can say what you will about my family (or those of other posters), but you don’t know the details. You would do well to step back and ask yourself if what you experience really applies to everyone else. In my view, even with your experience of God, you still do not know what is best for all people. Perhaps love of family is a form of love of God.
There are religious people who are further from God than many people who deny God exists.
The point I have always made is this: God exists, and his spirit is the greatest power we have.
Now, even people of good will who do not acknowledge God can possess this power and do great acts of love. But if these people sought out God as he desires to be sought out, and come to a knowledge of God that can be obtained, they will become all the better for it, and will never be fully alive without it.
Unfortunately, religion is where the water of faith always runs down towards, for it is human nature to want a compartment to store stuff in.
But the greatest people who ever lived refused to put God completely in such a compartment, and came to know God personally and through real experiences.
There was once a person on Earth who was more than a person. And, ever since that time people have tried to understand him and themselves because of him.
There are religious people who are further from God than many people who deny God exists.
The point I have always made is this: God exists, and his spirit is the greatest power we have.
Now, even people of good will who do not acknowledge God can possess this power and do great acts of love. But if these people sought out God as he desires to be sought out, and come to a knowledge of God that can be obtained, they will become all the better for it, and will never be fully alive without it.
Unfortunately, religion is where the water of faith always runs down towards, for it is human nature to want a compartment to store stuff in.
But the greatest people who ever lived refused to put God completely in such a compartment, and came to know God personally and through real experiences.
There was once a person on Earth who was more than a person. And, ever since that time people have tried to understand him and themselves because of him.
Most quit before they begin.
Only a rare few go all the way to the end.
I agree with some of what you say.
When you state “God is love,” do you really mean that God is the source of love? Because certainly, your concept of God as an entity (you use the convention of referring to God as “he”) is more than simply “love,” which is a strong binding emotion. Certainly many people have argued that God and love are the same thing, being more an amorphous power.
What is the way that God “desires to be sought out”?
Hanna, don’t have time to write. But, to be quick, God is first and foremost a divine personality who began this whole business of creation because as “love”, the greatest part of himself, he desired to share himself. Our response to God is what he desired all along, and what makes the life, death, and resurrection of the greatest person who ever lived the most important moments in creation. We have our moments too, and when they are joined to this great one, they all add up to a return of “love” equal to God’s most perfect love.
Hanna, don’t have time to write. But, to be quick, God is first and foremost a divine personality who began this whole business of creation because as “love”, he greatest part of himself, he desired to share himself. Our response to God is what he desired all along, and what makes the life, death, and resurrection of the greatest person who ever lived the most important moments in creation. We have our moments too, and when they are joined to this great one, they all add up to a return of “love” equal to God’s most perfect love.[/quote
I agree that love connects people to one other, but I’m afraid you and I diverge beyond that point.
Hanna, without God there is no “connect” between people.
We are scattered and individual. So, there must be a power beyond us and within us that binds us together. And, every power needs a seat for it to exist (e.g., the seat of thought is our brain), but the seat is not the power itself.
God’s spirit is the power behind our connection to one another, and our soul is the seat of this power.
To “believe” we are all connected without a rational framework is just whimsical thinking.
The stumbling block for you, and every other skeptic, is the lack of the rational framework that knowledge and understanding of revelation, i.e., the truth within opinion passed down through the millenniums, provides.
Make no mistake, the truth has been discovered by those who do not doubt it and those who are trained to find it.
Don’t let the cracked earthen vessels all around you draw your attention away from what they contain.
A radical skeptic, of the atheist kind, never looks inside these earthen vessels, but puts them on a pedestal and spins them around and around to see how many cracks and imperfections they can find.
This makes such a skeptic not the great “thinker” he or she claims to be, but a superficial thinker without the rational framework needed to make any lasting contribution to “what is true”.
Attributing our ‘thinking’ and our ‘connection’ to each other to spirits and souls and gods is pure anecdotal delusion. It’s simple superstition. Just putting labels on complex things that we struggle to understand. It’s a fiction novel about things that go bump in the night.
It is intellectual nothingness to wake up one day with all the answers and then dismiss centuries of human thought and discovery as “cowardice”.
Post your “courageous” intellectual credentials for all to see…or go away.
I’ll start—I have 20 years of formal education, and not a moment of “intellectual cowardice” (whatever the fuck that is) during that time, just a whole lot of study and many anguished days taking finals and struggling to maintain an “A” average for the semester. I remember one semester when I carried 28 credits (got a Bachelor’s in three years with a 3.80 G.P.A) and had to take 3 or 4 finals a day.
Only an under-educated big-mouth would look at someone with two college degrees and rattle off a silly term like “intellectual cowardice” based upon some sort of atheistic mumbo-jumbo.
Your turn. Explain yourself and describe yourself.
I live in Colorado Springs. My home was in the evacuation zone due to the Waldo Canyon fire. Luckily, we are about a mile from the devastation area (347 homes destroyed and 10,000 people still under evac orders). We were allowed to return to our homes in my neighborhood Friday night, and besides smoke in the air and parched potted plants outside, we found our home unscathed.
So, I think, how do people cope with a disaster like this?
Some think: “My house was spared, praise God.”
Others think: “My house is a pile of ash. God is with me while I grieve. He must have a different plan for me. I am so grateful for the support of my church family.”
What do atheists think?
Some think: “My house was spared. What a relief!”
Others think: “My house is a pile of ash. I am so grateful my family and community are helping to support me in this terrible time.”
Not so very different, I guess. Whenever my Christian friends have a misfortune, they state something as above. But I don’t personally see the benefit in believing God would allow or cause your house to burn down as part of his grand “plan,” versus believing wildfire is a force of nature that cannot be fully tamed by humankind.
And I emphasize personally. That’s my feeling.
Mario, I completely disagree with your statements:
...without God there is no “connect” between people. We are scattered and individual. So, there must be a power beyond us and within us that binds us together.
I feel it is our innate empathy, the ability to sense what other people are feeling, that connects us.
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