Atheists:

  • Thread starter Thread starter bradwill911
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Detales said:
mhpierce,

Given that all the statistics are accurate, why in the name of all that is Holy would you wish to go with the even supposedly correct version of the Catholic Church? Even that is understood to be atheistic in its anthropomorphism and secular in its politics. I think you may wish to look deeper. And Hilaire Belloc? How often do you see such a very well intended but complete confusion of correct perception of social needs doomed by such an impossible and unnecessary, nay, damning solution? If the Church looks within itself, to before the first century, or earlier, there *might *be hope for it. But the solution will never be in a Church, or history. Bon chance!

But someone else on here was right–do post this as another thread, or this one will be locked down as going too far afield.

Bindar
Click to expand...
Dear Bindar:
why in the name of all that is Holy would you wish to go with the even supposedly correct version of the Catholic Church?

First Answer:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, Horati uh, Bindar…

Second:

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s extremely beautiful and very real and provable apparitions, especially those of the last two centuries and what Her messages contain, many of which you are now living through, even if you do not believe it or not… Living proof of Catholicism and what it has always purported, real Salvation…

and The Third:

Good By and Thank you–it has been a pleasure. What I experienced here was as I expected: too much historical stupidity,serious heresy, and a lack of spiritual correctness… It’s foolish to caste pearls of wisdom before…

MHPierce
 
Blade_and_Blood said:
In all honesty, I’d rather die than go to heaven. I don’t like the idea of immortality; it’s too meaningless through my eyes. :dts: In dying, at least I had finished my part in contributing to the world and its inhabitants in any way that I could have, and finally letting the next generation take the torch. 🙂
Click to expand...
Wow. You are pessimistic. Immortality=meaningless? How do you know that in Heaven you couldn’t contribute to the world in a completely different way?

In a past post, you mentioned that you were Catholic when you started CAF, now Agnostic, anything happen to change you mind, for you to lose faith?

Just curious.
 
phantasm said:
Was Jesus lying or just telling tall tales?
Click to expand...
He was doing neither. He was teaching his disciples to follow His example. He was not teaching that most people would go to Hell. He said the way to Hell is easy to follow, the path to Heaven more difficult. I don’t recall any specific score as between Heaven and Hell being provided by the Savior.

Peace,
-Robert
 
Veritas248 said:
Just because people have different beliefs doesn’t mean that every single person’s beliefs are true. The reason why people wont submit to the Truth is because they are blinded by pride, indoctrination as you said, ignorance, and bias. When men try to redefine the Truth for their own satisfaction, they are, perhaps unconsciously, imperiling themselves. Acceptance of the Truth requires a free choice. Some just aren’t willing to make that choice, and so they remain content in the lies.
Click to expand...
Exactly! But, what is the Truth? Nobody knows. You believe that your faith is the Truth; a Hindu believes their faith is the Truth; etc.

This is basically the Militant Agnostic argument: “I don’t know and neither do you.”

But, you probably wouldn’t relate to that because you–among others–confuse Truth with Belief–belief being not quite opinion, but not quite fact. Of course people can take it to the extreme, but it’s simply the result of ignorance and the inability to listen to others.

I remember my Agnostic English teacher from last year (my junior year in high school), who told us that he use to be a Mormon. When we asked him, “What made you move away from the Mormon faith?” His reply: “I **educated **myself.” It takes education to figure out that the minds of different people from different cultures or religions function all too similarly. Bottom line: You feel your faith is the truth. Guess what? So does the Hindu, and the Mormon, and the Buddhist, and the Atheist, and the Satanist–among the rest.
 
Blade_and_Blood said:
Exactly! But, what is the Truth? Nobody knows. You believe that your faith is te Truth; a Hindu believes their faith is the Truth; etc.

This is basically the Militant Agnostic argument: “I don’t know and neither do you.”

But, you probably wouldn’t relate to that because you–among others–confuse Truth with Belief–belief being not quite opinion, but not quite fact. Of course people can take it to the extreme, but it’s simply the result of ignorance and the inability to listen to others.

I remember my Agnostic English teacher from last year (my junior year in high school), who told us that he use to be a Mormon. When we asked him, “What made you move away from the Mormon faith?” His reply: “I **educated **myself.” It takes education to figure out that the minds of different people from different cultures or religions function all too similarly. Bottom line: You feel your faith is the truth. Guess what? So does the Hindu, and the Mormon, and the Buddhist, and the Atheist, and the Satanist–among the rest.
Click to expand...
Ah, you’ve reached the crux of the matter. The problem is that we CAN know the truth through honest study and unbiased research. I gave a Chesterton quote criticizing militant agnosticism, which he calls misguided humility. I provide it here again:

“It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything – even pride.
But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.”-G.K.Chesterton
The point is that we CAN know the truth, but we have to go about it the right way
 
Veritas248 said:
Ah, you’ve reached the crux of the matter. The problem is that we CAN know the truth through honest study and unbiased research. I gave a Chesterton quote criticizing militant agnosticism, which he calls misguided humility. I provide it here again:

The point is that we CAN know the truth, but we have to go about it the right way
Click to expand...
First of all, I am uninterested in what Chesterton says. I am much more interested in your thoughts on the matter we are discussing. :yup:

Second, how do you know you’ve went about it the right way? 🙂
 
Blade_and_Blood said:
First of all, I am uninterested in what Chesterton says. I am much more interested in your thoughts on the matter we are discussing. :yup:

Second, how do you know you’ve went about it the right way? 🙂
Click to expand...
Ok, I’ll try an experiment with you to show you what I mean.

Let’s start by emptying all bias and knowledge.

All we have are our five senses and our thoughts.

If we can’t trust our senses, what can we trust?

Idealism, the belief that all is an illusion denies the five senses with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. It also suggests that we create our own realities, which once again, is based on no evidence at all. So Idealism is out.

Materialism, the belief that all that can be known can be known by the five senses, is also out,because there are some things that cannot be known by the five senses. Thoughts, numbers, abstract principles, etc. So no Materialism.

I’ll stop here and ask, Is my analysis, keeping in mind that all we have is our five senses and our thoughts, reasonable?
 
“…honest study and unbiased research” is yet limited to an evaluation by someone’s limited honesty and their own biases. It is all, in any case, contents, and not the field that will ever yield the results you allege to strive for. It will yield wonderous relative results, but nothing of a permanent value, save perhaps if the foundational idea vector is persued and their Source discovered.
 
Detales said:
“…honest study and unbiased research” is yet limited to an evaluation by someone’s limited honesty and their own biases. It is all, in any case, contents, and not the field that will ever yield the results you allege to strive for. It will yield wonderous relative results, but nothing of a permanent value, save perhaps if the foundational idea vector is persued and their Source discovered.
Click to expand...
Provided one does not empty themselves. An honest pursuer of Truth should follow the facts, wherever they lead.
 
Veritas, the five senses are yet contents. They and their results have been refered to as “the five cent world,” denoting their completely ancilliary value which is restricted to navigation and manifestation in our particular set of mind coordinates.
 
Blade_and_Blood said:
children are taken to Catholic school or some other private school. They grow up with it, and it’s all they know, .
Click to expand...
Hmmmm, I went to Catholic schools until I was 14. I thought there were Catholics and only Protestants. I was unaware of the 30,000+ strong protestant denominations and I was only around Catholics in my day to day living.

Looking back, that was not good, not at all.
 
Detales said:
Veritas, the five senses are yet contents. They and their results have been refered to as “the five cent world,” denoting their completely ancilliary value which is restricted to navigation and manifestation in our particular set of mind coordinates.
Click to expand...
We have to start somewhere. I’m taking the position of one completely ignorant. What else does one completely ignorant have?
 
Robert_in_SD said:
He was teaching his disciples to follow His example. He was not teaching that most people would go to Hell. He said the way to Hell is easy to follow, the path to Heaven more difficult.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, yet the Christ didn’t say, 'I’m not teaching that most people will go to Hell, just that it’s easy to actually get there."

Now that would have been straightforward! 👍

It is clear, most are going to hell, a few are going to heaven, the scripture is clear and Jesus said it. Unless of course you twist specific and clear messages, then it just becomes a friendly reminder that it’s easy to get to hell and more difficult to enter paradise.

Why Jesus didn’t just say that, I guess only the Biblical authors know. :rolleyes:
 
phantasm said:
Hmmm, yet the Christ didn’t say, 'I’m not teaching that most people will go to Hell, just that it’s easy to actually get there."

Now that would have been straightforward! 👍

It is clear, most are going to hell, a few are going to heaven, the scripture is clear and Jesus said it. Unless of course you twist specific and clear messages, then it just becomes a friendly reminder that it’s easy to get to hell and more difficult to enter paradise.

Why Jesus didn’t just say that, I guess only the Biblical authors know. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Bear in mind you are reading an English translation which may or may not have the best Translation of the original Greek. Make sure the Translation you use is accurate.
I already gave you a credible interpretation of that passage, but you refused to comment.
 
One completely ignorant in the sense, non-sense, actuallly, that you are looking for, starts with unmodified awareness rooted in Consciouness as such. No contents. Then the relative nature of person, ideas, thought, and manifestation are experientially understood as events within and dependent upon Consciousness, by whatever term you use to lable that. Anthropomorphists call it God and make an unfortunate proceedural errror yeilding the necessity of a religion that deteriorates into dogmas. This is in contrast to an all inclusive Self referent and supporing morality. When the “other” is understood as the Self, how can harm be done? What is not to be understood? All else is the realm of the shapes of gold. You can argue til forever about what shape gold ought be. The shape alters not the gold itself. Religion insists on a particular shape in order for the gold to be. Gold knows nothing of shape. It is Itself. This is experiencible, knowable. All else derives from THAT.
 
phantasm said:
I understand now, Hinduism is THE Truth. It must be,theis written in capital letters and it is the worlds oldest religion.
Click to expand...
That doesn’t mean anything. Just because it might be older doesn’t exclude human error. By the Truth, I mean objective reality. OBJECTIVE!
 
Yes, religious truth is subject to the believer because both are contents and relative.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top