About Buddhism, it’s Eight, the EightFold Path. Not only does Buddhism NOT discourage reasoning, it is the only way you can reach the goal. Analysis is the key to Vipassana Meditation. Here is a good definition.
dhamma.org/en/vipassana.shtml
I stand corrected.
Please, take a seat.I stand corrected.
You’re quite right, actually. When I see someone being lazy about what they mean, and acting like a petulent juvenile in being needlessly incomprehensible, I have this nasty habit of telling them so.
That would be accurate. Any “proof” of God adequate for a believer is no “proof” of God to a nonbeliever, because the nonbeliever has no means of comparing their experience of God with the facts provided by the proof.
That is absolutely correct. The atheist never did “stand a chance”.
My objective experience is that when I hold the description of God as the Church informs me, and I interact with the persons which that description forms, His presence is confirmed in a way which only the actual God thus described would “answer me”, which confirmation is not provided by the aforesaid description.
We are both “empiricists”. Therefore, it makes sense that we might agree on this bit.
Since you see all “faith” as equally bogus, that makes perfect sense that you’d say that.
I wanted to use the easter bunny as the object of belief, which is a non-real thing, so I merely flipped the type of belief to the negative.
The more intelligent one is the fool, because he’s wrong.
I speak from revealed knowledge, supplied by God, to those who were to pass on that information to everyone.
You certainly don’t. I certainly do. What’s your point?
God provides al the knowledge we need to get proof by doing the appropriate experiments, but He gives us no proof that would violate our free will to choose Him or not choose Him.
Free will is simply a gift from God for our use.
Those who cannot, for whatever reason, accept the truth are to be treated as good people who don’t possess a great prize.
i ia oe. Aloha nui.LOL!!!
Hell is not a punishment. Hell is a result. God doesn’t punish with hell. Hell is the result of finally not choosing God.#49 Aleii said:
My response was “formulated” as it was because your proposition that “all mercy” and “all justice” can’t logically exist simultaneously. My perception of one who chooses one side of a mystery over another (when both are true) to “justify” a “solution” to a mystery is a herecy in the vein of the “gnostics”, who “reason out” mysteries, making them “non-mysteries”.
God has said that there comes a time when men must make the final decision. Since that is true, and since the consequences of that decision are irrevocable, it doesn’t matter in the least how long the “parent” lives relative to the “child”.
This may seem reasonable at first, but it completely ignores our god-given dynamic nature. Eternal Hell is a gross abuse of free will.
BOOMUntil it’s too late, then free will is ripped away.
If that’s the gift of free will, it looks more like a holy gag gift.Your definition of “relative ignorance” is not mine in this matter.
If you had ANY belief that this were a possible case, then you wouldn’t take the chance that it WAS in fact the case, and do what was necessary to not fall into hell.
Since you don’t believe in God as revealed by God Himself, you will always wander around in your self-definitions of things, and your conclusions will always be irrelevant to reality.
There is no conflicting information, other than in your estimation, in these matters, because it right there in front of you, should you choose to see it.
If the choice were obvious such that no man would choose it’s opposite, where’s the choice?
We aren’t in ignorance, as we know all we need to know.
Your job in the world is to GET perspective, and God gives everyone the time necessary to get that perspective before asking them to use that perspective to make a decision.
Yes. The god that gives you that choice is evil. It’s a very good thing that that god is not God.
Your analogy shows your thinking perfectly. Thanks for the further illumination.
Your definition of “too late” is incorrect.Until it’s too late, then free will is ripped away.
Sorry I was unclear. I didn’t intend to make a case for non-eternal Hell, although it makes more sense than the man-made doctrine of an eternal Hell.
Fair enough. Just as if you had ANY belief that the version of Hell espoused by Muslims were a possible case, you wouldn’t take that chance either. It reminds me of the “Avoiding the wrong Hell” argument against Pascal’s wager.
True, except I “rationalize” it as non-existent (other than metaphorically) rather than non-eternal…
Quite right. It’s alien to what anyone is capable of knowing, IMO. That’s why there’s faith.
I do believe in God as revealed by God through the existence of the universe. Second-hand revelation, however, is always suspect.
It doesn’t quite work that way. Suppose someone sent me an e-mail saying that Keikiolu had a miraculous conversion to Satanism and wanted me to sacrifice my poodle in solidarity. If I disbelieve that message, I am not denying you, just the messenger - EVEN IF he and a large group of his friends assure me you told him to tell me so.
Sure there is. There’s the Qu’ran, the Gita, the Book of Mormon, and countless variations and other self-proclaimed revelations all conflicting with one another.
Are you suggesting that obscuring the choice and making it “not obvious” actually enhances free will? No, a lack of certainty can never enhance free will or quality decision making.
Yes, in keeping with the title of the thread: God gave us Reason, not Religion.
Agreed.
The rub is that perspective is uniquely relative. Most adherents to other faiths believe they have the proper perspective. Unfortunately, because of conflicting information that you denied, at least some are wrong. That’s no biggie as long as there aren’t eternal and disastrous consequences on the line.
“Man made eternal hell”. That states your mind very well indeed. Thanks for the clarity.
There is only one hell, just as there is only one God, and you either believe that or not.
Since to “rationalize” it as anything but what it is is to deny it, you do actually deny both it and that which proposes it.
Then how is it that I know there is an absolute truth, and that it’s more “native” to me than my sense of uncertainty is?
If you say so. But your statement that “certainty is alien to man” tells me that you are an atheist.
You can say that because you don’t understand what “God’s revelation” is. The Word of God IS God.
You’ve proved, to your own satisfaction, that the God who is God, as opposed to your god who masks God from you, doesn’t exist.And if I’ve proved that God doesn’t exist, that’s a rather amazing feat not accomplished by any human ever. Yay me! Only it’s a problem 'cause I’m not an atheist.
Atheists think they can set God’s revelations from different cultures against each other to “prove” that God’s revelation as given to men in terms men can understand is false.
I think we could have a fun discussion about this, so if I have a chance, I may start a separate thread on it.
How do you reconcile “respecting a choice” with never allowing us to revisit that choice once we have more certain information? How is removing free will not violating it?
He gave us both. The fact is, people both believe and act contrary to true religion and contrary to true reason.Its not really mutually exclusive. Religion is not always unreasonable, though on many cases it has beliefs that can be quite irrational. I’m sure everyone would agree that each one of us possess the gift of reasoning. But since everyone disagrees on which religion is true, then its safe to say that God didnt really give a religion to everyone. So God only gave us a talent for figuring things out, not a system of instructions that already figured things out. Religion is merely a personal point of view. Not a fact for everyone.
Everything I DO is a tangent…!!