How does this God make you feel?

[Think_About_It]

I’ll tell you how this God makes me feel.

All the love-less sex, drugs, alcohol, excessive materialism, gambling, food, entertainment, shallow amusements don’t compare to the spiritual and emotional depth of Catholicism. Journeying down the road of life, many people choose these distractions along the way because they feel good in the short term. Sacrifice is difficult. Sacrifice made me feel like I was losing when I’d rather be winning (feeling good). Serving friends and family makes them happy and they, in turn, make you happy and appreciative of that rare time to self. Finding a fellow Catholic who follows the rules reasonably well is like pure gold because you know what the goal is, what you need to give, and what you are likely to feel along the way. Independent individualism means selfish love games and power plays because there’s no universal agreement for behavior (Covenant). Pop culture 's message constantly sells us out to our basic instinctual lust (desire for the easy) for the instant gratification laundry list above. That’s one big reason we can’t find our way.

I wish the Church would do a better job of explaining this to people. If they did, more would find their way. So many people are looking in the exact oposite direction. They’re looking more towards the individual self, entertaining oneself with comfort and convenience, when true love’s depth can be found by following God’s Covenant.

I’m not convinced religion amends any of those short term satisfactions. Nothing seems more instantaneously gratifying to me than to indulge, at any given moment of gladness or weakness, in ephemeral fantasies of eternity and glory. It’s only the people that need it who believe it. If you can do away emotionally with any of it, you probably will. If you can’t, you’ll probably adhere to stringint beliefs, disregarding all the nasty stuff you glossed over in my first post in order to state your case.

 

[LilyM]

I’m not convinced religion amends any of those short term satisfactions. Nothing seems more instantaneously gratifying to me than to indulge, at any given moment of gladness or weakness, in ephemeral fantasies of eternity and glory. It’s only the people that need it who believe it. If you can do away emotionally with any of it, you probably will. If you can’t, you’ll probably adhere to stringint beliefs, disregarding all the nasty stuff you glossed over in my first post in order to state your case.

Nope. Idle fantasies of salvation are no more satisfying than idle fantasies of being a rock star or a celebrity, or President. Which most people (including most religious types) don’t find to be satisfying at all.

WORK, on the other hand - expending effort to practically achieve the goals of living as a good Christian, expending effort to acquire skills like singing, dancing, acting that might lead to celebrity, or political and leadership skills that might lead to having a genuine shot at the Presidency, is a different thing entirely. They are delayed gratification, but the work taken while treading the path is worthwhile in and of itself.

And I’d argue atheists need their atheism - need to believe there’s only what we can perceive and nothing more, no God or superior intelligence - equally, by your logic. And equally can be argued to be myopic about the nasty stuff that results from lack of belief in a superior being to whom we will ultimately be accountable. Look at Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao - all proud and militant atheists.

But you’re being ridiculous.

We all choose priorities and sacrifice lesser goods for greater ones. It’s part and parcel of intelligently living your life.

Think of all the nastiness of having to go to school for a minimum of 10-odd years as a youngster, all the play and fun you’re missing out on for 6, 8 or more hours a day, all the meanness we put up with from teachers and fellow students, all the batterings our self-esteem gets from standardised testing and marking. All the information you’re made to learn that you mostly will never recall or use again.

Yet we rightly say education, in spite of these nastinesses, is worthwhile, and rightly highly value the long-term benefits - at the same time doing what we can to minimise the nastinesses, eliminating bullying or useless parts of the curriculum or whatnot.

 

[Think_About_It]

expending effort to practically achieve the goals of living as a good Christian, expending effort to acquire skills like singing, dancing, acting that might lead to celebrity, or political and leadership skills that might lead to having a genuine shot at the Presidency, is a different thing entirely.

Never met a good Christian before. Met a lot of hypocrites, and bigots if not both. I’ve met dancers and singers before though.

And I’d argue atheists need their atheism - need to believe there’s only what we can perceive and nothing more, no God or superior intelligence - equally, by your logic.

I agree. What I would find hard to believe is that there is a Divinity who allows a spirit of Atheism to infect his creation. But I’m sure you’ll think of a thousand rationalizations before you get to the end of this sentence.

And equally can be argued to be myopic about the nasty stuff that results from lack of belief in a superior being to whom we will ultimately be accountable.

Most atheists are humanitarians - dissatisfied, if nothing else, with the alleged perfect morality of Christianity. *See my first post in this thread

Look at Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao - all proud and militant atheists.

Militant dictators who also were atheists. You’d have a hard time determining historically that their motivations were, in fact, atheism.

We all choose priorities and sacrifice lesser goods for greater ones. It’s part and parcel of intelligently living your life.

Think of all the nastiness of having to go to school for a minimum of 10-odd years as a youngster, all the play and fun you’re missing out on for 6, 8 or more hours a day, all the meanness we put up with from teachers and fellow students, all the batterings our self-esteem gets from standardised testing and marking. All the information you’re made to learn that you mostly will never recall or use again.

Yet we rightly say education, in spite of these nastinesses, is worthwhile, and rightly highly value the long-term benefits - at the same time doing what we can to minimise the nastinesses, eliminating bullying or useless parts of the curriculum or whatnot.

Yeah, and all that negativity suits me just fine for human standards. You’re not convincing me of anything by drawing on an alalogy about how God sucks as much as or more than the education system.

 

[LilyM]

Never met a good Christian before. Met a lot of hypocrites, and bigots if not both. I’ve met dancers and singers before though.

And I’m sure you’ve come across people who’ve done good, even excellent, things who were motivated in the doing of those good things by their Christian beliefs.

Or are you trying to say that Mother Teresa fed and housed no orphans and poor people, gave medical care to no dying people who couldn’t afford it - selflessly helped no-one, did nothing good in her decades on this planet? And wasn’t motivated by her Christian beliefs in doing so?

Nice try, no cigar.

I agree. What I would find hard to believe is that there is a Divinity who allows a spirit of Atheism to infect his creation. But I’m sure you’ll think of a thousand rationalizations before you get to the end of this sentence.

Wow. Great open mind you’ve got there.

Most atheists are humanitarians - dissatisfied, if nothing else, with the alleged perfect morality of Christianity. *See my first post in this thread

Most Christians are equally humanitaritans - dissatisfied, if nothing else, with the alleged perfect morality falsely expected of us by atheists. It’s a total strawman. As if the fact that we (as we freely admit) fail to live up to our ideals somehow makes those ideals untrue or not worth pursuing - for you equally fail to live up to yours, undoubtedly, and never will live up to them perfectly. I am certain you don’t think YOUR ideals are untrue or not worth pursuing.

Militant dictators who also were atheists. You’d have a hard time determining historically that their motivations were, in fact, atheism.

Nothing easier actually. I have a great uncle who was a priest, imprisoned by Communists, who knew precisely, because he was told it openly, that the aim of his gaolers and their Communist leadership was in fact to eliminate religion in all its forms. Because they fully subscribed to Marx’s dismissal of religion as ‘opiate for the masses’. Nothing else could motivate a desire to eliminate religious belief than atheism, surely that’s clear enough.

Yeah, and all that negativity suits me just fine for human standards. You’re not convincing me of anything by drawing on an alalogy about how God sucks as much as or more than the education system.

If you think that’s what my analogy was about you’re totally missing the point. The point was about sacrificing short-term goods for long-term ones. THAT (the sacrifice and the setting of priorities) is both unavoidable and a worthwhile thing to do, whether those long-term goods be the goods that education brings us, or the ultimate good of eternal salvation. Is my point clearer now?

 

[Think_About_It]

And I’m sure you’ve come across people who’ve done good, even excellent, things who were motivated in the doing of those good things by their Christian beliefs.

No no, not Christians who did good things. Good Christians- Christians who lived up to anything closely resembling its doctrine.

Or are you trying to say that Mother Teresa fed and housed no orphans and poor people, gave medical care to no dying people who couldn’t afford it - selflessly helped no-one, did nothing good in her decades on this planet? And wasn’t motivated by her Christian beliefs in doing so?

Nice try, no cigar.

It’s true, I didn’t meet her. She did some swell things though to be sure.

Most Christians are equally humanitaritans - dissatisfied, if nothing else, with the alleged perfect morality falsely expected of us by atheists.

Most Christians I’ve met are bigots - against equal opportunities and rights (I don’t think I have to tell you in what areas)

It’s a total strawman. As if the fact that we (as we freely admit) fail to live up to our ideals somehow makes those ideals untrue or not worth pursuing

They seem untrue by many methods outside of whether or not you live up to them.

for you equally fail to live up to yours, undoubtedly, and never will live up to them perfectly.

Of course I fail to live up to my ideals; it’s percisely the thing you expect from a person who has no divine help…

Nothing easier actually. I have a great uncle who was a priest, imprisoned by Communists, who knew precisely, because he was told it openly, that the aim of his gaolers and their Communist leadership was in fact to eliminate religion in all its forms. Because they fully subscribed to Marx’s dismissal of religion as ‘opiate for the masses’. Nothing else could motivate a desire to eliminate religious belief than atheism, surely that’s clear enough.

Mmmh, anecdotes.

If you think that’s what my analogy was about you’re totally missing the point. The point was about sacrificing short-term goods for long-term ones. THAT (the sacrifice and the setting of priorities) is both unavoidable and a worthwhile thing to do, whether those long-term goods be the goods that education brings us, or the ultimate good of eternal salvation. Is my point clearer now?

I’m sure that’s not what you meant - I was being facetious. I’m sure you knew what I meant by framing it that way, as well.

 

[djeter]

If your religion is “Critical Thinking,” Think-About-It, perhaps you might appreciate how Dr. Peter Kreeft goes about that – I suspect greatly different from your approach…

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/02/09/reading-selections-from-critical-thinking-for-christians-by-peter-kreeft/

dj

 

[ManOnFire]

I’m not convinced religion amends any of those short term satisfactions. Nothing seems more instantaneously gratifying to me than to indulge, at any given moment of gladness or weakness, in ephemeral fantasies of eternity and glory. Do you honestly think Catholics are only Catholic because of some kind of short-lived dream of glory in Heaven? If that’s what you think, then you’ve got it all wrong. It’s not primarily about “what Church can do for you.” It’s only the people that need it who believe it. Which do people need: true love, or megalomania despite the fact that scinece will never tell us when time began or ends, or where space began, or ends. There’s a humble quote somewhere out there from Einstein about his belief in a higher power. If you can do away emotionally with any of it, you probably will. If you can’t, you’ll probably adhere to stringint beliefs, disregarding all the nasty stuff you glossed over in my first post in order to state your case.I didn’t gloss over the obscure passage about Amakelites. I don’t know how else to interpret it other than to say it’s not for me to judge.

I really don’t think you can see the point. In trying to follow the Way, it feels like one is losing. It isn’t until it all comes together that one “sees the Light.” It’s like trying to “see the invisible.” It’s like when people say “if I only knew back then what I know now.” You probably won’t ever find it if you refuse to See. One needs to be open-minded. Pop culture media has done a very effective job at getting many young people to be come bigots who immediately reject even considering it (so much for open-mindedness, free speech, fair consideration of ALL sides of an issue). What Hypocrisy!!! Whomever tried to teach you the way tried to save you, but it’s not going to happen if you refuse to consider it.

 

[StrawberryJam]

If your religion is “Critical Thinking,” Think-About-It, perhaps you might appreciate how Dr. Peter Kreeft goes about that – I suspect greatly different from your approach…

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/02/09/reading-selections-from-critical-thinking-for-christians-by-peter-kreeft/

dj

From your article, regarding his view of GK Chesterton: Hell has a very limited imagination.

Indeed. Who was the first to come up with this meme?

 

[mary1173]

God makes me feel loved. In that He created us all in His image, to do His will and not our own. Wars have waged all through the history of the Bible, and will until He returns in the second coming. That the wars are revealed and spoken of in the Bible does not mean that any one group of God’s people are doomed to not be with Him in the end of physical earth and into eternity. Infants and entire races were slaughtered in the name of God. It doesn’t mean that God condoned it, nor does it mean that any one tribe is superior to another. On the contrary we will all be judged in the end and if we have treated one another with love, understanding, compassion, and charity it is then that God will take us to His paradise He has set up for us.
Get your noses out of your Bibles and take care to treat people with love and understanding. Live Christs word, don’t just read it.

God Bless
Mary1173
:slapfight:

 

[adstrinity]

Ugh. I hate it when people claim God in the OT is vengeful, spiteful, jealous, etc and is sooooo different from Jesus.

Apologies if this has all been said before. Read most of the first page only.

God let Adam & Eve continue to live and re-produce. Not only did He still allow them to live, He promised them salvation.

Soddom & Gamorrah: God said, if there are X ammount of righteous people, I will spare them…and He kept lowering His standards…and He DID save them.

God gave the covenant of circumcision to His people. You want to be part of His people? Get circumcised. It’s not like He wasn’t letting anybody else worship Him.

God told Jonah to do something, Jonah didn’t do it, great fish (JONAH LIVED), went to where he was supposed to, preached, God said he would destroy those who didn’t listen to Jonah, they didn’t, then, they got serious and fasted and prayed, and Jonah was upset BECAUSE HE WANTED TO SEE THEM SMITED!!! But, not God.

How many times in the OT does God give the people chances? God is a God of Love in the OT as well.

 

[mary1173]

Ugh. I hate it when people claim God in the OT is vengeful, spiteful, jealous, etc and is sooooo different from Jesus.

Apologies if this has all been said before. Read most of the first page only.

God let Adam & Eve continue to live and re-produce. Not only did He still allow them to live, He promised them salvation.

Soddom & Gamorrah: God said, if there are X ammount of righteous people, I will spare them…and He kept lowering His standards…and He DID save them.

God gave the covenant of circumcision to His people. You want to be part of His people? Get circumcised. It’s not like He wasn’t letting anybody else worship Him.

God told Jonah to do something, Jonah didn’t do it, great fish (JONAH LIVED), went to where he was supposed to, preached, God said he would destroy those who didn’t listen to Jonah, they didn’t, then, they got serious and fasted and prayed, and Jonah was upset BECAUSE HE WANTED TO SEE THEM SMITED!!! But, not God.

How many times in the OT does God give the people chances? God is a God of Love in the OT as well.

Exactly, I try to confer this to people, but they then accuse me of not believing in God because I say’‘God has had many titles given Him by His worshippers. And that Jesus being the Son of God is not what some religions believe, and just because Jews, Muslims, do not believe in Jesus that they are not worthy of God and being in His presence? Respect for those outside the faith is also important. Belief in God takes many forms’’…God has always gave His people chances to ammend their ways of wrongdoing. Now I’m going to go get an Excedrin…I’ve got a headache from all this bickering.:banghead:uch:

 

[Cristian_B]

My simple explanation is that it didn’t happen. Neither did Sodom and Gomorrah or the great flood. God doesn’t directly tell people anything now, so why would he have thousands of years ago?

Sodom and Gomorrah did exist.

The Ebla Tablets were discovered in northern Syria by two professors from the University of Rome, Dr. Paolo Matthiae, an archaeologist; and Dr. Giovanni Petinato, an epigrapher. The excavation of Tell Mardikh began in 1964 and in 1968 they uncovered a statue of King Ibbit-Lim. Since 1974, 17,000 tablets have been unearthed from the era of the Ebla Kingdom. These tablets have already made valuable contributions to biblical criticism.

One contribution is in relation to Genesis 14. Critics have have described the victory of Abraham over Chedorlaomer and the Mesopotamian kings as fictitious and the five Cities of the Plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar) as legendary.
Genesis 14:8 And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim.

                              The Ebla archives, however,                                       refer to all five Cities of the Plain and on one tablet                                     the cities are listed in the exact same sequence                                     as Genesis 14. The tablets further reflect                                     that the region was prosperous and successful                                     with a patriarchal culture consistent with                                     that recorded in Genesis prior to the catastrophe                                     recorded in Genesis 14.

Source​

Also read this link as well.

arkdiscovery.com/sodom_&_gomorrah.htm

There is evidence in the Ebla Tablets and archeology that Sodom and Gomorrah did exist and there is evidence from archeology that there was a fire.

So they did exist and they did burn.

 

[Cristian_B]

In my opinion God didn’t create the world like it says in the bible and adam never existed.

Why do you find hard to believe that all mankind could have came from only 2 men (Adam and Eve)?

 

[Cristian_B]

This is the only answer I found for the original poster at the moment.

Unlike us, God knows the future. God knew what the results would be if Israel did not completely eradicate the Amalekites. If Israel did not carry out God’s orders, the Amalekites would come back to “haunt” the Israelites again and again. Saul claimed to have killed everyone but the Amalekite king Agag (1 Samuel 15:20). Obviously Saul was lying…just a couple of decades later there were enough Amalekites to take David and his men’s families captive (1 Samuel 30:1-2). After David and his men attacked the Amalekites and rescued their families, 400 Amalekites escaped. If Saul had fulfilled what God had commanded him, this never would have occurred. Several hundred years later, a descendant of Agag, Haman, tried to have the entire Jewish people exterminated (see the book of Esther). So, Saul’s incomplete obedience almost resulted in Israel’s destruction. God knew this would occur, so He ordered the extermination of the Amalekites ahead of time. ~Source

http://www.gotquestions.org/Canaanites-extermination.html

 

[hellopeople]

Why do you find hard to believe that all mankind could have came from only 2 men (Adam and Eve)?

I find it hard to believe that the earth is only thousands of years old and that modern science is wrong and a book written thousands of years ago is right.

 

[Cristian_B]

I find it hard to believe that the earth is only thousands of years old and that modern science is wrong and a book written thousands of years ago is right.

You gave me no reason of why you don’t believe in Adam and Eve.

Also, Modern Science (it was ‘modern’ for it’s time) believed that the Earth was flat. The Bible never told us that the Earth was flat. For it’s time, that was modern science, and that modern science didn’t accept the true science. When someone told her that the sun was in the center of the solar system, it didn’t believe him . That was the modern science of that time. Now it is called old science. And in the same way the future science will call the science of our days ‘old’ and this will go on and on …

 

[hellopeople]

You gave me no reason of why you don’t believe in Adam and Eve.

Also, Modern Science (it was ‘modern’ for it’s time) believed that the Earth was flat. The Bible never told us that the Earth was flat. For it’s time, that was modern science, and that modern science didn’t accept the true science. When someone told her that the sun was in the center of the solar system, it didn’t believe him . That was the modern science of that time. Now it is called old science. And in the same way the future science will call the science of our days ‘old’ and this will go on and on …

Which creation story is the right one? Because there are two different creation stories. Which is right and which is wrong?

There is no reason to believe in Adam and Eve. The only evidence we have of Adam and Eve is in the Bible. Scientific evidence shows that the creation story told in Genesis is impossible. And I realize that there are going to be advancements in science, but none of them will ever support the Genesis account of creation.

Also, if you want to disregard the science, lets look at the story. How does the author know what happened before Adam and Eve? Did God tell Adam and Eve the order of the things he created? And how did anyone know what happened? Adam or Eve must have told their kids about it, and the story must have spread down the generations. But why would Adam and Eve tell such a horrible story to their kids? If you disobeyed God and got kicked out of paradise, would you tell your kids that?

Just like every other creation story, it isn’t true. They tried to come up with ideas of why things were the way they were without the help of science, so they came up with outlandish stories.

 

[Michael_Francis]

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