People who don't believe in God are broken

[PRmerger]

But they have no rational reason to be seekers in the first place.

And that, Reap, is a statement of faith.

You are just asserting that there is no rational reason to be a seeker in the first place because that’s what your faith teaches you.

 

[ReapReason]

And that, Reap, is a statement of faith.

You are just asserting that there is no rational reason to be a seeker in the first place because that’s what your faith teaches you.

I didn’t assert anything. In fact you are now making a straw-man. What I did demonstrated however, is that there is no rational reason to seek a cure for spiritual sin or salvation from eternal hell if such is not evident to a person who does not know that they are spiritually broken.

You agreed.

Thus people who don’t know have no rational reason to think they are broken and thus have no rational reason to seek a cure. They are rationally incapable of accepting your statement of faith in so far as we are talking about spiritual sin.

Thus there is no reason for atheists to be seekers in the first place in so far as we are talking about spiritual sin as the motivating reason for them being seekers.

 

[PRmerger]

I didn’t assert anything.

Okay. But you made a statement of faith.

Right here:

[SIGN]

But they have no rational reason to be seekers in the first place.

[/SIGN]

That is nothing more than, and nothing less than, a statement borne out of your faith.

You cannot prove that assertion any more than you can prove that there is no God.

Therefore, it’s a statement made of faith.

What I did demonstrated however, is that there is no rational reason to seek a cure for spiritual sin or salvation from eternal hell if such is not evident to a person who does not know that they are spiritually broken.

Then we are agreed.

Thus people who don’t know have no rational reason to think they are broken and thus have no rational reason to seek a cure.

Too true. Too true. :sad_yes:

They are rationally incapable of accepting your statement of faith in so far as we are talking about spiritual sin.

Of course they are capable, Reap. They just don’t see the need to take the medicine because they don’t see themselves as dying.

Thus there is no reason for atheists to be seekers in the first place in so far as we are talking about spiritual sin as the motivating reason for them being seekers.

This is clearly false. Any atheist may be a seeker. Many atheists are seekers, in fact.

And, if they seek, they will find. Of that I have great faith.

 

[ReapReason]

Okay. But you made a statement of faith.

Right here:

[SIGN][/SIGN]

That is nothing more than, and nothing less than, a statement borne out of your faith.

Wrong, as I demonstrated in my last post.

Therefore, it’s a statement made of faith.

No it is not.

Then we are agreed.

Too true. Too true. :sad_yes:

But you don’t seem to understand the rational consequences of that agreement.

Of course they are capable, Reap. They just don’t see the need to take the medicine because they don’t see themselves as dying.

Therefore they have no rational reason to accept the claim that they are dying. hence they are rationally incapable of accepting the statement that they are dying, until you provide evidence of spiritual brokenness.

This is clearly false. Any atheist may be a seeker. Many atheists are seekers, in fact.

Its irrelevant. What is relevant is how they become seekers. If they have no rational experience of being spiritually broken, then they have no rational basis to “seek” a cure for spiritual brokenness. Thus the people you are talking about are seeking a cure for irrational reasons.

And, if they seek, they will find. Of that I have great faith.

A rational person will not seek a cure if they have no rational basis for seeking in the first place. Hence they will remain atheists insofar as the claim that they are spiritually broken.

 

[PRmerger]

Wrong, as I demonstrated in my last post.

That is* another* statement of faith.

But you don’t seem to understand the rational consequences of that agreement.

Which are?

Therefore they have no rational reason to accept the claim that they are dying. hence they are rationally incapable of accepting the statement that they are dying, until you provide evidence of spiritual brokenness.

Yep. Especially the “until” part. And except for the “incapable” part. Sure they are “capable”. They just are not moved to take the medicine because they don’t know they are dying.

Its irrelevant. What is relevant is how they become seekers. If they have no rational experience of being spiritually broken, then they have no rational basis to “seek” a cure for spiritual brokenness

To be sure!

Thus the people you are talking about are seeking a cure for irrational reasons.

Nope.

You are the Queen of Non-Sequiturs, Reap.

Your reasoning is like this:
The sky is blue. (Yes!)
Thunder is loud. (Yes! Sometimes!)

Thus, rain is blue and loud. (Not so much).

A rational person will not seek a cure if they have no rational basis for seeking in the first place. Hence they will remain atheists insofar as the claim that they are spiritually broken.

Right! (Except you meant “insofar as the claim that they are NOT spiritually broken”
but I got what you meant. )

 

[PRmerger]

Therefore they have no rational reason to accept the claim that they are dying. hence they are rationally incapable of accepting the statement that they are dying, until you provide evidence of spiritual brokenness.

So here’s the thing, Reap: EVERY single atheist who examines her life is going to see that she’s broken.

All she needs to do is look at her life and she will see, “I am not how I intended* myself to be.”

Brokenness.

It’s only the one who are self-righteous who won’t examine themselves, who don’t see their inability to be who they intended for themselves, that won’t seek the cure.

*By “intended” please do not read this to mean “career”.

 

[ReapReason]

So here’s the thing, Reap: EVERY single atheist who examines her life is going to see that she’s broken.

All she needs to do is look at her life and she will see, “I am not how I intended* myself to be.”

Brokenness.

I have looked at my self before; I have felt that I was not in the job I wanted or I am not living the life I want. But that in and of itself does not lead to rational knowledge of spiritual brokenness.

 

[ReapReason]

So here’s the thing, Reap: EVERY single atheist who examines her life is going to see that she’s broken.

All she needs to do is look at her life and she will see, “I am not how I intended* myself to be.”

Brokenness.

It’s only the one who are self-righteous who won’t examine themselves, who don’t see their inability to be who they intended for themselves, that won’t seek the cure.

So now iis “self-righteous” people who don’t know they are spiritually broken?

How much more desperate are you going to get?

I thin atheists examine their lives just fine. They simply don’t have a rational reason to seek a cure for spiritual brokeness.

 

[Gaber]

Yep. That’s exactly my point as well.

What you call “thinking” I call proofs for the existence of God based on reason alone.

Are you taking the bolded part of the sentence for its entirety? That would be mistaking the scaffolding for the structure it aided the building of. It wasn’t the “proof” as a rationalizing excercise that constituted the experience, it was part of the exhaustion of mentality that allowed Grace and Vison. The “proof” didn’t make God happen. If it did, anyone reading it would see God, or at least understand that God IS. No “proof” has accomplished that in the sense of 2+2=4, or there would be no non-believers out of the many who have read it. Even many thiests disclaim the idea of proof referent to God. and why not disclaim what doesn’t work, save as a salve for believers who need such?

St. Angelic Doctor was a believer up to a point and thus concocted, because he believed, “proofs” that workd because he already believed. When he saw, he was no longer a believer, he became a knower, in the simiar sense to Paul who was a disbeliever, from whose eyes the scales fell after he saw, and he became a knower. Before knowing, belief and disbelief are equal. They are both unknowing. Reason alone is a blockage, not a perception, of God. There is no reason to God, though a gift og God in our area of experience is reason, that being applicable in a limited way to 4D navigation. It prepares the way for vision, it by iteswlf is not vision itself, being included in it.

 

[Gaber]

From a philosophical perspective, how much weight does knowledge really have, since it is constantly changing, based as it is on limited, subjective and interpretive perception? And therefore, the rational, systematic process whereby we attain such changeable knowledge: how much weight should we attach to that?

Wat sort of knowledge are you talking about? The knowledge a desert dweller might have of swimming by reading about it from a book, or the knowledge of swimming that an olympic swimmer might have? Or are you talking about the sort of faith affords, parts of which, even the idea of what God is, can be chsnged by scientific observation or by such contemplative acheivement as St.Teresa of Avila or St. John of the Cross had? Did your Torah or our NT tell us how to build the machine you are using to make your comment? Yes?

While science and that kind of knowledge are approximations subject to teleology, they have at least the advantage of engaging a methodology that over time more closely approximates how surfaces work with each other at various scales of encounter. Religon has the advantage of pointing, albeit in the vast number of cases not even approaching clarity, to the underlying reality of what allows science and what it studies to happen. It is meant to be an inner map, to meanings under the surface, and ultimatley to Meaning Itself. In order to do that, religion it needs to be penetrated with the same degree of study one might devote to discvoering a scientific fact. But most people are pleased to stop at the srface level of its story telling and go no deeper. Thus we have religious conflicts and invented moral issues on flimsy parochial basis instead of an actual “spiritual” or metaphysical Understanding.

 

[Contarini]

Discuss.

We’re all broken, whether we believe in God or not.

But disbelief in God is certainly one form of our brokenness.

Edwin

 

[Gaber]

Originally Posted by ReapReason
I have no rational reason to seek salvation from eternal damnation if I don’t know that I am spiritually broken.

Originally Posted by PRmerger
Egg-zactly what I’ve been saying all along.

Yes, this reminds me of the story of the Eskimo who was “evangelized” by the missionary:

Eskimo~You mean that if you didn’t tell me about your God, and I led a good life, as I am, I would have gone to Heaven?

Missionary~Yes

Eskimo~But now that I know about your God there’s a chance I can go to hell?

Missionary~Yes

Eskimo~Then why in the name of goodness did you tell me about your God!!!

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Yes, this reminds me of the story of the Eskimo who was “evangelized” by the missionary:

Eskimo~You mean that if you didn’t tell me about your God, and I led a good life, as I am, I would have gone to Heaven?

Missionary~Yes

Eskimo~But now that I know about your God there’s a chance I can go to hell?

Missionary~Yes

Eskimo~Then why in the name of goodness did you tell me about your God!!!

 

[atheistgirl]

We’re all broken, whether we believe in God or not.

But disbelief in God is certainly one form of our brokenness.

Edwin

I have no sense in which I am broken.

In fact, I think I’m just about the most together person I know

My mind and body, from which my ‘‘spirit’’ manifests, are pretty well in tune, and I have no sense what so ever in which I feel any kind of poetic sense of ‘‘brokenness’’.

From what I’ve read, I’ve found the objections to the logical proofs just as credible, if not more credible than the proofs themselves, so I do see ever how anyone could ‘‘prove’’ God using reason to me.

But reading this thread made me think, perhaps that wouldn’t be the biggest issue for this atheist.

The biggest issue is perhaps, I don’t need God.

There is absolutely nothing in me, or my life, that I can see would benefit from there being a God - or I should say, believing or knowing there is a God.

I don’t walk around thinking I’m a ‘‘broken’’ person, or inadequate for some spiritual place after death, or that I’m a sinner, or in any way ‘‘bad’’ what so ever.

I’m fully human, and fully alive. And my body, mind, and ‘‘spirit’’ that manifests from them has no sense at all that there is something missing, damaged, or ‘‘broken’’.

I’m very in touch with my mind and feelings and ‘‘spirit’’, and I have not got even the faintest sense that there is somehow something ‘‘missing’’ for me.

I love me, and I love being me

Maybe that’s my problem



Sarah x

 

[atheistgirl]

Yes, this reminds me of the story of the Eskimo who was “evangelized” by the missionary:

Eskimo~You mean that if you didn’t tell me about your God, and I led a good life, as I am, I would have gone to Heaven?

Missionary~Yes

Eskimo~But now that I know about your God there’s a chance I can go to hell?

Missionary~Yes

Eskimo~Then why in the name of goodness did you tell me about your God!!!

Just like the two Jehovah’s Witnesses I was talking to, who told me I could go to heaven if I was ignorant of the Word of God, as God would not punish me for being ignorant. It wasn’t my fault.
But once I knew about the Gospel, I had to beleive as they did, or God was destroy my soul, as they had the Truth, all other churches are more or less corrupted.

So I told them not to tell me

Course, they did anyhow, as they said they’re commanded to by God.

Incidently, their belief in what happens to the damned in the afterlife reflects what I think happens anyhow.

Existence ceases.

So I guess in their world view, if I ended up damned, I’d have lost nothing anyhow

Sarah x

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Course, they did anyhow, as they said they’re commanded to by God.

That is interesting. “God sent us here and commanded us to tell you this, and you might go to hell now and suffer forever in eternity because He did.”

Alan

 

[atheistgirl]

That is interesting. “God sent us here and commanded us to tell you this, and you might go to hell now and suffer forever in eternity because He did.”

Alan

Divine Command see? Much more important they do what they think the Bible tells them to, than to actually care about the fate of my soul.

It’s ok though Alan.

I don’t have a soul

Lucky for me huh?

Sarah x

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Divine Command see? Much more important they do what they think the Bible tells them to, than to actually care about the fate of my soul.

It’s ok though Alan.

I don’t have a soul

Lucky for me huh?

Sarah x

Can you be resouled? Then you could play the e-lottery with the rest of us, eh?

For that matter, I wonder when it might come in handy not to have a soul?

Alan

 

[Gaber]

Just like the two Jehovah’s Witnesses I was talking to, who told me I could go to heaven if I was ignorant of the Word of God, as God would not punish me for being ignorant. It wasn’t my fault.
But once I knew about the Gospel, I had to beleive as they did, or God was destroy my soul, as they had the Truth, all other churches are more or less corrupted.

So I told them not to tell me

Course, they did anyhow, as they said they’re commanded to by God.

Incidently, their belief in what happens to the damned in the afterlife reflects what I think happens anyhow.

Existence ceases.

So I guess in their world view, if I ended up damned, I’d have lost nothing anyhow

Sarah x

We each tell ourselves the story that makes us feel good, but some stories match Reality a bit more closely. Being sincerely and thoroughly observant of nature and ourselves is a heck of a lot beyond growing up with some story that may, indeed, be useful to some. But it is unseemly for any of us to make ourselves feel better by atempting to convince someone else ours is the one true story. It’s kind of like putting stuff on your cafeteria tray and holding it up and saying “Only I have the One True Tray!” The whole idea of nutrition, taste, iindividal need, aesthetic perception, nutritonal insight, etc, etc, is declined in favor of conformity.

But hey, it is fun to load up on shrimp lo mein and trade tastes with someone who likes lamb chops with mint jelly.

 

[atheistgirl]

We each tell ourselves the story that makes us feel good, but some stories match Reality a bit more closely. Being sincerely and thoroughly observant of nature and ourselves is a heck of a lot beyond growing up with some story that may, indeed, be useful to some. But it is unseemly for any of us to make ourselves feel better by atempting to convince someone else ours is the one true story. It’s kind of like putting stuff on your cafeteria tray and holding it up and saying “Only I have the One True Tray!” The whole idea of nutrition, taste, iindividal need, aesthetic perception, nutritonal insight, etc, etc, is declined in favor of conformity.

But hey, it is fun to load up on shrimp lo mein and trade tastes with someone who likes lamb chops with mint jelly.

Beautifully expressed

(no lamb for me though - that meat’s too greasy for my tastebuds!)

Sarah x