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As someone who has been celibate for close to 30 out of 35 years of life, I can promise you that although bachelorhood is freedom in some respects, it is a great minimisation and reduction of a person in others.
That is a genuine tragedy. I don't necessarily consider becoming a former Christian tragic; but my own (non-Christian, somewhat) faith has been one of the most beneficial aspects of my existence.
Yes, except in Christian terms, a good many of them end up becoming militant, Dominionist nut cases who fill their heads with the likes of Texe Marrs or Tim LeHay instead. Forgive me if I have trouble seeing the improvement.
No, it isn't. It's actually just another layer of said control. First they edited it, and had control over which books ended up in it. Then even after they'd exercised editorial control, they cemented it (for a while at least) by making sure only their own approved people could read it.
No, reincarnation itself didn't give birth to the caste system at all. Go and read the Law of Manu. Varnashrama Dharma (the caste) was in there from the word go. Also, there are two reasons why the caste started to damage India.
How do you not understand that dreams are not visions of past lives?
Nothing supports the idea that you will be a Master in your next life...
your dreams ARE NOT REINCARNATION.... Nor will you be punished for them...
You DO NOT see past lives in your dreams... You don't... i can't explain it any other way... Mind you there have been some that do... Clearly you are not one of them.
This is why i do not want to argue with you.... its pointless because you don't understand what you're talking about.... nothing supports what you're saying...
Why don't you just admit you don't believe in reincarnation because you don't understand it?
justify why you should be punished for a past life.
If you socially construct "good" to mean loyal servant, yes.
Proof?
I'm picking and choosing what I believe is true about it. Let's say, I just feel it is.
Originally posted by Gorman91
Militantism is not bad. Its when you become violent for stupid reasons that it is bad.
Personally, I never heard of Texe Marrs or Tim LeHay.
I fall in line with the Billy Graham type.
In my own eyes, people who actually read the bible end up like something Ron Paul-ish, though more socialist than he.
Hereditary or not, it is easier to control a slave if you tell them they will be the master in the next life
One is revenge, the other is forced coexistence.
The idea of a fixed caste is inherently illogical. People change, and thus the social order should logically change with it. And it is inherently easier to control people if they believe they have no hope in this life of becoming anything else.
Christianity tells you to accept where you are, but gives you a way to improve it in your life time.
Thank you for being more civil than Akragon.
You are your own soul/spirit... call it what you want... There is a physical world that is material... and a spiritual world... both exist in the same space in time... One deteriorates as time passes but can not be actually destroyed... one can not be destroyed period, but it absorbs vibrations... The spirit is positive, the physical is negative so to speak... The spirit is life... the physical has no life, it is meat... though it "vibrates"... we are meat and spirit... and your body absorbs these +/- vibrations... from the range of human emotions/vibrations...love to hate.... Both spread like wildfire
as the light and the dark... the physical and the material... everything in existance has two sides of the same...As above, so below... and all of it is God.
God gave all life to explore different perspectives of himself... When your physical body dies your spirit returns to the source... The spirit side of God... With it follows the negative and postive experiences that you caused within your life... That... is Judgement day At which time you are judged for your deeds... Perhaps even questioned, unfortunatly i do not know... IF you have not learned how God wants you to be, you are returned to earth... in whatever body you deserve... and possibly a debt to pay to God. Its said "a veil is place over your eyes hiding your past lives from you".... Which is possible to lift through contemplation...
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
A "man who curses" is given a body that will be continually "troubled in heart". A "man who slanders" receives a body that will be "oppressed". A thief receives a "lame, crooked and blind body". A "proud" and "scornful" man receives "a lame and ugly body" that "everyone continually despises." Thus earth, as well as hell, becomes the place of punishment. (Pistis Sophia)
Good and evil are both subjective...
Of what? That you don't see your past lives in your dreams? I said its possible... IF your dreams are in fact your past lives. And you've hurt people in those lives... expect some "punishment" in the future... On the other hand perhaps you've resolved your Karma with God...
Feel free... but denying the possibility of its existence is nieve... especially since there is an abundance of support for reincarnation.... from every relgion... almost
Originally posted by Akragon
reply to post by Gorman91
IF you have not learned how God wants you to be, you are returned to the physical being deemed "not worthy"... in whatever body you deserve... and possibly a debt to pay to God. Its said "a veil is place over your eyes hiding your past lives from you".... Which is possible to lift through contemplation...
Good and evil are both subjective...
I've been in a transitional period in the direction of pacifism, for several years now. The single biggest reason why, is because I've noticed that these days at least, people who make violence part of who they are, tend to have such an overwhelming monopoly on it, that you're not likely to get the better of them via direct force anywayz. The second reason, which is probably more fundamental, is that I have noticed that violence tends to perpetuate itself. In other words, if one person is violent, and another person is violent back, it continues. If the person who is attacked is non-violent, it takes an almost completely amoral person to keep going; and in some places at least, truly evil people are actually quite rare. The only real reason why we think of them as being more prevalent, is because most of them end up in positions of authority, where their influence is disproportional to their real numbers.
They're fundamentalist Christian authors. LeHay wrote the Left Behind fiction series, which you may have heard of, even if you don't know his name. They became fairly popular.
Graham is fine. My churches of choice during my teens, were usually Pentecostal. I don't have a problem with revivals at all, because they can help people. My issue is when people start being judged as unsaved, simply because they aren't manifesting paranormal phenomena (such as being "slain in the Spirit") which have dubious theological rationalisations to begin with.
Whoever came up with the term socialism, and its' definition, could be called Milton Freidman's best friend. What the label of socialism succeeded in doing, was making compassionate and/or altruistic behaviour, actually look like a negative thing.
Except people weren't always told that. The conditions of reincarnation revolved around works in Christian terms, or Karma. In Christian terms it might be considered a little more morally neutral, but the bottom line is that the way you have lived in one life, or sometimes a series of lives, determines where you will end up in the next. Human incarnations are actually considered extremely difficult to get, because humans have the most complex form of consciousness on the planet.
Being reborn as a demon is considered particularly dangerous, because it is very difficult to raise your own spiritual level sufficiently to get out of that situation again; although it is considered possible.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap." It wasn't a Hindu who said that.
I edited that slightly for you.
There's a subtle, implicit assumption here, which I think is worth pointing out. Paul makes the statement that an individual is always a slave by default, whether to God, or someone else. I believe surrender is important; but personally, I also put a slightly higher value on freedom than many Christians seem to.
My learning civility has been a long, slow process; that has actually involved '___' and marijuana among other things, believe it or not. My current area of offline residence also helps considerably. Akragon seemed to consider you inherently illogical for some reason. I do not.
Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Akragon
You are your own soul/spirit... call it what you want... There is a physical world that is material... and a spiritual world... both exist in the same space in time... One deteriorates as time passes but can not be actually destroyed... one can not be destroyed period, but it absorbs vibrations... The spirit is positive, the physical is negative so to speak... The spirit is life... the physical has no life, it is meat... though it "vibrates"... we are meat and spirit... and your body absorbs these +/- vibrations... from the range of human emotions/vibrations...love to hate.... Both spread like wildfire
Sounds like a bunch of baseless metaphysical silliness to me.
The spiritual also can be destroyed, assuming it exists. That which can be observed can be changed, and that which can be changed, can be destroyed. This is a simply rule in the universe.
Not so. "as above so bellow" is a metaphysical made up lie.
as above so bellow has no proof.
IF God exists, how could you owe him any sort of debt beyond thanking him for existence?
What can God want? He is God. He can damn you, destroy you, create you, and rewrite your own existence. He's God. What kind of silliness is it to say you can owe God anything that can be paid.
So if you want to role with Christ, you can never return to God as yourself.
You can never enter heaven as you are. Nothing in life can you provide to make him say you deserve heaven.
God wants you to be free in your own perils and submissive to his demands. Nothing else.
Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by petrus4
I don't even believe morality exists beyond sex. I abhor war. But if I was forced into it, I cannot honestly say there are any self-created mental limits to what I can do to survive.
They're fundamentalist Christian authors. LeHay wrote the Left Behind fiction series, which you may have heard of, even if you don't know his name. They became fairly popular.
Each clay pot has it's purpose. A spirit for its role. Some are common, some are extraordinary. No reason to think people without any special abilities are not saved.
Yep. I consider myself quite a socialist with a capitalist drive. My grandmother came from communist Russia and would say at times that "Jesus was the first communist." Of course communism isn't socialism, but I think you get the point.
I don't believe in Karma, because if Karma exists, then it ultimately means that people are not that complex. That they inherently do the same thing over and over again and really aren't any different than animals and not worthy of anything.
People have existed for 50,000 years, and humans as a species have existed on the mental scale of "highly intelligent" for 200,000 years. That means there have been something like 100 billion people to ever have lived. (rough estimate I read on a statistics site a while back).
Not to mention the "wtf" factor of when our population went from 1 billion to 6 billion in 100 years. What happened?
Joking aside, it is a relevant point. Why would population size only increase if Karma existed, and people were worthy of getting out of it?
Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by colbe
Something controls everyone's mind in some way. Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean you aren't controlled by some other idea.
Some things become more obvious with experience, Gorman.
Einstein said that energy can neither be created or destroyed; and I tend to consider him an authority on some things, since I don't like mathematics enough to want to verify them myself.
No, it isn't, but it does take a little clarification. It refers to what we now know as the fractal principle. Another term for it is Quantum Non-locality. It does not always refer to individual objects, as much as the overall energetic lattice. If you make a change in the energy of your immediate area, with intent, it is possible to achieve a state change in the area where you intended it to occur, even if said area is thousands of miles away. That is how prayer works, but most Christians don't usually have a very specific or conscious understanding of the mechanics of it.
Again, it depends on how you define proof, and what you are looking for. I would encourage you to keep an open mind. There have often been times when I came across something which I initially didn't understand, only because at the time, I did not have context for it. It was only after I received additional, clarifying information that I was able to.
Viewing God in terms of subject-object, is useful at a particular stage of development, but not forever. It also has an unfortunate tendency to cause wars.
They seemed to consider it important to capitalise on such opportunities; and Jesus gave them a few, unfortunately.
I don't believe this. You of course are welcome to, if you believe that it helps you; but I would suggest that it probably doesn't.
Are we talking about God, or Sadaam Hussein here?
I define morality primarily as allowing an organism to exist in whatever natural state it observably would, if nobody interfered with it. Most of the ten commandments are implicitly included in that.
I didn't think that myself, but some of the people at the churches I went to did. I was objecting to it.
I used to think that Capitalism was a good idea. Then I realised that I like the idea of having continued access to food, water, and oxygen, and thus a planet which could continue to provide them.
I'm not sure I understand the relationship between the complexity of a thing, and its' worth. I actually tend to place a higher value on simpler things, to be honest.
Probably a lot more, actually. Souls also don't just stay here, but move back and forth between here and other spheres. It's a big universe out there.
The rated A (for Atheist) explanation for this, is that said 100 years marked the rise and fall of oil. The acid tripping New Age hippie explanation (which I'm more partial to, personally) is that the more drama and conflict shows up on Earth, the larger the number of souls who tend to want to come here. Drama means lots of different experiences, which means more learning, which means much faster spiritual development than usual. If you accept reincarnation, the end of the world actually has a serious silver lining.
Because even assuming that both karma and reincarnation exist, the process moves incredibly slowly. That's actually the whole point of reincarnation; we really don't tend to learn much in an individual lifetime at all, relatively speaking. Probably less than two dozen individuals have reached the point of divine realisation, liberation, or merger in the whole of human history. You seem to claim allegiance with one of them. Becoming the focus of major religions is a standard tendency for them, when they show up.
Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by colbe
Control from fear, and control for love are two different kinds of control. Once you ponder Christ's life and desire to be like him, love controls your mind.
If you are truly with Christ, do you not sometimes make up reasons not to give to the poor in your mind? That's because Christ is in control of your mind, you're just trying to justify not following orders.
Which is only human. But I simply say, control can be from love. You MUST love. It is a form of control in your mind. Some men find murder easy, some impossible. All a matter of what controls their mind.
Ideas control, and they perpetrate your actions.
When the first Protestant men revolted, left the Church, there was no control. They no longer believed or were badly catechized or in pride, followed the evil one. The Church didn't stop them.