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It's blatantly not universally accepted. I know Him personally, I know Him better than I know my grandparents. Sadly with three of them it's not difficult, they died when I was young. But I know Him better than the one that's left.
I think you will find, that I have never laughed and Bush's assertation that he bases his policy on instructions from God.
I don't care what you think. It's not a defensive thing, and quite frankly you're being terribly hypocritical by saying that. Otherwise you wouldn't be so defensive over your view on drugs.
Are you still smarting from me pointing out that sophisticated religous thinkers don't take the Bible literally?
The big difference is that I can point to facts and figures and situations which back up my claims - you can't. We have to take it on "faith".
Again, I can point to facts, figures and situations in the real world to back up my claims.
In your opinion.
so, who are these sophisticated religous thinkers?
lets have some facts figures and situations from the real world
In the words of Christ himself: (Matthew 7:20-23)
20
So by their fruits you will know them.
21
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
22
Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?'
23
Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.'
A liar who sanctions wars of aggression against non-threatening nations, advocates the use of detention without charge nor recourse to due process of law, and who continues to coddle the rich elites from whom he too will profit at the expense of the poor and disenfranchised is indeed an evildoer by Christ's own standards.
If he is hearing any voices at all its either the result of his long untreated substance abuses or else the principalities and powers of this world to which Christ also referred.
And you think that will mean the press will leave him alone?
There are similarities to be drawn between religion, myth, psychoanalysis, magick etc. They are not literal truths, in the way that physics etc is. Rather they are stories, metaphors etc to try and understand and explain certain aspects of human experience (interior life, love, beauty, transcendence etc) that can't be measured in a rational materialist way.
Belief can be very powerful - people kill for it, people sacrifice themselves for it. But if Christianity is right, then all the other religions are wrong. But Muslims think they are right and Christianity is wrong, where does that leave us? And what about Hindu's, Jews etc?
I think that all relgions are expressing certain truths, but these are not to be taken literally - they are metaphors, stories to express things that can't be expressed in other ways.
Belief is a tool, not to be taken too literally. All the religions are differing approaches to trying to explain/express things which cannot be expressed. None of these belief systems are literally "true" however, they are merely approximations, models of an inepxressible truth.
I pointed them out on another thread - do a search.
I give up. You're too blinded by your faith to think critically about it. But ask yourself this - why are you a Christian? If you'd been born somewhere else, you'd probably have a different religion.
So its all down to chance really, isn't it?
What?
Christianity is labelled as a religion, but at its heart is the grace of God which does not depend on human deeds, rituals etc.
:banghead:
I have studied physics and I have studied the Bible.
If physics wasn't a literal measurable thing (although the concept of scientific "truth", is admittedly, a slippery one), we wouldn't be here chatting on this interweb thing would we? Or is it powered by Jesus?
Such arrogance! So you are right and millions of people are wrong? What if you'd been born into a Muslim family?
Based on knowledge, experience, reading about religion and belief, going to church when I was younger, chatting to people from all different religions etc
Didn't do a very good job, did he?
As I said - all religions are expressing the same things at their heart.
Why oh why do most religious people pretend that their beliefs are beyond questioning?
This is just getting silly now
I think we should be told.
So there!
actually most physics comes from mechanics, experimentally derivied relationships between things, and statistical mathematics combined
It's one thing to question, it's another to deny someone else's experiences as entirely false.
You still need to be taught.
As I said before...this is just getting silly.
Oh and prove to me that the tooth fairy doesn't exist, cos I can tell you this much, I know one of them and his name is Oscar. He helped me to pick some shrooms in the forest a few weeks back.
Surely if you believe what it says in a physics textbook, you can understand why people believe what is written in the Bible? Put a colon after silly and I'd agree with you.