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How can you search for the truth when you have no idea what it actually is.Doesn't this then become a blind search which will eventually end up with you believing in something that may not be the truth?
I would love to have just a sniff of what the truth is then maybe if i feel it will be beneficial to me i will hand myself to god on a silver platter.

lloydy wrote:How can you search for the truth when you have no idea what it actually is.Doesn't this then become a blind search which will eventually end up with you believing in something that may not be the truth?
I would love to have just a sniff of what the truth is then maybe if i feel it will be beneficial to me i will hand myself to god on a silver platter.

This is exactly what I was thinking. If you care so much about the truth, how can you settle on something that requires blind faith and a stretch of the imagination on the way? Short of a god actually appearing in physical form and performing some crazy ass miracles, I don't think anyone's ever going to find a definitive religious truth that doesn't require faith in bizarre beliefs that no evidence supports. Further, I don't understand how anyone can claim to hold the truth in great importance then follow one of the major religions. They're all so full of contradictions, to piece them together in a way in a way that makes sense in a modern, educated world you have to pick and choose which parts you consider the truth.

tl,dr

i don't adhere to any particular religion but I believe in god. In response to lloydy and mac: For me (keeping in mind that the only real dogma I follow is the same collective concsience that most people follow or think is right-> the smashing of ego and service to others) I'm not stuck on one particular idea because my concept of god has evolved. And of course it takes faith, but that doesn't mean blind faith. Obviously I can't empirically prove god; however there is too much I've seen personally for me to not believe at this point in time. I personally don't have a problem with religion as an institution though. It's the human beings that went and screwed some things up in order to persue their own agenda. But I don't blame religion for the mistakes people made (this last part isn't really in response to you as much as it is just my general outlook).

My main issue is that we have no evidence of anything supernatural whatsoever. So suggesting things that haven't quite been explained yet (bear in mind 100 or so years ago science hadn't explained a lot of things attributed to a god, we keep learning) are caused by supernatural means just seems totally ridiculous to me. I mean fair enough believe there's something more than we can see but... why?

imo in the past religion was useful, ie when science wasn't around and it would of been easier to explain 'why are we here?' with god put us here rather than millions of years of evolution and natural selection. Also for explaining the sun, gravity etc. However in this day and age i think it's such an archaic principle, i can't really take anyone who is 'deeply' religious seriously.

Belief is god or whatever is ok imo, but not believing all the stories in the bible or other books

I went to catholic school until age 13. Was never explicitly religious, however, I believed in all the major tenets up until 2009 when I was 20. I have been an atheist for the last 2 years or so. I could not hang onto belief absent evidence. I had come to the conclusion that given the contradictory tenets of the major religions, it could not be possible for all of them to be true. Either one or more or none of them was true. And given that most rely on "divine revelation" a hardly verifiable source of knowledge, I concluded none were true.

A person can believe what they want, they cannot impose their beliefs on the populace or in publicly funded institutions. Our first amendment guarantees that.

Our amendments are wet tissue paper to the will of the forces reshaping our country, don't fool yourself. If it so to be anything though, religious practice and joining likely will be prohibited, rather than the other way around.

what i wanna know is whether god has switched to serato yet

I have a couple of gods that I invoke.
Hui the weather god that responds to my calls for rain or surf
and Horus, more of an avartistic protector.
Whether they are real or not is ultimately irrelevant.
The investing of belief and energy in such astral identities
is my way of empowering part of my subconscious.

Much like animists, appealing to spirits for intercession in day to day events,
this would be more like "shallow religion",
concerning lower spirit levels and magical entities,
that ward off threats to psychic health.

magma wrote:

Leave Blank wrote:

magma wrote:Just to divert for a second, sorry...

What makes you believe the Bible is God's word?

I get that Muslims believe that about the Qu'ran because it was directly dictated to Mohammed and Mormons about Joseph Smith's writings, but the Bible is fairly openly an anthology of people's experiences with God written by the people who had the experiences over the course of several centuries - most have been Sainted since, but they're definitely still humans... purely out of interest, because I've missed something, what makes you think it's actually God's word rather than Man's words about God? Is it that the writers were all directly channelling the Spirit whilst writing?

As illogical as it may or may not seem, I believe so yes. Of course I acknowledge that the bible was penned by humans however, it is divinely inspired and echoes the voice of God's spirit. I shall not go into it any more in this thread, if you wanna know more pm me.

Nah, I'm happy enough with that... just curious is all!

I'd always been told by vicars that contradictions within the text (all the instances of laws contradicting other laws) were down to human error in interpreting God's message and so personal interpretation was a big deal...

How do you deal with contradictions, especially between Old and New Testaments if you believe it's the direct word of God? Did He change his mind on certain issues after Jesus' life?

Sorry for the lack of reply only just clocked your post. I'm afraid my answer is somewhat uninteresting.

I do not see contradictions between the old and new testament. The deal between man and God in the old testament (levitical law as some might call it) was a harsh one. I believe it serves the purpose of demonstrating just how impossible it is to get things right with God (have you ever tried obeying the 0 mixed fabrics law and burnt offerings?). I struggle to read my bible daily sometimes let alone follow the OT laws.

Thus, we are presented with an issue. Humanity, created in the image of a relational God, unable to maintain that relationship, there's nothing we can do either. The punishment fitting our prevarication is, justly, death (by death I mean more than the physical process as there are different views on that process depending on cultural/ideological outlook. I'm talking the humanist interpretation here: nothingness). This death is as far from the biblical promise of eternal joy as one can imagine, it is literally the opposite. So, for a Triune, relational God, the solution is going to have to come from him. I'll spare you a long winding elaboration, the solution is for himself to become fully man, lead a life free of sin so that; upon is death he can say: "I am doing this to pay the wages of sin so that, those who take note of what I've done here might regain their relationship with me".
The new testament tells that story and the story of how the news of God's relationship restoring solution began to spread throughout the globe.

So, I see no conflict between old and new. If you want to talk specifics please highlight what you perceive to be a contradiction and I'll do my best to give you an honest Christian answer (in some cases that might have to be a humble, 'I don't know')

scspkr99 wrote:I'd appreciate if anyone who takes a literal view of the bible could explain why Jesus has two genealogies according to the gospels Luke and Matthew. Also the death of Judas is dealt with differently in Matthew and Acts. I understand that different churches maintain that it's their interpretation of the bible that is true but I don't know how inerrantists resolve the questions of the bibles inherent contradictions.

I don't know that Leave Blank is a literalist so this isn't directed specifically towards him

I don't think you're likely to find a rational, intelligent bible literalist to answer that as you'd have to be pretty moronic to take all of the bible literally.
Like any work of literature, the bible uses a bunch of literary tropes and conventions. As a result, there will be parts of the bible that are allegorical, metaphorical etc. Even Jesus spoke in parable.

However, there is an extent to which, I can answer that question. Matthew's gospel is not, in terms of events, names and places; the most accurate however, it makes sense when you consider the culture Matthew was writing into. Matthew has a tendency to group events and names together thematically as opposed to chronologically (for example, Matthew groups most of Jesus' teachings that follow a particular theme into one event in his gospel, the sermon on the mount whereas, all other gospels refer to the same teachings happening at different times, some scholars even claim there was no single, "sermon on the mount"). So, Matthew's gospel exists to speak in to a very particular eastern cultural context whereas, Dr. Luke's gospel was much more meticulous in terms of chronology for the same reasons as Matthew's wasn't, namely culture. Luke's gospel written to a bureaucratic Roman friend serves as an early form of apologetics and, therefore, needs to remain as accurate historically as possible. It is for this reading that you find the odd contradiction.

As an aside, it is precisely because these gospels contain contradictions that gives them their credibility as witness accounts to Jesus' life. Imagine you are on the jury in court and you have four guys charged with a robbery. Each guy comes out, one at a time and gives their account of the events and you soon notice that all four accounts are 100% flawless in their correlation with the other accounts. It would quickly become apparent something fishy was going on as, in the heat of the moment, it is perfectly natural for one person's perception of events to differ slightly from the other's. In fact, this simple bit of knowledge is used today in the justice system as a means to detect collaborative lies.

I hope this resolves those conflicts for you.

I'm good with my faith but I also think that's a very good explanation and it is one I'm more comfortable with. Am really glad I didn't lump you in with the literalists as it would do you a disservice.

scspkr99 wrote:I'm good with my faith but I also think that's a very good explanation and it is one I'm more comfortable with. Am really glad I didn't lump you in with the literalists as it would do you a disservice.

Thank you.

I'm deeply anti-religion.

lloydy wrote:How can you search for the truth when you have no idea what it actually is.Doesn't this then become a blind search which will eventually end up with you believing in something that may not be the truth?
I would love to have just a sniff of what the truth is then maybe if i feel it will be beneficial to me i will hand myself to god on a silver platter.

you just be open, patient and thorough

"What, you ask, was the beginning of it all?
And it is this…

Existence that multiplied itself
For the sheer delight of being
And plunged into trillions of forms

So that it may find it's Self innumerably "

Sri Aurobindo.



"out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field . I will meet you there " -Rumi


"we're all just walking each other home " -ram dass

In la kesh a'la kin ( you are another myself , I am another yourself

fractal wrote:

lloydy wrote:How can you search for the truth when you have no idea what it actually is.Doesn't this then become a blind search which will eventually end up with you believing in something that may not be the truth?
I would love to have just a sniff of what the truth is then maybe if i feel it will be beneficial to me i will hand myself to god on a silver platter.

you just be open, patient and thorough

See my idea of what the truth is is just becoming a decent human being.Is that not what the bible or religion is getting at?showing you pathways as a human you should follow.
I get this idea from conversations at work with a girl from Africa who is so religious it's almost ridiculous.Also i worked with a freemason for a few years and he sort of told me the same thing.
Now they both pointed out that it's a spiritual quest,both with different ideas but in a way sort of the same.See the mason was very much about becoming egoless and believed that when you become a 33 degree mason you become Jesus like in a way that you could perform the miracles and all that sort of stuff.
The African girl believed you had to become like jesus to guarantee a pathway to heaven which meant to become a pure soul by again avoiding negative influences in your life.
This is what got me thinking the truth is about being a pure individual void of any negative influences and living your life without any degree of negative emotion.But seriously is that even fucking possible?
Now weigh it up,look about yourselves and ask how much of your life and soul you would actually have to give away just for the greater good.Even my family and close friends are selfish to a certain degree which i accept because i am close too but really when you look at the grand scale of things you rarely come across people in life that aren't negative to a certain degree.
I mean yeah i could imagine if you can walk through life without the negative side affecting you in some way or another then bravo i'm in awe but seriously for me our culture and the way we are programmed from an early age it is just a serious fable.
Also the reason i feel it's bollox is i look at the African girl and she has faults,stern,condescending,looks down her nose at other religions also pretty much wants things her way or no way.Not really the traits of a pure soul are they?
The mason done nothing but bang on about being egoless and all that stuff but when you looked at him with a deeper perspective he banged on like it was something sacred with a kind of look at me i'm special,ego traits in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong i don't believe that this is what the truth is(well unsure)but listening to the way religious people around me talk about it i believe it is a spiritual conquest of the human mind but i stand no chance unless i move to a monastery and become a monk.Life is just not that simple when you have two teenagers,wife,serious emotionally and physically demanding job and not much time for yourself.
Not knocking you fractal but being open, patient and thorough is just more things to add on to all other life's pressures someone like me has to endure.Giving my life to something with nothing in return is just to much,i give give give give constantly so giving for the greater good just to possibly get something when i die is not how i want to do things brother!

Also ,'true ' seekers intend not to be proved 'right' , but to have everything that they think they know proved wrong.

As soon as you externalize the goal or authority or saviour or deity or personification you are affirming the illusion of srperation from it.

You cannot search for an objective truth with a subjective mind.

No things arise Independently of them selves and so we are "not two " as they say in zen.

You are all things discovering all things . If a godhead exists you are not one ,but all of it's eyes and it's entirety divided.

All religions ,ideologies , philosophies stem from the same source .(idealist monoism) Both the personification of an embodied holy being as well as the dualistic oppositional demon/devil/wrathful aspect. It all came from unity and the illusion of separation is a veil we choose to submerge in to simply to experience the ecstatic-euphoric- orgasmic-fantastic return journey.


In the quest for righteousness people become self -righteous .

Nature teaches us that with maturity we give ,as the tree produces ever more seeds.

"before enlightenment, carry water ,chop wood... After enlightenment ; carry water chop wood"

Religion is a contradiction if it's foundation is not based in eternal compassion for All others as ' other-'yourselves " and your individualized self too.

vishes wrote:I'm deeply anti-religion.

...Although I'm not 100% atheist.