Originally posted by Mattsanity.
The pleasures of this world are so short that they're bittersweet. Even the lowest peasant wouldn't do what Jesus did, he washed people's feet.
What I'm trying to say is that Jesus brings more satisfaction than naked strippers around you.
Well, I'm going to agree with you on the stripper metaphor. When you learn the nature of what a stripper does, you see they really don't bring much satisfaction at all, especially long lasting satisfaction.
Basically they dance naked on stage for a song or two then walk around to every table and talk to everyone as if they are the most important person in the whole room in order to try and get that $20 dollar for a lap dance. I lost interest in those Clubs a couple months after turning 21.
We have to agree to disagree on the everything else though.
Halcyon+On+On
quote:
Originally posted by Desiderata
When you learn the nature of what a Priest does, you see they really don't bring much satisfaction at all, especially long lasting satisfaction.
Basically they pontificate on stage, lead a song or two, then pass around a collection plate to every seat and talk to everyone as if they are the most important person in the whole room in order to try and get that $20 dollar for a seat in Heaven. I lost interest in those Churches a couple months after turning 12.
Fixtroll't
Mattsanity.
quote:
Originally posted by Desiderata
I understand all this. I'm just trying to add the opposite emotion to what your saying. Because I'm hearing about men being evil and humans are hateful etc etc. So I'm just trying to say if you say God made us or really any Religious person saying God made us but then at the same time says we are evil and hateful then God should do something about it and fix it instead of making our life about resisting temptations and proving are love and worship to him. If we are so ed up, it's the old expression like father like son. That's why I don't see God fitting into the things you are saying.
To answer why God doesn't fix things, all I can say is I DON'T KNOW. I'm sorry about the capital letters but I simply dont know God's motives for the past, present, and future. He does however reveal himself to those who seek him until their knees require shinpads.
Christianity intrigued me because:
1. It's the only faith that preaches our wrongdoings and the antidote to that through
a god.
2. Jesus is the only person that claims he died, rose from the dead and lives today in heaven.
3. The transformation of people's lives from bad to good. One might argue this is a placebo effect but I believe it's a divine intercession.
And I apologize if I'm putting words in people's mouths when I say that everyone wants to go to heaven. Some just don't want God to be there.
Moongoose
To be perfectly hones i dont understand how the idea of the eternal afterlife doesnt scare the out of religious people. I dont mean just the idea of hell, i know that scares the out of plenty of christians, but the idea of heaven as well well since in the end, it doesnt matter anyway since they are both basically the same.
For once Im not joking when saying this, i think afterlife is one of the most dreadful and scary things ever to be though of.
EddieZilker
quote:
Originally posted by Moongoose
i think afterlife is one of the most dreadful and scary things ever to be though of.
Blake
Here's one thing that's always baffled me...
I was raised religious for the first 15ish years of my life.
But by the time I'd reached age 10 or 11, it became quite clear to me that my parents were either full of , or completely mental. I wasn't alone either. I had friends declaring themselves as atheist or agnostic, as early as 5th & 6th grade. And while I was still made to participate in religious practice, I stopped accepting the fairy tales I'd been fed as being worthy of my belief, from a fairly early age. I decided that while there must be some truth as to the order of things, I would have to sort it out for myself.
So what's always baffled me is... why don't more people question the validity of what they're being told, with regards to all of this? I'm particularly baffled at those who actually make it to adulthood without ever stopping to consider the thought, "... maybe my parents are nuts." or at the very least, "something seems off... maybe I should work out my own personal beliefs for myself."
I mean, I know some brilliant scientists who still subscribe to these fables which simply aren't worthy of grown men and women.
Why are people so mentally lazy? :eyespop:
The conclusion I've come to thus far is that some people simply do not have it within themselves to generate such thoughts. It's similar to the reasons why some animals can be domesticated, while others simply won't allow themselves to be controlled in such a manner. Some animals are their own masters.
Moongoose
quote:
Originally posted by EddieZilker
I was thinking scary in the sense of time. Sure, supposedly its all fun and good things happen if youre in heaven and you get to spend an etrnity with jesus and all that. But then thats the scary thing...eternity. I dont think people who wish for an eternity with jesus grasp just how long that is.
In that timescale the 80 years or so the average western person will live or so is practically insignificant time. The 2000 years or so since jesus allegedly walked the earth...many many generations were born and died yet that number pales in comparisn to eternity. How about 100000 years, when primitive man walked the eart and nobody even had a concept of the god of the deser yet...hell there were no jews yet to make him up...still quite insognificant compared to eternity. 65 million years, when dinosaurs last walked the earth? Doesnt come evwn close to eternity. 5 billion years, rounding up the age of the earth...eternity laugs at just how insignificant 5 billion years is. 14,3 billion years, the best estimate at the current age of the universe. By the standards of eternity that many years is so small its not even worth mentioning. How about a grahams number of years. Grahams number is a number so big it cannot physicaly be written down in its long form in the current observable universe yet its insignificantly small if compated to infinity which is an apt synonim for eternity in this case.
Now imagine simply existing for all that time, being conscious of everything for that many years...and knowing that once youre done with another that many years you havent come any closer to eternity. No matter where you are, what you do, what you like, what you love, after that many years surely you will get fed up with it yet there is no end to relieve you from the feelings of boredom and other stuff that i cant remember now at 2am the proper words for but are all psychologically very bad.
That is why i said i find the cojcept of afterlife itself one of the scariest things ever, no need to divide it into good or bad, after a sufficoent amount of time has passed, they are the same.
peace n trance
im Catholic because i was born that way and choose to be but I'm pretty opened when it comes to God. for me its just about connecting with my roots as an irish fellow. do i believe everything the Church says? no. but i go anyway because it gives me spiritual fulfillment. the Church knows there is plenty of things wrong with it, and when you're in the business of God its hard to answer all the paradoxes. I just wish everyone that claims to be "open minded" just because they are atheist wouldn't judge me right of the bat for being Catholic
Lira
quote:
Originally posted by Blake
Why are people so mentally lazy? :eyespop:
I wouldn't say it's got anything to do with mental laziness.
Some people actually believe it makes more sense to believe in God than not (I lost count of how many times I've had to tell baffled believers what I did and didn't believe in). Others have been told all their life that you can't be good without adhering to that one set of laws and, given how reasonable the 10 commandments are, they never felt the need to reject it. And so on...
But, yeah, I started having doubts still in elementary school, and I couldn't believe adults believed the stuff they did. I was such a smart-arse troll as a kid... but then I learned I didn't know everything :)
Desiderata
I won't go so far as to say I lost total believe that there is a God very young but I basically did in a round about way have a lot of questions that peoples answers never satisfied me. My Grandma was Lutheran and would take me to this Lutheran Church every Sunday when I was 5 or 6. I couldn't start Kindergarten at my local Elementary School because they had a rule back in the early 80's that you had to be 5 or 6 years of age by October or November in order to start school that in January (this was before we had Pre-K programs and year round school schedules) at schools here in SA anyway. So my birthday being in January, I had to wait an extra year to start but it wasn't a big deal then because a lot of kids were born in later months in the schools eyes such as I.
So I would go to this Lutheran Church and my favorite part was the cracker and wine. Yes, they would ask my Grandma for permission to receive the blood of Christ. It was the best part. I never got buzzed but as a kid it was the only fun part.
Finally, after a month of going every Sunday or so, they told my Grandma that it would be better for me to be with the kids in Sunday School while the grown-ups listened to the Preacher.
My first day they gave us God coloring books and I started colouring Jesus' sheep black. This started this girl who looked like she was dressed for a part in Little House on the Prairie starting questioning me about the color black being evil and I can't quite remember the exact story but she told the Sunday School teacher and she came over and started asking me questions about my faith in God. I said something like if there is a God who created God because to me at that time I figured everything had a beginning, so how could something just have been always there and never had a progression to it and it also being all knowing and such. The teacher talked to me for awhile and I wasn't really clever or anything but I said something about how come God doesn't talk back to me when I talk to him and he doesn't answer my prayers or something. I guess even though I wasn't a super smart kid or cleverly spoken I had a keen sense that although I believed there was a God at that age, I still felt there were a lot of questions I just wasn't buying into in what they were teaching us about his existence.
The teacher went and told someone and my Grandma came in the School room of the Church and got me. She grabbed my arm tight and pulled me out saying something to the teacher. They told her I was evil and she was mad at me for part of the walk home then started talking out loud saying my Grandson is not evil something something something and we never went back to that Church or any other.
On another note:
I'm glad I wasn't Catholic because I remember in Middle School all my friends had to take CCD classes. Don't know what they are about but I know it has to do with being Catholic.
EddieZilker
quote:
Originally posted by Moongoose
I was thinking scary in the sense of time. Sure, supposedly its all fun and good things happen if youre in heaven and you get to spend an etrnity with jesus and all that. But then thats the scary thing...eternity. I dont think people who wish for an eternity with jesus grasp just how long that is.
In that timescale the 80 years or so the average western person will live or so is practically insignificant time. The 2000 years or so since jesus allegedly walked the earth...many many generations were born and died yet that number pales in comparisn to eternity. How about 100000 years, when primitive man walked the eart and nobody even had a concept of the god of the deser yet...hell there were no jews yet to make him up...still quite insognificant compared to eternity. 65 million years, when dinosaurs last walked the earth? Doesnt come evwn close to eternity. 5 billion years, rounding up the age of the earth...eternity laugs at just how insignificant 5 billion years is. 14,3 billion years, the best estimate at the current age of the universe. By the standards of eternity that many years is so small its not even worth mentioning. How about a grahams number of years. Grahams number is a number so big it cannot physicaly be written down in its long form in the current observable universe yet its insignificantly small if compated to infinity which is an apt synonim for eternity in this case.
Now imagine simply existing for all that time, being conscious of everything for that many years...and knowing that once youre done with another that many years you havent come any closer to eternity. No matter where you are, what you do, what you like, what you love, after that many years surely you will get fed up with it yet there is no end to relieve you from the feelings of boredom and other stuff that i cant remember now at 2am the proper words for but are all psychologically very bad.
That is why i said i find the cojcept of afterlife itself one of the scariest things ever, no need to divide it into good or bad, after a sufficoent amount of time has passed, they are the same.
I don't think it's as simple as boiling down Heaven to an idealized "hobo" existence. If Hell is offered up as eternal torment then Heaven could be conceived as eternal satisfaction, delivering well beyond such corporeal delights as chicken-fresh, soft-boiled eggs. Perhaps you're right. In one of the more intelligent scenes in the Matrix, Agent Smith discusses how entire crops of people were lost because they weren't psychologically prepared to accept the bliss of Utopia. Even lottery winners who have everything they want aren't actually that happy. If the small idealized existence isn't enough to satisfy, an eternity of it might actually be hell.
Moongoose
That was kind of my thinking, even if we put aside what we might now consider our little joys like chocolate cakes and lesbian porn, and say that heaven is just pure distilled delight and you dont have to bother with any of those earthly concepts. How long before it becomes monotonous. IF one looks at their own live they are bound to find moments of joy, sadness, anger, despair, hope... something that gives life variety and keeps it at least mildly interesting. A constant state, no matter if its bliss or pain...not very interesting and gets more boring as time goes by and in an eternity a lot of time goes by.
Also i seem to vaguely remember a short story i read (or was it a twilight zone episode? i cant remember) of a down on his luck gambler who died. And then in the afterlife he found himself in a casino where he won all the time. First he was overjoyed and thought to himself "Well this must obviously be heaven", but after a while the constant winning bored him so much he begged to be taken to hell until he realised (or was told by someone) that this was his personal hell.
And that was kind of my point, no matter what you love doing or how you love to feel, no matter how much pain youre in, as time goes by its stops being fun, it stops to hurt and instead of enjoying the afterlife or not, you simply exist in it in that state forever. And that to me, is a fate far more frightening than absence of existance.
