Well, after breaking 2000 comments on the previous thread, I think it’s time to move to a new one. Feel free to continue the conversation here.
Also, I want to make a note about future posts. The tone on this blog for the last month or so has been decidedly different than what it used to be. While that’s definitely made things interesting, I’d like to move back to a tone more in line with the way things used to be. So going forward, I want the comments on all new posts to remain civil. We can all make our points, and I expect to see a wide range of opinions. But I don’t want to get into name-calling and bashing when we can’t all agree on particular issues. Let’s try to stay focused on the points and not get side-tracked with personal stuff. Let’s also keep each comment substantive so we don’t rack up so many comments in such a short period of time that it’s hard for everyone to keep track.
If you don’t feel like you can participate within those guidelines, then feel free to continue posting within this thread (and any future “Kathy” threads, if they’re needed), because I won’t be enforcing any guidelines here. But if you want to comment on any other posts, you’ll need to abide by the rules I just laid out. Otherwise, your comment will be subject to deletion, and after a warning, you might find yourself banned from at least that thread, if not the entire blog.
If there are any questions, let me know.
Thanks
arch – a sweet story and I can tell you, she’s a girl after my heart. 🙂
Kathy, the relevance of these stories is this – what one can experience in REAL life from the love of another tangible, living person, pet, or place as opposed to a relationship with an invisible, unprovable, unKNOWable, imaginary god is yours for the taking. I hope you really think about what these good people are trying to communicate to you. Remember, they’re still good WITHOUT god.
William, please don’t be ashamed of your past thinking – you really should be proud of yourself for figuring the whole ruse out. In fact, I have great respect and admiration for those of you who did that – it obviously took great strength of character. The fact that you are willing to tell your stories to help others ‘see the light’ is nothing short of heroic, in my books. I tip my hat to each of you.
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“she’s a girl after my heart. 🙂” – that 8-year old can “burn” me better than most of the so-called wits on these blogs. The girl’s smart and quick-witted, I can talk with her almost as freely as I would with most adults, in terms of needing to choose words she will understand.
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Reading your latest comment is like reading a script from any fundamentalist christian
Zoe, I so totally agree! That’s all they hear. That’s all they know. The scope of their knowledge doesn’t extend any farther than the walls of the church or the covers of the bible. Sad. Very sad.
Re: your sources of information — I call and raise you one: TBN!!
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Nate,
“To a “by-the-book” Christian, few things are as eye-opening as Paine’s examination.”
Can you give some examples of what you feel is “eye-opening”? I really am curious.. it may compel me to read the book.. as it is, there are tons of books written by people with heavy biases.. I don’t want to waste the time.. I’d love to find one that was written by someone with objectivity.. I really would like to read that book.
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thomas paine wrote “common sense” – the pamphlet that inspired a new nation toward a revolution.
it’s not long, and if you read it, you’d be better able to speak intelligently about it.
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William..
did you post specifics of why my accusations of your lack of objectivity are “stupid”? I want to determine YOUR objectivity.. so I need your arguments against my accusations.
And since you don’t agree that I am applying objectivity, I do still want an example of that also.. I don’t see why you’d have to go through “thousands” of comments to prove my lack of objectivity. I don’t have to for my examples showing yours.
I want to address your other points but I want to settle this issue first.
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“did you post specifics of why my accusations of your lack of objectivity are “stupid”?” – kathy
not recently, although i have several times before, and again, i have no intention of scanning 3 to 4 thousand comments to do so again – which is what i’d have to do to cut and paste per your request.
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Carmen,
“Remember, Kathy – those pastors depend heavily on keeping people slavishly devoted to them and their ideas. They have to keep you putting money in the collection plate. ”
Carmen, you do realize that the motivation of these few pastors has no bearing on the truth of Christianity.. right?
And while we might be “good” compared to certain other human beings.. in God’s presence we aren’t… we are sinful. We aren’t “filthy”.. the Bible never says that. If it were true, God wouldn’t have made the sacrifice that He did for us.. we are all very valuable to Him.
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Kathy,
In part 2 of The Age of Reason, Paine starts with Genesis and goes straight through the Bible, pointing out where it contradicts itself.
His tone can be very condescending at times, so you may not like what you read. But that’s beside the point — he takes the Bible and compares it to the Bible. So there can’t be any accusations of him not being objective, as he’s not really criticizing the Bible so much as he’s letting the Bible criticize itself.
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Btw, Paine was a deist, so he very much believed in God. Just not Christianity.
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Ruth,
“Being coerced into submission with the threat of hell looming is not free will. I don’t know how you can’t understand this.”
Have you been “coerced into submission” Ruth? Doesn’t look like it.. clearly you’ve CHOSEN, using our free will, to reject God.
God can’t change His very Being and His relation to sin just because His creation feels coerced and threatened. It is what it is. You and others choose to be offended and threatened instead of focusing on what God has done for you.
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You and others choose to be offended and threatened instead of focusing on what God has done for you.
I don’t choose to be offended and threatened because I don’t believe there’s a hell. But preachers and teachers do use hellfire and brimstone to frighten people about their destination should they decide not to follow your God. That is coercion. And, yes, at one time I was coerced. I was so frightened of the fires of hell I wouldn’t even entertain any doubts. So I only exercised my freewill after I overcame my fear of hell.
What has God done for me, Kathy? I’m being serious when I ask that. You keep going on about him “giving his son” and the “sacrifice” he made for us. What exactly was that?
I know the story, Jesus was God, he made himself a little lower than the angels, became a man, and walked the earth for 33 years. He was crucified and buried and raised again on the third day. I got all that. I even got that Jesus was supposedly in hell for those three days because he became sin for us.
Three days, Kathy. Three days. And thirty-three years and three days doesn’t seem like much in relation to having been God for all eternity and also knowing that once that short time period was up he’d sit at the father’s right hand once again.
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“Have you been “coerced into submission” Ruth? Doesn’t look like it.. clearly you’ve CHOSEN, using our free will, to reject God.” – kathy
kathy, i think is an example of missing objectivity. You’re only coming at this from one side, and that is, “god is unquestionably true and the bible is his divine word, and that rejecting the bible is rejecting god.”
you continue to posit this again and again, failing to recognize that the bible is merely a compilation of men’s claims.
Now, were those claims true?
can those claims be trusted?
They claimed they were speaking for god. what’s the proof? there isnt any? so then what’s the evidence?
1) you provide martyrs, even though every religion and many non-religions have them.
2) you argue existence – which no one knows how that started, but even if you must land on god(s), you must go back to that book of claims to get to jesus.
3) there were miracles, but as it turns out, those dont happen today, and end up being more claims by the same men who claim they speak for god.
4) the fulfilled prophecies we’ve discussed weren’t really prophecies at all, or had to be viewed so figuratively that it’s difficult to show anything precise about them other than location (maybe) in order to claim they’re actually fulfilled.
5) you’ve spoken about 40 authors taking 1500 years to write the bible. But there’s nothing miraculous about men writing books, editing books, and being inspired to write a book or letter after reading an older book.
So yes, this is one small example of your lacking of objectivity. It’s just true in your mind and that’s that. Furthermore, when you’ve “shown” people like me to be lacking objectivity, all you’ve done is said that you disagreed with us and since we reject god, we lack objectivity – that’s one reason your labeling everyone as “non-objective” is a joke.
read the age of reason – it will give us something else to discuss because I’m tired of this “you’re not objective” game and you’re clearly not going to address any of the other points – you could prove me wrong, but somehow I doubt it.
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Kathy, you say, “And while we may be “good” compared to certain other human beings. .. in God’s presence we aren’t . . we are sinful” and then, “we are all very valuable to him”.
So, which is it? Are we good (and valuable) or aren’t we? Because “sinful”, to me, suggests that we aren’t very good, that we’re tarnished, that we’re somehow not worthy. That we’re somehow LESS than god – I thought we were all made in his image ??
Kathy, pastors hammer away at this dogma – that we are sinful, depraved people who must have a god to straighten us out – and that THEY are the ones who can guide us to him. I don’t buy it; in fact, I call it was it is – bullshit.
I believe in GOOD Kathy – which I believe people have inherently; not god. In fact, I believe MAN made god, not the other way ’round.
As someone else suggested, read some books.
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Carmen,
I count myself among those who’ve seen the light and climbed out (or, am climbing, as it were), so I thank you for your touching comment.
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“I really would like to read that book.” – then read it, Kathy, and quit trying to get Nate to give you reasons not to. Considering all of the time you’ve wasted on this board the past month+, I can’t imagine your time is all that valuable.
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“I thought we were all made in his image ??” – so why can’t I become invisible?
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Quote from Age of Reason by Thomas Paine:
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Well, Nate and Nan, you’ve played right into Kathy’s hands, and given her all the reasons she needs not to read the Age of Reason – watch and see —
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Kathy, I would also highly recommend that your read, What God Wantsby Neale Donald Walsh.
Here is the opening lines of Chapter 2:
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Well, Arch, she asked for “eye-opening” examples. These are statements made not by an ATHEIST (who, according to her, lacks objectivity), but by someone who believed in God.
Besides, what Paine says is absolutely true. ONLY the first person that tells the story should be believed. And since Jesus didn’t write ANYTHING himself, everything is based on what someone said about him.
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“Well, Arch, she asked for “eye-opening” examples.” – exactly, she asked us to give her excuses not to read it, and a couple of us did.
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No TBN for me Nan. 🙂 Thankfully.
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Ruth,
“I don’t choose to be offended and threatened because I don’t believe there’s a hell. But preachers and teachers do use hellfire and brimstone to frighten people about their destination should they decide not to follow your God. That is coercion. And, yes, at one time I was coerced. ”
So? Again, I’ll point out to you what I just pointed out to Carmen.. what preachers and teachers do has nothing to do with God. I have no interest in defending people who twist God’s word and His will. I’m trying to explain my understanding of God and His will to you all who continue to make unjust un objective biased claims against Him. I don’t care what SOME preachers do. I think it’s leftist/ atheist propaganda to make that claim against the majority…what liberals typically do.. take the minority fringe and attach it to the majority.
“What has God done for me, Kathy? I’m being serious when I ask that. You keep going on about him “giving his son” and the “sacrifice” he made for us. What exactly was that?”
First, you conveniently overlook your very life.. God gave you life and every good thing in it.. including/ especially your loved ones.
Then you say this:
“Three days, Kathy. Three days. And thirty-three years and three days doesn’t seem like much in relation to having been God for all eternity and also knowing that once that short time period was up he’d sit at the father’s right hand once again.”
Ruth, this really does encompass the mindset of atheists.. you conveniently skip right over the incredible suffering He went through to pay for your sins. You attempt to diminish it to being a time issue.. “just 3 days”. It’s the ingratitude and unbelievable pride/ lack of humility that dominates the thinking of atheists. You claim to have been a Christian but it’s hard to believe you truly were after you’ve so callously skipped right over what the entire Bible and Christianity is based on. Even if you don’t believe it, you still should have acknowledged the suffering of Jesus’ crucifixion instead of only the 3 days… that you didn’t is very revealing. You all accuse me of being “brainwashed”, but I think that’s true of you.. to once be believers, and then suddenly “forget” the main doctrine doesn’t really make sense. Either you weren’t truly believers at one time or you all are now brainwashed and controlled. There is a point where God does turn His back on us.. and will leave us to fend for ourselves.. and we’re no match for satan.
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Nate,
“In part 2 of The Age of Reason, Paine starts with Genesis and goes straight through the Bible, pointing out where it contradicts itself.
His tone can be very condescending at times, so you may not like what you read. But that’s beside the point — he takes the Bible and compares it to the Bible. So there can’t be any accusations of him not being objective, as he’s not really criticizing the Bible so much as he’s letting the Bible criticize itself.”
Nate, this is actually another example of your lack of objectivity.. we’ve been debating the interpretation of the Bible all throughout these posts.. but your statement about the author implies that he gets the right interpretation.. on everything. Lack of objectivity can most certainly be present.. that’s why I was hoping/ asking for some specific examples.
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