(IFF) there is variation in the interpretation of the holy scriptures (multiple Christian denominations) (THEN) the holy scriptures cannot be the true and plain, infallible, perfect, literal word of an all-wise and all-knowing god.
You don't know that.
I'm pretty sure I do know that, and you can too, by applying simple logic.
Nobody disputes the existence of a particular copy of the holy scriptures.
I can present the book and any two people, regardless of their preconceptions, can agree the book exists.
The words are also not in dispute. The words exist. We can agree on the words printed on the page.
I can even generously grant that this book and these words are "the one and only true and infallible word of god".
Great. That's great. We agree on that much. We agree up to that point.
The trick is, that even if we agree on everything up to this point, 100%, we still DON'T agree on the APPLICATION of those words.
How does this perfect book and these perfect words INFORM my daily life?
What PRACTICAL VALUE does this perfect book actually have?
That's the bright line.
That's the line between FACT and OPINION.
That's the line that clearly demarcates Catholic from Episcopal, that specific line is what distinguishes between Baptist and Methodist.
In one part it says, LOVE THINE ENEMY, and in another part it says, KILL ALL ENEMY CIVILIANS INCLUDING CHILDREN AND LIVESTOCK (except for the virgin females of course, give them to the Priests as servants for the rest of their lives).
What MEANING am I supposed to glean from this?
You are making a claim about something we cannot know. We are using this world's rules to apply to a place we don't even know exists.
This is not an intractable problem. These are real-world questions that demand "objective" (not-opinion-based) real-world answers.
I want what the Christians promise. OBJECTIVE MORALITY. Real-world, unambiguous, yes or no answers that are not context-sensitive.
When god says, "kill the child who curses their parent", THEN KILL THEM.
When god says, "one who marries a divorcee commiteth adultery" and "kill adulterers", THEN KILL THEM.
These are unambiguous statements. We know how the ancient Israelites interpreted these laws. This is not up-for-debate.
ZOMBIEBASICTRAINING
+proHUMAN +proFAMILY
Your scathing critique is requested.
We cannot get to objective morality without scientifically quantifying human wellbeing. (edit: i think ultimate morality might even extend past just human wellbeing)... We would also have to separate identity and ideology - something that religion relies on to survive against all opposing evidence. I tend to agree with Sam Harris's take on morality - he believes that there is an objective and absolute morality out there... but we haven't discovered how to demonstrate it in an objective, scientific manner...
As far as words on a page go, i still haven't heard a convincing argument of why is the bible more credible than any other fictitious story... Are we giving it more prominence because it was written so long ago? Using the bible to prove there is god is the same as using comicbooks 500 years from now to prove that spiderman exists/ed.
Also what is the "perfect book"? what metric do we use to arrive to such a conclusion? Oh wait... there is that...
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The main "problem" with "objective morality" is that humans are fundamentally subjective beings.
The "Christian bible" isn't the slightest bit credible, I'm merely pointing out that even if you accepted it as 100% true, it still wouldn't do you any good.
Thanks for the video clip!
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LOL im on an agreement roll with you
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Nice!
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I finally squeezed this out of my interlocutor,
Nice!
So all I have to do is obey the logically incoherent, ever changing, perfectly subjective LAWS OF THE LAND.
The rest only applies AFTER DEATH.
And since I was doing this already, basically "The Bible" is WORTHLESS as a day-to-day-real-world guide to "objective" morality. *
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If only these things could be made unambiguous.
Freedom of speech is very important.
But shouting fire, where there isn't one, in a crowded theater is a murder attempt, not free speech.
The problem with the bible is that it was edited, abridged, translated and edited again. And we know this.
The next problem is that most of the bible we take as real is allegory, and most of the bible we take as allegory is real.
Take the birth of Christ on December 25th. Such an important day was not chosen by happenstance. That is the day that Sun of God rises from the (Southern) Cross.
Further, the Bible was edited by King James to give more power to the king. Sooooo, is any particular passage the word of God or the word of James?
The only solution is to get in touch with God yourself and live your life by those words.
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If the very text, upon which your belief system is founded, is untrustworthy, then what can you be certain of your belief system? Randomly praying to a god based on uncertain texts are meaningless, as well as useless. One might as well "pray" to a flying pasta monster in Jupiter orbit.
If "God" can be so easily accessed to an average human, then the numberless factions killing each other across time and space would not be. Personal revelation regarding the divine is nothing more than personal whim excused as "divine commandment." Organising one's life based on personal revelation, or interpretation, of the divine is no different from orgainsing one's life based on feelings. At least the atheist rejects the bronze-age mythology without apology; the modern-day heretic clings on to psychological crutch to justify his whims.
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Nothing of the sort.
What one notices when one studies a lot of religions is the similarity.
What one realizes when one trains their mind to access other realms is that they see, what many people have seen before.
A guided meditation to a strange cave, meeting a stranger being
AND EVERYBODY remember her wearing the same clothes. (that were not described by the guide)
It is not easy to access God. And even after you make contact, the connection is not clear. However, you can get better at it, and get more useful information.
And then you find out the things God thinks are important to your life are almost meaningless to those who would want to prove God, or no-God, or precognition...
So, it is not easy, and no your feelings are not that trivial.
I do concede that many people have used the name of God to start wars, attack people / nations, and are still using the name of God to control people.
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Religions are mutually exclusive concepts. Superficial similarities are irrelevant to irreconcilable fundamental differences. Only one religion is true, and others false; or all religions are delusional group psychosis.
If god is not easily accessile, then such god doesn't wish to be accessible and remains irrelevant to human affairs. What use is such a god, when atheist logic is easily accessible and palpable in this reality?
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Only someone who hasn't explored, in depth, multiple religions can say the similarities are superficial.
Jesus, the sun of god, is born on December 25th. Do you know just how many other religions have that exact same date and story? Its not coincidence. And it is not one story being told in lots of places. It is a VERY significant event, that atheists, if they had any deep logic, would respect and honor.
Atheists have no logic.
In order to be an atheist you have to believe in the largest coincidence(s) in the universe.
However, the most important thing to realize is that we were given free will.
In order to have free will you have to be able to believe or not believe in God.
Also, there has to be a path to find God yourself, each person, individually.
And that other person's choice has to have no effect on your belief.
Thus, we end up with a world were science cannot prove God.
However, there are signs of God everywhere.
"Seek, and so shall ye find"
Further, atheist can only access level one truths. And without level 2 & 3 truths, you really cannot make a fulfilling life. To an Atheist, only relative truths exist, and thus, there is no good, nor bad. Everything that happens is by chance. You are a clump of cells with no future. That kind of logic leads to a very sad life.
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What role would you say ignorance plays in determining the richness of ones ability to exercise free will?
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That is an interesting and deep topic.
Looking back, you will often say, "ignorance was bliss".
But in the cycle of life, you come back to the same place where you have both, the knowing and the richness.
So, once you get to that mountain top, and then can see the path, it all makes sense.
Unfortunately, on the path, you neither know why you are struggling or where the destination is. The only thing you know is that you cannot return to where you were.
However, there is the opposite side of this equation, in that having learned the lesson, having expanded your mind, knowing the universe better, you are allowed/able-to create more / bigger things in your life. So, you actually gain more opportunities out of the possibilities.
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Jesus the "sun" of god? Lol. You must be the typical 'Murican who thinks Jesus wrote the King James' Bible and the Budha spoke to his disciples in Anglophone. Then again, the Colonies were initially populated by the religious refuse from a heretical kingdom, so such bastardised religious conception is to be expected from their descendants.
If a man intentionally ignores that Aztec blood sacrifice to feed their sun god contradicts Sino-Budhist injunctions against all killing, even animals, then I suppose he can accept your cock and bull nonsense of all religion being the same. I gather that the Christian conception of man's history ending and the interminable Karmic cyclic of the Hindhu system is but "superficial" difference in their perception of the universe, since they both seem to consider the Winter Solstice (a major cyclical planetary event) to be of some significance.
Rather than using some woo-woo magic to rationalise your whims, why not be honest with yourself and admit that all religions are delusions? Since you have some special access to "god" (whatever that is), your decisions must be the correct ones. Your will drives you forward; lose the bronze age crutch.
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i comprehend how you feel this way.
i used to be much like that.
However, everything you wrote in this last reply you can only do out of much ignorance. Responding to them would be saying, it wasn't this way, it was that way. But, since i won't go deep enough and long enough into any of these topics, you will continue to think the easy, derogatory stories.
So, what i will tell you is when you, yourself, find magic, then you will understand how incorrect you are. How small your life and thinking was. It isn't something trifling like adding more area to your thinking, it actually adds more dimensions. Stop living in the 3D world, join us in the 6D world.
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What God commands is good. The error of modern age is believing that God commands what is good. Good exists only with God. The latter way of thinking posits that good exists outside God; it assumes that man can determine what is and is not good, and thus, exists on a plane equal to God.
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So, stay with me here, are you suggesting that humans are incapable of knowing "true good" from "true evil" and therefore must simply follow whatever their gods tell them on blind-faith?
And if that's the case (I am willing to accept that premise) how do humans know the will of the gods?
How do you and I know what the gods want us to do, actually do, in the real-world, today?
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If a human claims to be religious, then his religious institution, as ordained and founded by his god (whatever that god may be) informs him. If, on the other hand, man claims to know amd determine for himself "good" and "evil," then what need is there for the superfluous variable known as "god?" There are only the atheists, the truly religious, and the superfluous morons that can't decide.
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It sounds like you're proposing only two options.
Either decide for yourself, or trust the word of another human.
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Also, I'm not an ATHEIST.
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🤔are you a theist then?
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Gnostic Deist.
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hmmm, well that's certainly is a label to reckon with :) If I'm not mistaken, does that mean that you believe there is supernatural or some sort of divine mechanism? or do you simply accept that there is esoteric knowledge that doesn't really comply with any scientific scrutiny, but has a ton of doppy mystic imagery? (im down with the imagery of course) :)
I've always had difficulty understanding the gnostic stance... it seems to bear the burden of proof since there is a claim to knowledge... then again the word 'knowledge' in this regard can be really tricky, after all, metaphysics and astrology are 'knowledges' that represent some pattern recognition... the tricky part is that patterns can be perceived to occur where there are none...
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The key aspect of GNOSTICISM is that you should NEVER follow a book or a person (priest or prophet or sage).
NEVER.
If you didn't experience it for yourself, you should be extremely skeptical.
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That point was one of the grabbing turns in the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. The main character told the Buddha that the flaw in his teaching others was he could never convey the experience of enlightenment to his followers with his words, it could only be experienced.
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I agree. There are aspects that are necessarily unique to each Gnostic experience. Although the descriptions can be somewhat useful for identifying people with broadly similar experiences.
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That is epic, thank you. I laughed a lot through the first half, as I've never been one to meditate like many others. I identified with the thoughts he was having. I found for myself that I meditate when I am in an act of doing, or in stressful/dangerous situations.
The only difference I saw in my interpretation from his was I didn't lose my sense of identity, it felt more like an connection with everything else. There was a joy attached to it as well for myself. Guessing the difference is based on the experiences/lenses we all drag with us wherever we go.
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Probably more of that.
It's sort of a catch-all category for all non-scientific, unfalsifiable claims.
It's the same as someone telling you they had a dream about some strange and personally significant place or thing.
It's certainly important to them, but nobody else can tell if their "revelation" is "true" for anyone other than themselves.
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i totally get that, personal experiences can be very profound, and regardless of whether there is truth in them, they can change your life and leave you a different person... Of course, adding a dash of mysticism can amplify the effect of such experiences... but it is as you said, hardly ever convincing or matters to others.
I've writen about the topic before in an old post, that is still waiting for it's 'part II'... https://steemit.com/writing/@ankapolo/how-to-trust-knowledge-or-part-1 figured i'd share since we are both passionate about logic and believes...
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