Christmas is a mystery. One great big "How can it be?" I don't understand it all, but I believe in it. I believe because I need to believe. If the mystery of Christmas is not true, then we are alone in this world. If hope was not born at Christmas, if love did not come as a baby, if God was not made flesh, then we are alone and helpless. So I believe in Christmas with all my might, because without it I am without hope.
How can this be? It can be because God Almighty says it can be. Christmas is impossible by human designs and devises and conceptions. But with God nothing is impossible.---Sermons for the 4th Sunday in Advent
First of all, he's not saying December 25th, so I'm going to ignore the whole issue. I'd get carried away.
If Jesus was not born, then "we are alone in this world." Helpless. That's the essence of atheism, isn't it? There are 6 billion people on earth, and he says we would be alone without one mythological figure. There are maybe 10 sextillion stars in the galaxy. Maybe 10 million billion planets. It's possible that none of them but one have some kind of life. But I don't think so. And without a mythological figure, one that has many copies in the myths of the world, we are alone? So I have to wonder if this "need to believe" exists. Maybe it's the Christians who are the hopeless ones! This business of "if God were not made flesh then everything would be terrible!" is even more unbelievably sad. How sad are christians? But luckily with God, everything is possible!
So, if everything were possible, then this God could have made it so people have hope without God making himself into a man. He could have made it so humans never sineed, yet have free will. He could have made it so people lived forever on a clean and lovely earth. But he didn't. He made suffering, then went down to earth in a great show of "suffering" where he "suffered" for two days, tops, to "save" us from himself. Inspiring.
I believe in Christ because to do otherwise would require that I ignore the overwhelming evidence around me. I believe because I must--to do otherwise would be irrational. God has offered a lifeline, and I have chosen to reach out and take hold of it. God has offered a gift, and I have chosen to receive it.--Tim Krell
So much for faith. But a person who believes on evidence must ignore the overwhelming evidence around him of either terrible cruelty on God's part or natural processes. That's a lot of ignored evidence. Every time one claims supernaturalism, every time one says "God did it" has chosen to stop looking for evidence and rest on his desires. What did he say about being "irrational?"
He said, "I don’t believe because you believe, I don’t believe because my parents believe. I believe because when I ride my bike in the park in our neighborhood, I feel God’s presence and I know God is real.--Turning Doubt into Faith
How noble.
This is the "I feel good, therefore God exists" argument. There are many ways to achieve this feeling. actually, I make a mistake in saying "this feeling." The feeling of "God's Presence" is subjective. There is a physical anomally that caises that specific feeling, (temporal lobe seizures can give you the massive feeling of significance, and such huge rightness that people should follow you) and is really the only objective "I feel god's presence" feeling. But many people interpret many different feelings to be God's Presence, because they want to think that God acknowledges them personally. They want to feel special.
I know that many Christians would never believe me, but I am certain that I have felt the same rush while alone in nature that this young person has. It could be called "the warm fuzzies," but it feels so much more important than that. There is a deep, spiritual lift, a feeling that all is well with the world, one knows one's place in it, and one may feel one's connection to it. Some things in the world are inspiring. Mount Rainier, for one. The Tumwater Canyon near Leavenworth, Washington. The Columbia River Gorge. Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. Shostokovich's 5th. Beethoven's 6th and 9th. I even felt that in New York City the first time. Once, I felt it when I was around 8 and my mother tucked me into bed. This is life. This is not death. This is material. This is not supernatural. The fact that your brain sent signals to release hormones does not diminish the experience in any way. It's just one of the greatest physical benefits I can think of. What that girl felt was real. Not God.
*Always be open to possibilities* I have become very much in touch with my spiritual side and soul, therefore allowing me to grant myself much enlightenment on a vast variety of subjects. I stand greatly by what I believe, because, truthfully, it is all I can be sure I really know. As long as I believe what I truly believe, then that is all the truth I'll ever know, yet all the truth I shall ever need. I've finally become more in touch with my totems (Cat, Wolf, Crow, and Horse) and I know that my soul is that of a cat. Therefore, I am a cat's soul inside a human "anchor". As for my religion: I'm a Pagan (though not a Wiccan) with my own, individual beliefs.--Animal Spirit Guides and Totems
I thought I'd throw this in to illustrate how very little people know about the nature of belief and knowledge. And it's not just believers, of Dear Readers. If you are reading this, I would like your assignment for today to be a short essay on the difference between belief and knowledge. Send it to me if you want me to mark it and send it back!
Thanks,
Alleee
10 comments:
Belief is something you want to "know." Its something you want to be real.
But "knowledge" is compelled. You dont want it; you have to accept it because you cant lie to yourself about the information that came to you.
I love that dragon in the sky image! Hilarious!
David Burns had a very good point in his landmark book "Feeling Good". He states that "Just because you feel something doesn't make it so." Feelings are just that - they are not facts. A responsible person asks whether what they are feeling is appropriate for a given situation and does not allow it to master their behavior or cloud their reasoning - this is an indicator of maturity. "Feeling" the presence of god is not proof that one exists - you may be experiencing euphoria. This is quite normal, but can be confusing sometimes.
Alice: "Granma says gnats only dance under the trees if it's going to be a nice day tomorrow. There are gnats dancing under that tree so I know it's going to be a nice day tomorrow. I'll leave my umbrella at home."
Betty: "Granma says gnats only dance under the trees if it's going to be a nice day tomorrow. There are gnats dancing under that tree so I believe it's going to be a nice day tomorrow, but I'll take my umbrella anyway."
Carol: "Granma says gnats only dance under the trees if it's going to be a nice day tomorrow. There are gnats dancing under that tree but I'll listen to the weather forecast and have a look at the sky tomorrow morning before deciding whether or not to take my umbrella."
Belief is the foul conspiracy of stupid evil monkey-christian priest and pope and piss police in their FAKE FALSE and FICTITIOUS monkey-christ lord of the DEMON dung...Believe is EVIL conspiricay of duped fools of christ satan led by shadow government of CIA NEA FDA agriculture and space implants and jesus army of DORADO and CHAMELEON and elsewhere in their celesital slop house of horrors. Everything you believe is wrong -- excpet through me!
KNOW is the sacred sexual rite of conjunction with ME, glorious IAM, prophetess of HASHISHAN warriors of ISLAM and MORONI. When you KNOW me, your glorified and delightsome juices SRUGE into your veins and happiness takes over and the temple mounts of Thailand shriek with deligth and JOY and aromas of LOVE. Who ever wanted gay sex with that fat faggot fake monkey Christ (?) evil bastard crazy shit? EVERYONE STRIPS IN MY PRESENCE.
You know I am GOD because of the special feelings in your skull. You know it is logic because 2 + 2 = you & me in divine sexocosmological UNITY
However if you are atheist that is okay cause I was one too. Then I woke up and realized that I was GOD in three persons - Ted, Sara, Naum, : how else can you explain the magic in my life? ATHEISMA of the matter world in KNOWN, ATHEISMO of the falso SPIRIT world is BELIEVED?
Look under your skin. Reptoid? Me too! Knowledge! Sanity! Health!
Ted is "sruging"
in my veins.
Hey, Ted--your ex-wife says hello. She says only I can make her sruge, and you were shit at sruging.
I'm mentioning this because his account got suspended by his ISP. For spamming. Now, *sniff* spamming is all he's got! So he's created a new identity. He had four already. I guess he discovered pot. I would have assumed it would calm down a mind like Ted's. We have a page on him already, over at
insolitology.
Ahum. ?What makes me suspect our friend Ted has umbrellas in every room in his house just in case, but wouldn't take one out with him even it was clearly going to p*ss down in the next five minutes?
"Who started this universe ??"
You seem to be confused. It is your religion that believes someone "started the universe", not us. We don't believe in that nonsense.
"Thought and Humour,"
No thank you, I will not be making voodoo chants to the Oogoo Boogoo Man.
My parents are quite nice, but of course they did not contribute everything that I am at the moment. There are many other factors.
Forfatima:
Since most christians tell me no one was necessary to "start god," I simply remove the middle man. Not being was necessary to "start the universe." If you're talking about how it looks now, well, that was a process that probably started at the big bang, when all matter that is in the universe was at one dense point. It all took maybe 12 or 15 billion years to become what it is today. That's one of the best answers we have.
And no, a big group of powerful mad scientists didn't sit around in a big room laughing maniaclly, rubbing their hands saying that they will fool us all into thinking we came from monkeys, and rule the world. If they had, they would actually be ruling the world, and we wouldn't have this problem with maniacal religious television network executives.
To Forfatima:
Space is not empty. It is full of cosmic rays, photons, and even a few molecules and a lot of other stuff, like stars, planets, asteroids, comets, etc. It is such a big place, that if you represented earth's atmosphere as having molecules three inches apart, then molecules in space would be about a mile apart. It is the closest thing to a complete vacuum that exists because of the vast size and the distance between "stuff". Now, imagine everything collapsing into a singularity (black hole). If there truly was NOTHING inhabiting the space we know as the Universe, would it exist? Logic and mathematics both say, "no". Once space itself collapses into the singularity, there is a paradox: you have a singularity with no place for it to exist. BANG!
Scientific enough?
Why does there have to be an answer for everything? How can we presume to be able to accurately explain every phenomenon around us. Science is a way of describing everything around us, theology is the art of making up stories about things that don't exist.
Post a Comment