CG Didymus
Veteran Member
He thinks Jesus is physically dead. The gospel writers say Jesus is alive. Somebody is full of it.
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Are Religions and Gods manmade?
- Thread starter PAUL MARKHAM
- Start date
Not all Gods are anthropomorphic. But I certainly agree with you, for those 'Gods' that are anthropomorphic.
CG Didymus
Veteran Member
And God couldn't have Jesus write one thing? So the stories we do have about Jesus and the things he said and did are manmade. Jesus didn't write them. And God didn't write them.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
You have no facts to support your claims about spiritual truth, so why do you make them?
I have more than an idea who is a Messenger; I know who the Messengers are, and it has nothing to do with what i want to believe, it is based upon the evidence.
You do not know whether I know anything spiritual, you only believe you know. But it is just your personal opinion, nothing for me to be concerned about, because I know myself and I know who Baha'u'llah was. You can never take that certitude away from me with your constant derision of Baha'u'llah.
Truly spiritual people never criticize other people OR their beliefs. You can take it from there.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
No, it is a belief.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
It was not part of God's Plan to have Jesus write His own scriptures but that does not mean nothing that was written about Jesus is true. It is just not as direct from God as what the Bab and Baha'u'llah wrote.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Who God is changes because it is revealed a little differently in every religion, and also because man changes the meanings what was revealed over time.
I separate the stories from the spiritual truths and laws. Even if God did not write them on a stone, the 10 commandments are laws that still pertain (except the Sabbath Day which is only for Jews), but the parting of the seas is story. The parables of Jesus are eternal spiritual truths but the resurrection is a story... I could go on and on.
See how easy that was?
.
Bird123
Well-Known Member
your quote:What I do not believe is that I can know God through the actions of God in this world
My Answer: Have you ever heard the saying: Actions speak louder than words??? God's actions speak to who God really is far beyond the words of mankind.
your quote:Rather, I believe that whatever happens in this world is the direct result of the free will choices and ensuing actions of humans.
My Answer: Does this justify the judging and condemning of others learning lessons you might have already learned? Does this justify hate?? How can you justify WE and THEY?
Free will is a part of God's learning system. On the other hand God is far from helpless within this realm.
your quote:Here is the problem with your belief system called Discovering the Truth: All you Discover is what you believe is the Truth about God, but there is no way you can prove any of what you Discover is the Truth.
My Answer: Fancy this: You have created a belief system and even given it a name. I realize you create this as an excuse not to change. That's OK. Do nothing. On the other hand, I think it is sad that you have been taught to fear God so much as to require a middle man to keep your distance. Little do you realize that you already know God. There is nothing to fear. Allow no one to convince you otherwise.
You are right in a sense that in the beginning the pieces of the puzzle were beliefs along with some educated guessing based on ebb and flow of knowledge, based mathematically on things must add up perfectly. What is the most intelligent way? Piece by piece the view of God appears upon understanding God's actions.
Is God dormant? Is God helpless? No. God paid me a visit to confirm much of what I discovered. This visit is not to be discounted. I have evidence of God. You do not. You think I am trying to get you to Believe what I say. I am merely pointing the way you can Discover this for yourself.
God exists just like you exist. I have evidence of you both.
Would you be intimidated by a visit from God? Yes? God would never visit you because God isn't going to intimidate your choices.
If God showed up at your door, would you recite your beliefs? People see what they want to see. How would that visit go when you are supposed to Discover the answers instead of being told what to do? If you do not understand, what is there to talk about?
God doesn't tell knowledge. You Discover knowledge. You will not get any short cuts from God. God did not tell me anything I did not know and already discover. On the other hand, since I have been studying God through God's choices and actions, this was a priceless opportunity to Discover more.
God places knowledge and truth around us all. It waits to be Discovered. I merely copy God by placing my knowledge in the world so people can Discover what God is all about beyond the beliefs of mankind.
When God places knowledge in the world, God makes no demands to Discover it. Neither do I. I point. You do whatever you please. On the other hand Think rather than accept.
There is so much knowledge within the reach of us all. It takes work to reach and grab it. Few things worthwhile are served up on a silver platter and all one has to do is believe and accept. Look around you at this world. What do you really see?? It stares us all in the face! It is God!!
That's what I see. It's very clear!!
Bird123
Well-Known Member
Make sure the math adds up, keep moving forward for conclusions can change in the midst of newly Discovered knowledge. Remember be open for all possibilities for truth will not always be an agreeable thing. Finally, walk toward the most intelligent way of doing things for that is where God lives.
That's what I see. It's very clear!!
Ancient Soul
The Spiritual Universe
So don't accept it, it's that simple.
Your opinion does nothing. "I" will still have my spiritual life and there is nothing you can do about it.
Bird123
Well-Known Member
Is No God the only answer possible?
Let's assume you were God and very smart. How would you have done it? Please give me a better answer than Poof creation. Think! What is your Intelligent way of doing things?
Ebb and Flow of knowledge. I bet you can come up with some good answers.
The universe is not old enough for random chance to create it all. On the other hand, if it was run like a computer program, there would be enough time. Is there any evidence of this? Fractals and Entanglement are some very Big clues.
That's what I see. It's very clear!!
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
How do you think you can KNOW what God is doing in this world?
Do you just assume what you SEE happening can be attributed to God?
I fail to see how your answer is in any way related to what I said.
God is not helpless at all in any realm, but that still begs the question of how you believe you know what God is DOING.
I did not create a belief system, you did, and you gave it a name. You call it Discovering the Truth. The first problem is that you have no way of knowing that anything you have Discovered is actually the Truth. The second problem with your belief system is that if someone else Discovers something different and it contradicts what you Discovered both cannot be true because Truth does not contradict itself.
But you still have no explained how you can KNOW God's actions?
Okay, now we are cutting to the chase so we are done here because I will never believe that God ever paid you a visit and I will never believe that you have evidence of God.
I do not believe that God shows up at anyone's door or goes visiting. If you want to believe that you are welcome to.
No, I do not see God, nobody does.
I think we are done here, again.
Happy trails.
Ancient Soul
The Spiritual Universe
Ha, but "I" have all the facts "I" need, more than enough actually. All you have is some bombastic gobbledygook scribbling that teaches NOTHING truly spiritual.
Sure, like the "evidence" you presented where this Baha'u'llah self-proclaims that HE is the all mighty "messenger" of "god" and so everyone MUST blindly believe him. They all believe he is a GOD because HE says so.
Oh, I fully well know that we had a very l-o-n-g go-round several months ago in trying to get you to answer/describe a list of true spiritual matters and you came up with NOTHING on any of them. You even quoted your Baha'u'llah who said the soul is UNKNOWABLE or some such wording. So I then described what a soul really is to prove my point, which you now plagiarizer and pass it off as your own.
LOL!
Everyone can read your posts to me and see how that statement is one of those pot/kettle things. Why, the hypocrisy is apparent in the very first (Topmost) comment you made!
So back to you...
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
What are the facts? Your personal experiences are not facts. Everyone knows that but you.
What do you mean by truly spiritual? Those are just words.
If you do not answer my questions it will be obvious you have nothing truly spiritual.
That is a big fat straw man. Baha'u'llah never said everyone MUST blindly believe Him, and I never said they all believe He is a GOD because HE says so. In fact, I told you Baha'ullah never claimed to be God.
Who came first, you or Baha'u'llah? If anything that Baha'u'llah wrote is similar to what you believe, He did not get it from you.
If you think you have something better than Baha'u'llah, let's see it.
What are these spiritual matters you speak of? So far I have not see anything concrete and I have read other posts of yours.
Ancient Soul
The Spiritual Universe
Clever. Falsely accusing me of a "straw man" while replying with a straw man.
I already shot down your repetitious hate driven straw man comments. Yet you still keep on trying it as a tactic of avoidance because your Baha'u'llah has NOTHING truly spiritual to offer.
As I said, it is not an opinion, it is a suggestion as to how we might develop certain beliefs. Priming is often involved in many ways as to how we believe what we believe. I know, as a whole, humans do have a tendency towards beliefs in God or gods, or spirits, and souls, but there might be some reasonable explanations for this without any of these actually being true - and the numbers believing such isn't a sufficient reason for any belief being true. And as pointed out by myself, and others, there does appear to be examples where certain peoples don't have such concepts. Exception to the rule perhaps.
Like others, you are intent on seeing your early experience in a particular way. You may be right of course, but seeing as very young children don't tend to remember anything of their early life before about age two or three (I have only one memory from that period), it tends to follow that one should be suspicious about how we interpret such memories. My experience was rather physical - being lost on a beach - and as such has never left my memory, been altered, or ever been contradicted - my mother verified it years later in every detail. I doubt I even had a concept of God at that age, and apparently before about age three, a mother and God seem to be on a par as to how they are seen by the child - if they even know about God. Whatever you experienced, I myself would leave it open rather than settling on a definite explanation - which then went on to determine subsequent beliefs. But that is me, and I have the same attitude to mentions of NDEs/OBEs, etc. where I am reliant on second-hand evidence, no matter the numbers discussed. This chap died recently - no one seemed to want his money:
James Randi: Magician and sceptic dies aged 92
joelr
Well-Known Member
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/GWB/gwb-75.html.utf8?query=conditioned&action=highlight#gr1
RIght but if you saw a dragon and wanted to demonstrate it to another you would show them. With something subjective like what you are speaking of we already have endless examples of people believing things for emotional reasons which are clearly not true. Every religion or cult has people making belief choices on personal or subjective evidence which considering how many people believe false things this is incredibly unreliable.
People believe by the millions that a guy is channeling an alien named Bashar from another solar system and millions more believe Esther Hicks is channeling an entity named Abraham. They believe this based on statements that "sound legit" to them.
Then why does every scripture have ancient people who are shown that the gods in the stories are real by some supernatural demonstration? Everyone witnesses a miracle or has a clear vision.
The way people are convinced is a deity demonstrates it's power. After that people only believe for emotional reasons which is demonstrably a terrible way to judge truth. So weather you convince someone or they come to belief by reading scripture, both are not reliable.
There is no text/scripture that could not have been written by a smart person. To believe scripture is words from a deity is exactly what people in every other religion are doing. The ones you don't believe are true. Yet they use the same method as you and they are wrong.
So this is not a reliable path to truth.
The alternative is what we have. Religions that look exactly like all myths and contain words that cannot be shown to be written by gods but could easily be created by men.
How many sects of just Christianity do we have? Plus all the other religions and cults? So it's not working. A universal God could speak to all people, demonstrate power occasionally and stop looking like stories passed on from older cultures.
Revelations are men either delusional or lying. There is no evidence that any words from a revelation is anything but fiction from people.
One example, the revelations from Jewish prophets during the Persian invasion just happened to contain all the interesting elements from the Persian religion, good vs evil, Satan vs God, a world saving messiah, linear time, the end of the world in fire, resurrection at the end...Wow what a revelation. Yeah they weren't just copying the Persians were they? It's called religious syncretism.
What scholarship realizes is these are all myths being reused. If some people want to be like "oh no that was really from God that time.." then cool. But I have no interest in fantasy world.
Great but the gospels are anonymous stories written in a highly mythic, metaphorical way, not intended as history. They literally transform OT stories with ring structure, Markan sandwiches and all types of myth writing devices. They also use the mystery religion, Hellenistic dying/rising savior demigod myth that was very popular before Jesus. So there is no chance this isn't mythology.
Evidence wise there are NO prophets. Scholarship does not support these as actual history.
Yeah that's in Mark as well, including the figs and fruit. As the pages and pages of verbatim Greek show Matthew was sourced from Mark. This is called the Synoptic problem, solved by showing Mark was the likely source. It's fiction. But there are no prophets who have God-messages. And sourcing fiction doesn't show anything.
They were obviously worried about "false prophets and messiahs" because they themselves were borrowing ideas from several other cultures. 1st century apologist Justin Martyr mentioned that Jesus was no different than the other sons and daughters of Gods but his version was the best one.
Great, except there is zero evidence on that. All of the evidence points that all sons of God are fiction.
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
A new type of Man means until then we have to deal with the existing system.
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
Is there some form, force, thing, etc that created the universe? Maybe but not one that is written about or worshipped. That defeats your argument.
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PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
The problem with that theory is we now have the proof or most of it how Man evolved from a tree-dwelling ape species. So where did a god get involved?
Remember your answer must fit into a god-like act to seem plausible, so no slight tinkering with evolution that hasn't proven yet.