|
| Welcome to Religious Forums |
| Welcome Guest to ReligiousForums.com . You are currently not registered. When you become registered you will be able to interact with our large base of already registered users discussing topics. Some annoying Ads will also disappear when you register. Registering doesn't cost a thing and only takes a few seconds. We provide areas to chat and debate all World Religions. Please go to our register page! |
|
|||||||
 |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
|
#121
08-14-2006, 08:50 AM
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...337445?ie=UTF8 
__________________
THE CAKE IS A LIE
 
|
|
#122
08-14-2006, 09:44 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
Poker is an especially entertaining recreational activity that not only inviolves monetary wager; but when engaged with repeated success, entails evolved skill sets of capacities to "read" body language, and visible "tells" of deceit. Wagers in such activities are predicated upon two simple concepts that are applicable to human existence itself. One, is the concept of self-surety of one's own position (or winning hand); the second is the concept of instilling doubt of one's own surety measured against another's fear of loss (either in financial accountings, or in personal esteem and integrity). Your evasion of the other presented (non-wagered) observations of my last post are obvious, and reveal either an unwillingness or an incapacity on your part to address them head-on with salient and pointed reply. Evasion of unequivocal challenge, predicated within qualified parameters, allows myself and others to legitimately question the boundaries, limitations, and surety of faith-based claims that lack any means of objective scutinty and test, beyond personally chosen wishful-thinking and rationales borne of selective affirmations of position/perspective. It would seem that an atheist has more "faith" in his own predictive methodologies, than a "believer" would potentially fear to lose in demonstrable evidence of unfulfilled prophecy. If you like, I will allow the modification of any given wager to include any aspect of reward/punsihment that you would deem fair, or righteous. Monetary profit or gain is but one avenue to ponder...righteous confirmation of "known truths" can certainly be acknowledged by other means as well. I'm open to your qualified suggestions... Just the same, I'll again note your utter evasion and deflection regarding my referenced evidences of 100% failure of all previous "end of the world/civilization" cautions/warnings/prophecies borne of faith-based revelations/prophecies (including those proffered by the LDS faithful). I was a Junior in High School in 1975. I survived the LDS prophesised Armageddon of that year, with a BOTH clear conscience and a 3.9 average GPA to boot. Go figure. If you TRULY believe that the "end times" are at hand, and that Tribulation and Ultimate Judgement are at hand, I certainly hope that you are doing everything in your power to counsel believers from spawning children in the undeniable face of such a hopeless, frightful, and unavoidable inevitibility. I mean, c'mon...why would "true believers" care about "the unborn", the immorality of the skeptical, unsaved, and irreligious; if the Redeemer Himself could arise once more and take seat upon the throne of righteous justice tomorrow? Shouldn't the wicked be punished as promised? If the Savior might not return for another 10,000 years, then what accountability/responsibility would you (or should you) bear or accept for the maintainence of His "creation" today? Does it even matter that mankind is wreaking havoc upon "His creation"? Will your God punish or reject those that do not seek to preserve and protect what He has made, or will HIs dutifully faithful adherents receive their "ultimate reward" just the same? Is human procreation an affirmation of His commandments, or a potential usurpation of His "ultimate" Will and Purpose for mankind with imminent doom at hand? If God knew that I knew (having been informed by God Himself) that "the end" was right around the bend, would He approve of you spending your time making babies and painting the spare room in pink and blue? Wouldn't that sort behavior seem like a state of denial or impious defiance in the face of God's own foretold Armageddon? How can it be that predictions/prophecies borne of a 3000 year-old-plus religious text be repeatedly accounted as both erroneous and unfulfilled for eons on end, whilst "scientific doubts" as to the "certainty" or probability/plausibility of either global climate change or evolution theory as to be thusly regarded as implausibly or falsely accounted/substantialted/evidenced, but not such matters as gravatational theory or electrical conductivity; yet Bible-based claims/predictions are faithfully maintained and promulgated despite their utter vagaries, archaic metaphors, and unfulfilled predictions? How is it that otherwise ordinary, rational, and intelligent people can accept the notions of talking serpents, bodily-infiltrating evil "demons", flying lions, and 900 year-old (or more, apparently!) mortal men, as being veritable and immutable fact and revealed "truth"...but an overwhelmingly empirically evidenced notion of mankind having evolved from lower order critters is just "crazy talk" from the lips of liars and godless, hard-hearted apostates? Why would your god puposefully conceal/secret HIs ultimate purpose and manifest Will in future times and events within some secretly embedded cyphered "code"? Is your god purposefully cryptic in HIs meaning and purpose? Is there a prize at the bottom of this cereal box, or some-extra credit to be earned on the "Final Exam"? Why would any "god" feel the need to beat around the burning bush, so to speak? Isn't that"strategy" more typically personified by politicians, diplomats, lawyers, and scam artists? Or is a "don't ask, don't tell " policy the best testament of truth? One final inquiry regarding "prophecies" that promise to accurately foretell of future events. If the "future" has already "happened" (so to speak) , and all events forever to come have already "played out", then what purpose or benefit is served in any attempt to alter or affect any decsion or circumstance (either personally or globally) if such a fixed course has already been determined beyond any human alteration? If you were informed (in revealed prophecy) that you would most certainly suffer a broken leg tomorrow, what would you proactively do with that knowledge? Shop for crutches and pain medications today? Call your employer and inform him that you'll suffer a broken leg sometime tomorrow, and be therefore unavailable for work for some indeterminate period of time to come? Or might you instead lock yourself in a padded closet for 24 hours, in hopes of somehow thwarting the inevitable (that has already "happened" in the future)? Would you beseech your god to perhaps change His mind, and thusly spare you the pain and inconvenience of such a misfortune? If you could proactively prevent the occurence of the broken leg, what then of the relative merit or value of such an unreliable and unfulfilled prophecy? Are such prophecies meant to lend hope and benefit to the recipient, or merely instill fear and trepidation within the mind and heart in the face of some inexorable "plan" of ultimately inconsequential choices and unalterable outcomes? Even if we concede for the sake of argument that any deciphered matrix-prophecy IS "true"...the question still remains, "so what of it"? What is a believer supposed to do with that "revealed" information?
__________________
"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. " -HL Mencken
|
|
#123
08-14-2006, 09:48 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
Hee! Here's twenty virtual silver dollars for that reference.
__________________
"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. " -HL Mencken
|
|
#124
08-14-2006, 02:21 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
There must be an opposition in all things, for example; there must be the possibility of men to both sin, or be righteous, in order for God's purposes to be fulfilled, hence, the evils that exist in this world and the many good things, which do simultaneously exist. 2 Nephi 2 ~ There must be an opposition in all things ~ Read Listen Doctrine and Covenants 122: 5-8 ~ All things work toward our good ~ s2a, if I were to say I do not know of a surety when the world will end, I would be telling you the truth, because we don't know of a surety when anything will happen, otherwise faith would have no part in our existence, which is necessary for our progression, towards becoming like God. Last edited by FFH; 09-14-2006 at 08:06 AM.
|
|
#125
08-14-2006, 02:36 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
|
#126
08-14-2006, 02:37 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
__________________
"In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." -- Ayn Rand
|
|
#127
08-14-2006, 02:39 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
|
#128
08-14-2006, 03:27 PM
|
||||
|
