Except you brought in red riding hood to make a comparison with the OT
Say what? Should i take that as a threat of just bumbling humour?
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What "if" you are wrong
- Thread starter We Never Know
- Start date
Except you brought in red riding hood to make a comparison with the OT
Say what? Should i take that as a threat of just bumbling humour?
I've never heard a rational solution -- and I've heard a lot of arguments and apologetics.
How would one rationally resolve it, pray tell.
It depends on which god turned out to be real, don't you think?
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Unless you can prove that "To know truth one needs to renounce faith. For truth comes from nothingness" it is only a personal opinion or a belief.
If you mean a person has to start their search for truth from nothingness, that is exactly what I did.
I am not sure what you mean by "renounce faith." One cannot believe in God without faith since there is no proof that God exists.
The way I see it, what if God DOES exist, but I' worshipping the wrong one, and this real God keeps getting madder and madder each time I ignore him and worship the fake one? I"d rather not worship at all
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
How do you know that the truth doesn't come from religion?
Do you think the truth falls down from the sky and says "here I am, the truth!" ?
Or do you think the truth comes from within? How could one ever know that is the truth?
How do you know I didn't do that before I learned the truth?
Why should a person let go of the truth after they learned it?
Spice
StewardshipPeaceIntergityCommunityEquality
Nope...as an example of an allegory made to draw and hold attention.
That's the message of a frightening allegory made to draw and hold attention in the OT. It's not history, it's not literal, it's "stories" sometimes correlating to true events, but more like FOX News would report.
It also doesn't matter if there is one (or an afterlife) - at least not yet - a position called apatheism.
To me agnostic means unknowing. Its etymology is 'not know.' The word has application outside of religious belief. We can call ourselves agnostic about any matter in which we cannot decide yes or no based in present evidence.
In the religious sense, the word is used both to mean that the question regarding gods is presently unknown or unknowable in the sense you mean. When I call myself an agnostic atheist, I am saying that I cannot answer the question, not that it is forever unanswerable, which is probably the case if there are no gods, but not necessarily true of they exist and we learn that in this life or after corporeal death.
I don't feel that way. I assume that consciousness ends with death and find life quite meaningful. Ultimate reality doesn't matter at all.
You don't have to believe in gods to take biblical advice if you think it's good advice.
How should an observant Christian feel if he found out for a fact today that the religion was false. Suppose you were in a car accident and awakened no longer believing in that god. Do you think that you would still be glad of having spent years reading scripture, going to church, praying, tithing, denying yourself experiences such as extramarital sex or getting an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy or self-loathing because of your urges, and all the rest that goes with that life?
I can answer for myself, a former zealous Christian who left the religion four decades ago. The change was for the better. One could only call it a mistake of the god of Abraham exists as described. If not, it would have been a mistake to not get out. I married a woman that wouldn't have had me if I were still religious. We chose to not have children, which would have been much less likely had we both been Christians. Goodbye to all of the Grateful Dead weekends, where we would fly to some Western venue (San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, LA, Las Vegas, Phoenix) for a three-show weekend. Gone would be all of the world travel and the restaurants several times a week. Gone would be band practice three times a week with my wife and a second guitarist, and all of the live performances about twenty times a year. That's a huge price to pay.
How about you? Are you good with your choice even if the religion it false and its god nonexistent?
The omnipotent creator of the universe would surely know how to make His existence clear and unambiguous.... if He actually cared or desired salvation for all.
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Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Atheism is disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods, although hard atheists claim that no God exists.
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.
Nope I mean truth comes from literally losing ones Self.
To die to Oneself.
If you can't or didn't do that, truth is always just a glimmer of nothing. Most religions fall into this camp..
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Because we've talked a bit, and I've read your posts for years.
Experience with them.
Because those who know the truth realize it's useless and meant to be let go.
siti
Well-Known Member
So the life - and example of living (good or bad) - you passed on to your kids...and grandchildren and their children...etc. would not matter? I think it would be more accurate to say that if we are wholly mortal and our existence finite, what we do in life is the ONLY thing that matters...whether God exists or not.
I am wrong and I know it. I know for sure that future generations will achieve a far better explanation of reality than we have now, just as my generation has improved on the understanding of my great-grandparent's generation a century ago. Eventually, I imagine that what I now know as "the truth" will be entirely superseded...in ways that I can probably scarcely imagine. And their explanations of reality may or may not include something that might be what we call "God" or "gods" - but it probably will bear only a passing resemblance to what we understand (or more usually fail to understand) by those terms today.
Will it matter? That I am wrong...not a jot...but that humankind will have moved on to a clearer understanding of the universe and their place in it...that might be all that matters in the end...if our generation doesn't bequeath them extinction before they have the chance that is.
Spice
StewardshipPeaceIntergityCommunityEquality
I'm extremely good with my choices. I found peace when I let go of "organized" religion. No more fear of judgement by man or God. My God knows my heart at all times and guides me through my worldly travails.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
God could have done that, Baha'u'llah said so, and then He explained why God chose not to do that.
“He Who is the Day Spring of Truth is, no doubt, fully capable of rescuing from such remoteness wayward souls and of causing them to draw nigh unto His court and attain His Presence. “If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people.” His purpose, however, is to enable the pure in spirit and the detached in heart to ascend, by virtue of their own innate powers, unto the shores of the Most Great Ocean, that thereby they who seek the Beauty of the All-Glorious may be distinguished and separated from the wayward and perverse. Thus hath it been ordained by the all-glorious and resplendent Pen….” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 71
God does care and desire salvation for all, but salvation only by use of one's own innate powers, not because God made His existence clear and unambiguous.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
That is actually an important Baha'i teaching, one I strive to attain to.
“By self-surrender and perpetual union with God is meant that men should merge their will wholly in the Will of God, and regard their desires as utter nothingness beside His Purpose….. The station of absolute self-surrender transcendeth, and will ever remain exalted above, every other station.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 337-338
Good luck.
But even this statement is as inaccurate as mine was in describing how to do what I am saying.
This is where I realize Pascal's Wager almost fails. If there is no god, the bet is not an insignificant loss. Well, at least, to some, they might have to give up a lot. I'm giving up the person I love the most out everyone I fell in love with. Its not easy. I know I would be happy with her, but I am letting her go because my religion forbids us being together.
Also, believing others are going to go to hell, it's not easy. It makes life almost unbearably painful if you have empathy.
Sorrow is the path of knowledge given the circumstances the world is in. People who reflect and then become sad in that moment do so because they reflected properly. However, a person of sorrow constantly sees and is a constant state of reflection.
However, if no hell, and I was wrong, all that sadness on top of sadness, and suffering for the thought of others going to hell, was avoided and I just lived life to the fullest and say no God, and this our only life.... then I gave up the only life I had, gave up living with the woman I love, for the next world and for pleasing God.