Posts by funkyderek

26

Holy Week Rocks

by RWC in

as some of you may know this week is the most holy week in the christian faith.

it is the week that jesus, true god and yet true man, willingly gave up his life including all of the pain that went with his cruel death, to save us from our sins.

he opened the door for all to be saved and have eternal life.

funkyderek

I don't see why this is so complicated. Surely you "get" it, but are choosing not to believe it. The plan is like this: God created a perfect world and in it he put man who he gave free will to follow God or not. Man chose not to follow God's directions and sin entered the world. This sin seperated us from God. All are born with this original sin and must be reconciled to God. Since there is nothing we can do through deed are good works to overcome this, God sent his son to pay the sacrifice in our place. Now through believing in him we can be reconciled to God. It was the ultimate sacrifice done in our place.

OK, so apparently I wasn't missing something. It sounds marginally less absurd the way you describe it, but essentially that's exactly what I said above. I hoped there was some logic to it that I hadn't noticed. Obviously not.

I do not believe that you are so arrogant to think that you have done nothing wrong in your life. That you have never wronged anyone or hurt their feelings, yelled without cause, said something hurtful, or in anyway acted in such a manner to hurt someone else. That would be classified as a sin. So even if you do not want to believe in the original sin, you have fallen short of the perfection that God would require but for the perfection of Jesus.

I have wronged many people in my life, and I have been wronged by many people. If that is your definition of sin, then we are all sinners. However, I would be fairly angry if someone who had wronged me expected my forgiveness because they had decided to believe in the 2000 year old ghost of a Jewish carpenter. It may be enough for you and your god, but my standards are higher.

Now you must be honest that you have made the choice not to belive. You hav been exposed to religious training and the Bible, the evidence of God's existence and his word has been given to you. You chose not to belive under the quise of you need more evidence.

The available evidence is not sufficient for me to determine for certain whether or not there is a god. In the absence of such evidence, I assume that there is not - as in this case, I think an absence of evidence can be taken as circumstantial evidence of absence. Regarding your particular god, there is enough evidence to show that he cannot possibly exist. You believe without evidence, and think that such gullibility - or faith, if you prefer - will guarantee you salvation from something which your religion invented in the first place. I believe only in things that actually exist.

--
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. - Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

78

Recommend a Book

by Black Man in

jw
friends

that's right....recommend a book...any book that would be a good read....... mine's is:.

invisible man by ralph ellison

funkyderek

I'm not going to mention the classics that everybody knows, but here are a few books definitely worth reading, and their reviews from Amazon.com
In no particular order:

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras.

The Cybergypsies by Indra Sinha

The story of bad behavior--fanaticism about small debates, gender-disguised "Netsex," the spending of other people's money on vast phone bills--has been told by others. In The Cybergypsies: A True Tale of Lust, War, and Betrayal on the Electronic Frontier, Indra Sinha tells the same story in a British context where the poverty and uncertainty of the Thatcher era made everything that much more intense and obsessive. This is also the story of the near collapse of the author's marriage: he withdrew from his wife or dragged her off to meet Net chums who never showed up--or showed up and never introduced themselves.
These were also the years of his growing political commitment--a highly paid copywriter, Sinha started using his skills for good causes like exposing the use of chemical weapons by Saddam against the Kurds. He writes well about his discomfort with his Net friends' games of expensive verbal sadomasochism in the face of real evil. This is a moving and wise book about a man who loved games and came to feel that he could no longer, in good conscience, play them; there is real pain here, in his rejection of a sort of beauty.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

In The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks presents a distant future that could almost be called the end of history. Humanity has filled the galaxy, and thanks to ultra-high technology everyone has everything they want, no one gets sick, and no one dies. It's a playground society of sports, stellar cruises, parties, and festivals. Jernau Gurgeh, a famed master game player, is looking for something more and finds it when he's invited to a game tournament at a small alien empire. Abruptly Banks veers into different territory. The Empire of Azad is exotic, sensual, and vibrant. It has space battle cruisers, a glowing court--all the stuff of good old science fiction--which appears old-fashioned in contrast to Gurgeh's home. At first it's a relief, but further exploration reveals the empire to be depraved and terrifically unjust. Its defects are gross exaggerations of our own, yet they indict us all the same. Clearly Banks is interested in the idea of a future where everyone can be mature and happy. Yet it's interesting to note that in order to give us this compelling adventure story, he has to return to a more traditional setting. Thoughtful science fiction readers will appreciate the cultural comparisons, and fans of big ideas and action will also be rewarded.

Longitude by Dava Sobel

The thorniest scientific problem of the eighteenth century was how to determine longitude. Many thousands of lives had been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to determine an east-west position. This is the engrossing story of the clockmaker, John "Longitude" Harrison, who solved the problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed only half the promised rich reward.

The Demon-Haunted World : Science As a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan muses on the current state of scientific thought, which offers him marvelous opportunities to entertain us with his own childhood experiences, the newspaper morgues, UFO stories, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of pseudoscience. Along the way he debunks alien abduction, faith-healing, and channeling; refutes the arguments that science destroys spirituality, and provides a "baloney detection kit" for thinking through political, social, religious, and other issues.

River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins

Nearly a century and a half after Charles Darwin formulated it, the theory of evolution is still the subject of considerable debate. Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins is among Darwin's chief defenders, and an able one indeed-- witty, literate, capable of turning a beautiful phrase. In River Out of Eden he introduces general readers to some fairly abstract problems in evolutionary biology, gently guiding us through the tangles of mitochondrial DNA and the survival-of-the- fittest ethos. (Superheroes need not apply: Dawkins writes, "The genes that survive . . . will be the ones that are good at surviving in the average environment of the species.") Dawkins argues for the essential unity of humanity, noting that "we are much closer cousins of one another than we normally realize, and we have many fewer ancestors than simple calculations suggest."

The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams

You loved the comic strip; now read the business advice.
Or should that be anti-business advice? Scott Adams provides the hapless victim of re-engineering, rightsizing and Total Quality Management some strategies for fighting back, er, coping. Forced to work long hours, with no hope of a raise? Adams offers tips on maintaining parity in compensation. Along the way, Adams explains what ISO 9000 really is and assesses the irresistibility of female engineers.
The breath-taking cynicism of the strip should prepare readers for the author's no-holds-barred attack on management fads, large organizations, pointless bureaucracy and sadistic rule-makers who glory in control of office supplies. Readers of the on-line Dilbert Newsletter are familiar with the kind of e-mail Adams receives from his readers -- and may even have sent a few of those missives themselves. Along with illustrative strips, e-mail messages provide excruciating examples of corporate behavior which compel the reader to agree with Adams when he insists that "People are idiots".
The final chapter offers a model for would-be successful businesses to follow: the OA5 model. It's introduced with little fanfare, no outrageous promises and just the right amount of self-deprecation

--
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. - Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts[/i]

7

Why did Helen Kellers dog commit suicide???

by Waygooder64 in

you would too if if your name was "mmpmpfowscfmph" i love that one.....

funkyderek

Derek, you're gonna get SPANKED for that one!

I deserve a good spanking! I've been really bad!

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

22

Yet Another SEX QUIZ !!!!

by Prisca in

just for fun!.

.

http://www.thesite.org/magazine/sex_and_relationships/animalquiz.html.

funkyderek

Apparently I'm a tiger! Grrrr!!!

Grrrr!!! You sexy beast! You're a party-goer, the life and soul! Anything goes, and its usually instigated by you. Role play, bondage, it's time to get kinky. You're passionate, energetic, raunchy and sometimes noisy! Anyone caught in your claws is gonna be walking funny for the next few days. Easy tiger!.

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

26

Holy Week Rocks

by RWC in

as some of you may know this week is the most holy week in the christian faith.

it is the week that jesus, true god and yet true man, willingly gave up his life including all of the pain that went with his cruel death, to save us from our sins.

he opened the door for all to be saved and have eternal life.

funkyderek

Funkyderek, Jesus died on the cross for the sins of all including those in the future. Yours included.

How does somebody's death save us from "sin"? I don't see the connection.

Sin is a wrong against God.

But

nobody but Jesus has ever been born without sin.

So when I was born I had already wronged god? My very existence, over which I had no control, was a wrong against god, for which I will be punished unless I believe that 2000 years ago, someone died to save me from the wrong against god which I would commit simply by being born?

It seperates us from him and without the reconcilation of Jesus, we would never bridge that gap. That is why Jesus is our Savior.

Nope, still don't get it. Surely if god simply gave up his policy of punishing the innocent, there would have been no need to kill someone to make it all better?

Sins come in all shape and sizes, some serious and some not so serious, but ever since the fall of man, we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But I thought simply being born is a sin?

You can choose not to believe it and that is your free will.

I don't choose what to believe. To do so would be the worst kind of dishonesty. I believe what the available evidence compels me to believe.

But it is a gift that has already been made available to you.

Some gift! Let me get this straight. Just be being born, I've already committed a "wrong against god". To be "saved" from the punishment (by God) that goes with that "wrong", I must believe - without evidence - that this god had his son executed, and that this execution saves me from the "sin" I was born with. Or am I missing something?

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

7

Why did Helen Kellers dog commit suicide???

by Waygooder64 in

you would too if if your name was "mmpmpfowscfmph" i love that one.....

funkyderek

Why couldn't Helen Keller drive?
Because she was a woman

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

26

Holy Week Rocks

by RWC in

as some of you may know this week is the most holy week in the christian faith.

it is the week that jesus, true god and yet true man, willingly gave up his life including all of the pain that went with his cruel death, to save us from our sins.

he opened the door for all to be saved and have eternal life.

funkyderek

Show me one such record

http://hosted.ray.easynet.co.uk/serial_killers/kurten.html

If we say we have no sin in us
we are deceiving ourselvs
and refusing to admit the truth

That depends how you define sin. You apparently define it as follows:

sin is that what makes you feel guilty

If I do something and I do not feel guilty, does that mean I cannot have sinned? That is what your definition would imply. If you say that when I sin, I really feel guilty, then you have a circular argument and are no closer to defining sin.

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

26

Holy Week Rocks

by RWC in

as some of you may know this week is the most holy week in the christian faith.

it is the week that jesus, true god and yet true man, willingly gave up his life including all of the pain that went with his cruel death, to save us from our sins.

he opened the door for all to be saved and have eternal life.

funkyderek

No one that has killed someone is without the feeling of guilty

That's avoiding the issue and probably untrue. There are certainly records of people who have committed murder and felt no remorse.
If someone does something that you would consider wrong but feels no guilt about it, have they sinned?

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

26

Holy Week Rocks

by RWC in

as some of you may know this week is the most holy week in the christian faith.

it is the week that jesus, true god and yet true man, willingly gave up his life including all of the pain that went with his cruel death, to save us from our sins.

he opened the door for all to be saved and have eternal life.

funkyderek

There is no such thing as no sin, no guilt

But you said:

sin is that what makes you feel guilty

So if I kill someone and don't feel guilty, have I sinned?

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

18

The philosophy class

by Scorpion in

a college student was in a philosophy class which had a discussion about god's existence.

"has anyone in this class seen god?

"has anyone is this class heard our professor's brain?

funkyderek

I actually believe the professor, if atheist, would have flunked the student.

If he was a good professor, regardless of his personal beliefs, he would have made sure that by the end of the class all the students understood that the student's argument was specious and why, and he would have encouraged other students to point out the real flaws in his original statement.

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein