It's quite simple really. God ethnically cleanses the earth of people that disagree with him, and then in the paradise, he selects individuals with traits he admires eg. stupid, gullible, submissive, and allows them to live, but other people with bad traits eg. skeptical, reasoning, rebellious he eliminates and doesn't allow them to procreate. A kind of 'artificial selection' if you will. Don't look too much into that, though. It could stumble your faith!
Flat_Accent
JoinedPosts by Flat_Accent
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Free Will in Paradise Earth
by FaithfulBrother ini was raised in a witness family but never got baptized.
i have been studying with an extended family member for a while after 20+ years of being away from the kingdom hall.
i asked them about the paradise earth after armageddon and if we will become robots if we survive.
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251
Evidence for God...
by tec inlife come from the living, and this is a universe of life.
his teachings are truth.
which is why i weight it against the truth of the teachings (and one other thing that i will get to).
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Flat_Accent
True, and a statement cannot be made about this either way. I think that was my point. Can't ask why he waited so long to reveal himself, if you don't know whether or not he did wait so long.
You didn't mention my comment about why God waited all that time to send a redeemer to mankind? And if God sent us important truths earlier in mans history, why did he not protect them and allow later peoples to discover them and use them? We have cave drawings from thousands of years ago, but God couldn't save ancient texts he inspired? There is no way of knowing, but there is also no reason for me to believe it.
No, I think universal truths could be evidence that they originated from the same source... but carried and spread out, being added to or taken away from.
Truth could also be learned as per what works and what does not work; though few civilizations actually follow the golden rule, or turning the other cheek (not repaying wrong with wrong), even though their spiritual leaders might understand these things.Go to any corner of the globe and you'll have a moral obligation not to murder or steal, and to do good to others. All cultures have similar rules to follow, but their spiritual beliefs are usually quite different. One may ask you to pray 5 times a day, facing a certain direction. Another will tell you to perform a sacred dance for the crops to grow (as NC said earlier). Why is there variation in one but not in the other, if the two are tied, and are supposedly from the same source? If there is only one moral truth, then shouldn't there be only one spiritual truth as well? Unless God has said ''worship me however you want''. But what's your evidence of this?
No, purgatory is a detail or interpretation about the spiritual. So it is not a new idea. The spiritual had already been conceived in order for someone to attempt to define it... such as in purgatory, or nirvana, or heaven - whomever's version. It is this original conception of the spiritual that I am speaking of, with no other spiritual thing or knowledge to build it upon. A completely new concept.
It's still a supernatural concept which came from purely human imagination. Just like those different ideas of heaven. They can't all be right, can they? If all religions stem from a single source, then the further back in time one goes, there should be a visible trail that leads back to the original, ultimately correct view. So what about the Egyptian view of the afterlife? It came well before the Christian adaptation of heaven, but it's still completely wrong. Unless God wants to keep us in the dark about the real afterlife and so has made a motley crew of ideas to confuse us, there's no reason for all these different views. Completely nonsensical.
Yes, that is a simple statement. But then why would Krauss laugh that theologians state, see, life did not come from nothing? It is the same thing that he is saying. It was conflicting. Hence my confusion.
Because the theologian's view is 'God is the something'. In actuality Krauss is merely saying, on a scientific level, nothing cannot exist.
I actually did assume this... I thought it was what science had discovered. So then, eternal God or eternal universe was on equal footing. Something was eternal, and this concept could not be used to help prove or disprove anything. But science no longer states this, has decided that this was a mistake, at least as pertains to this universe. Instead, the universe now had a beginning, a cause. Even if there are multiple universes, one after another, that leads back to a cause for the first one. Because that seems to be how the physical world runs... a beginning and an end.
Just apply Occam's Razor to your thinking, that's all I'm asking. Does one perform less mental gymnastics contemplating an eternal universe, or an eternal omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent creator? Yes space and time began at the Big Bang, our universe had a beginning and will end at some point (by eternal I was referring to the possibility of universe cycles; Big Bang/Big Crunch/Big Bang etc). It's quite possible there will only ever be one universe and this is it. God is still MIA though. And just because on earth, causality works in such a way, does not mean the same laws apply to the universe. But, in my opinion there isn't enough known to state anything of the above with certainty, and i'm not an astrophysicist so I can't have a real discussion with you about it.
You're not providing any evidence to make me think God had to be the first cause, if a first cause was needed at all.
The last part was something you mentioned a couple of pages back. Someone said there are scientific inaccuracies in religious texts, and you argued against that point. I wanted to see examples.
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251
Evidence for God...
by tec inlife come from the living, and this is a universe of life.
his teachings are truth.
which is why i weight it against the truth of the teachings (and one other thing that i will get to).
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Flat_Accent
Nice try, sooner, but you made one fatal mistake. The inkwell you left at your bureau contained within it the invisible ink which you used to write your post, in an attempt to conceal the true evidence. When Madame Bebbington came to clean your office that Monday morning she discovered the shocking truth for herself, and it was this knowldege that led to her untimely death.
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251
Evidence for God...
by tec inlife come from the living, and this is a universe of life.
his teachings are truth.
which is why i weight it against the truth of the teachings (and one other thing that i will get to).
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Flat_Accent
Einstein thought thoughts that no one ever thought before. We are capable of taking in available evidence and extrapolating it. That's logic. Sometimes we start from a place of ignorance--and we end up anywhere. Sometimes we start from a place of knowledge, and the journey is more directed and supported. But to pretend that it is just impossible for humans to create gods and spiritual things is to deny that we are able to think creatively and symbolically.
It is not adequate evidence. In fact, it is not evidence at all.
That was beautiful.
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251
Evidence for God...
by tec inlife come from the living, and this is a universe of life.
his teachings are truth.
which is why i weight it against the truth of the teachings (and one other thing that i will get to).
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Flat_Accent
Shoot, my bad. I said purgatory but I actually meant limbo. Just noticed now.
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The best and worst Travelling Overseers in the UK
by usualusername inmy fave was roy renouf - district overseer.
always had time for me and seemed to keep thigs real.. heard that on a zone vist he told the governing body the branch was told old and grumpy or something like that!.
worst was michael purbrick.
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Flat_Accent
Les Perkins was great. My family was very close to them. Again i'm too young to have been there for the most of the time they all spent together, but I remember him as a caring man, always smiling.
He tripped and fell in the street one day, thought nothing of it. He was dead by the end of the week. Very sad, my dad went to the funeral.
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The best and worst Travelling Overseers in the UK
by usualusername inmy fave was roy renouf - district overseer.
always had time for me and seemed to keep thigs real.. heard that on a zone vist he told the governing body the branch was told old and grumpy or something like that!.
worst was michael purbrick.
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Flat_Accent
I remember Renouf simply for the reason no one could pronounce his last name. At one Special Assembly Day he gave 2 talks and both times the chairman mumbled out his last name: "And now, for brother Roy r eneuhfhfuh.. *cough*"
A couple of others to mention:
Edmund Curr - who reminded me of a character out of a Charles Dickens novel. He always looked down his nose at you.
Dennis Green - D.O. very friendly guy though I was too young to really know him. He stopped travelling when his wife got terminally ill. He had a very high pitched voice if I recall "As you're about to speak the man slams the door on your face. You knock on the door, and when he opens it again you say 'I love you.'"
oh lol cedars you knew him as well!
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Evidence for God...
by tec inlife come from the living, and this is a universe of life.
his teachings are truth.
which is why i weight it against the truth of the teachings (and one other thing that i will get to).
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Flat_Accent
Morning folks.
Certainly, the idea of god was not exclusive to the bronze age anyone. I think that was part of my point. Seeking the spiritual, a god/goddess/creator/spirit (s)... has been part of us since the beginning of us, as far as we know of ancient civilizations. I am not suggesting that at the point of Abraham or the Israelites, this was the only time God presented Himself as He truly is. Or even the first time. But people are limited. Generation to generation forget. People spread out, they bring original truths with them, even though those change as people forget and do other things.
I think people have to be willing and able to accept Him. There are universal truths among various religions, newer or ancient. I believe those came from Him.
As for the Hindu version of heaven, or the buddhist nirvana, these are variations of one thing - the spiritual. The details might be different, based on different understandings, but it is still spiritual. And yes, I am saying that if the 'supernatural' (spiritual is a better word imo, because I believe the spiritual is natural, just natural we have not discovered through scientific means yet) did not exist, we could not have thought of it. Not if we are purely natural (or physical) creatures. Which it would seem that we are not.It seems I've made a mistake in labelling your faith. As gladiator said you're like a patchwork quilt of everything sewn together. I feel like its going to be difficult to tie you down on anything here, tec >_>.
Anyway, you say here that God might have revealed himself to earlier peoples, which unfortunately is unprovable. There are no sacred writings handed down from those times - if any even exist today - that would be beneficial to anyone. Even if there were it doesn't prove a thing, but I'll get to that in a minute. It also makes one wonder why God still chose to wait those 90,000 years before he decided to send a redeemer. Here you say people bring original truths . . . is that to say they make truth? So truth isn't constant, it changes? Maybe truth changes according to the time period and the society, as we know it does? That doesn't sound universal, or timeless.
You're making an illogical assumption as well, by saying something along the lines of:
• Humans are capable of doing good, saying moral things and applying moral principles
• God gave humans these moral truths
• Therefore God exists
You jump to the conclusion God supplies our truth, yet why go so far? Why not take one step back and say that humans are responsible for their own truth?
Yes, ideas of heaven vary. What I was saying is that some of them are still wrong. ie. someone sat down, thought up something new about what heaven could be like and went round telling everyone about it. Just like your idea of heaven would be wrong to a Hindu. Another example would be PURGATORY - which the Catholic church now admits never existed. So Purgatory was a spiritual plane that someone made up. In their head. A purely natural creature imagined a supernatural world. Are you suggesting that person had God's help in it?
If I were to ask you what heaven is like, you couldn't give me an in-depth answer. Why? Because you don't know. What you would probably say is something relating to your feelings - happiness, bliss, contentment. What does this mean? Your concept of heaven is entirely solipsistic. Christians go to heaven to live in eternal happiness, Muslims go to 72 virgins. Doesn't that bespeak its human origins? There's no view of heaven that isn't grounded purely on human emotion and experience.
I do not ascribe to these arguments to establish the truth of God. I also do not think these are a likely cause - on their own - of the first people leaping to a 'goddidit' response. Perhaps enough to get people seeking... but only because such a thing as the spiritual exists.
Really if you take away your personal experience, what are you left with? 'Nothing cannot create something' - you said it yourself. In other words, 'things need a cause, yet that cause itself must be uncaused, hence the uncaused cause is God'.
I would refer you to my confusion over the comments of Physicist Laurence Krauss, above. Many, many questions, yes.
I mentioned how I personally know though... I heard it from my Lord.
As for the bolded part, God is timeless. No beginning, no end = timeless. Hard to wrap our minds around that, since everything we know right now (even that sentence) has a beginning, middle, and end.The statement is simple enough - Nothing, in the truest sense of the word, does not exist. Go to any corner of the universe and you find something, even in the parts where there would seem to be nothing.
And look, it's easy to say things like 'God is eternal', but it's harder to prove them. And as I said before, why not take a step back and say 'the universe is eternal'? It's quite possible our universe works on a cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches that follow into each other. Does that require a celestial handyman to tinker with it every now and then? To me it seems like the universe does a pretty good job of running itself.
Perhaps the 'conditions' are also timeless then, you might say? If so, what a concept for some spiritual leaders to grasp all on their own with no testable evidence! Perhaps they knew something of what they were talking about after all ;) Or perhaps they were listening to the same source. What are we doing wrong that we are just barely beginning to test and perhaps prove a concept that these men understood all along?
I'm unsure of what you mean here, so please get back to me. I'd also like to hear your evidence of scientific accuracy found within these religious texts. Someone brought the question up before and you disagreed with them.
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The Great Debate: "Has Science Refuted Religion?
by dark angle injust want to share this amazing debate!
caltech cosmologist and physicist sean carroll teams up with skeptic magazine publisher and science historian michael shermer in this epic debate with noted conservative author and king's college president dinesh d'souza and mit physicist ian hutchinson as they go head-to-head over one of the most controversial issues of our age.
as science pushes deeper into territory once the province of religion, with questions such as why there is something rather than nothing?, where did the universe come from?, how did life arise?, what was the origin of morality?, and others, inevitable conflicts arise over the best approach to answer them.
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Flat_Accent
You mean intangibles like antimatter and the atom, Night Owl?
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251
Evidence for God...
by tec inlife come from the living, and this is a universe of life.
his teachings are truth.
which is why i weight it against the truth of the teachings (and one other thing that i will get to).
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Flat_Accent
tec's gonna reply to my comments now. And just as i'm climbing in between the sheets.
Well, between the sheet and the . . . continental duvet.
