As with those warned off Bernie Madoff's scam or NESARA prosperity cults or Freeman-on-the-land pseudolegal pseudoscholarship or "Peter of England"'s WeRe Bank scams, the deceived often misdefine "kindness" as allowing their delusions to persist unchallenged. If you truly think I have been objectively unkind, you should build a case for it and tell people. The writing in Post #38 is not as opaque as Langan so you should be able to comment on it. To know God one must dissect God? Or just kidnap Him and hold Him hostage until the exchange is made? Proofs don't work that way. Each assertion must have support or it is an empty assertion, the fault of the speaker not the listener. Humility is part of the scientific methodology. One starts with the humble "I don't know" and seeks if there is a way to objectively progress from knowing nothing to knowing a communicable and useful something, even if only in a contingent manner. Humility is not part of those who claim without support that they have had a personal revelation since if it is personal then why would you need to share it? If it is of no utility to others, are you not just wasting time telling people about it? Also, where has Langan's story taught the value of humility?
As long as it's not stereotypical hallucinations / feelings induced by drugs or medical conditions, private revelation can indeed be a form of validation for the individual. However, due to it being grounded in personal experiences (or whatever alien medium), it would be a violation of its very nature to craft it into a testimonial-based meme. IOW, to design it to go viral in the inter-subjective arena with the intent of converting others. The latter would mean the gullible accepting it minus the private apprehension which brought about a transition in the original recipient. Christian tradition might give its blessing to such an approach of "modify one's personal epiphany into descriptive gospel or promulgation so that the many may accept it on faith". But Thomas Paine long ago elaborated on that as both a contradictive act and a fallacy [at bottom]. Now, OTOH, if there was some practice or discipline which could invoke private substantiation (of "whatever") for interested parties -- like say, Zen buddhists short circuiting their normal cognition of sensuous events -- then that avenue at least delivers the goods which enlightened the prototype or "founder". It's at least no longer limited to misplaced confidence in an evangelist's verbal or written reports. [Or even arguments, though the latter would seem unsuitable for a completely xenological validation injected by a revelatory intuition.] Thomas Paine: Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which, bye the bye, it is impossible to prove), is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another person is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it, or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells, for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases the proper answer would be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God." This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of the Age of Reason; and which, while it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation. But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and the disposition to do good ones. The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us. --The Age of Reason
This is your opinion. I am happy with my believe in the prophets , They were a guidance for a society which was going deteriorate . Their prophecy was to keep the society in order . Yo can see in the bible , Prophets and religion usually attempted to correct the social behaviour . Please think ... in the ancient time in most of the social society were illiterate
??? That was Thomas Paine's opinion of where all blame resided, back in the day. Most non-theists of today (or deists if they were still amply around) wouldn't consider the Biblical figures of the Old Testament to have existed in the first place. For my part, I distribute "blame" for historical, current, and future atrocities to all brands of ambitious formal systems and egocentric cliques of authorities that want to acquire power or stay in power. As well as just blood-crazed mobs arbitrarily motivated by perceived slights and injustices from rival factions. The tool shed of the former is well-stocked with far more than just religion when it comes to ridding obstructive or threatening weeds from their gardens, or just needing a scapegoat for why the roses or the tomatoes aren't doing well. Manipulative rhetoric, appeals to nationalism, stirring-up past grudges, raising fears about unwashed hordes gathering at the borders, clamoring that the proletariats need to replace the bourgeois, aristocratic, and economic mogul tyrants that keep them down with new oppressive ideological Red tyrants and upstart back-alley thugs as a change of pace, etc.
It was also used as a method to control the masses... certainly you can see that? You really think that the Catholic Church, being the ONLY ones able to read/write for hundreds of years, didn't tweak the bible juuuust a little bit to help them consolidate power and remain influential and in control? Cause... yeah, humans? Humans are kind of greedy like that.
What was? What does "it" refer to? No. For one thing, the "Catholic church", if by that you mean the church organization run by the Pope in Rome, never exercised control over all of Christianity, even in medieval times. Alongside it there was also the Byzantine Orthodox sphere as well as the Copts and the Syriac churches. They all preserved Bibles whose texts still coincide in large part. What's more, since the Renaissance paleographical and textual scholars have devoted great attention to the Bible. Their studies that show that the Hebrew and Greek text of the Bible have survived relatively intact and unchanged since ancient times, before there was any "Catholic church". Ancient copies of the Biblical text have been recovered and compared to modern texts, without huge discrepancies being discovered. Whatever discrepancies do exist aren't large, nefarious or politically motivated. They are typically the result of small scribal errors. (These have enabled scholars to create family trees for the Biblical text, tracing how it spread through the medieval world.) In my opinion, the idea that the Bible was rewritten by the "Catholic church" in order to "control the masses" is an expression of relatively modern 18th and 19th century anti-Catholic hostility often repeated by more "liberal" Protestants today. Ironically, neither Luther or Calvin would for a moment have agreed that the texts of the Bibles upon which they were basing their entire 'reformation' had been corrupted by the Catholics. I'm curious, what does any of this have to do with Spellbound and his love of God? It looks like the thread has broken its banks, has started to meander and has lost its focus.
I have found your Post #38 to be too verbose and long-winded with little meaning to the topic at hand.
Oh, I know how to translate that: if you tried to reply you'd either have to waffle incoherently or show the paucity of your "logic". So, basically, you've made the right choice: don't get into an argument you can't possibly win.
Great, just great. I guess now I have to respond to rpenner's post # 38. I am not a Calvinist, but the binary decision process still applies, as "worthy" and "unworthy" can be measured and so yes there exists a scale. If one assumes that choice is an illusion, then everything and everyone are equal in the eyes of God. Precisely. Correct. You may very well not be less worthy of God's love than me, but as an authority and witness of God and His manifestations, and as one who has a relationship with Him, I can say with such assurance that you have not determined reality enough to dismiss the fact that God is real and that He assigns love to those who have earned it through their actions.
So you're a self-proclaimed "authority and witness of God"? I'm guessing humility isn't one of those things they teach at the Langan Institute of Nonsense, is it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
For whom have you conducted measurements? With what precision? Can you give examples that bracket the worthy-unworthy line? Is the procedure for measuring worthiness one that can be communicated? Have you considered that teaching people to be worthy may be far more objectively beneficial than telling them stories that God talks to you? So allegedly claimed Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and Satan (in the book of Job). So at this point we need more evidence than self-credentialed "witnesses." Both John 3:16 and Ephesians 2:8-9 tend to indicate that God is not a big one for having people earn His love. However both John 5:29 and 1 Peter 1:17 tend to indicate that God is a big one for judging if people have earned His love. Also: • http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/god_hates.html • http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/faithalone.html Since we have so many unclear communications of what it is God wants, have you considered that teaching people to do what God wants might be far more objectively beneficial than telling them stories that God talks to you?
