Can Christians Do Good For Goodness Sake?

[ch33zw1z]

How dare you challenge an omniscient being

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Lets think about that rationally. I am an engineer. I create things, lots of things. When my creations fail, it is I who am judged for their failure not the creations themselves. I AM PUNISHED NOT MY CREATIONS.

In what kind of fucked up universe are we blamed for our creator's fuck ups? He made us badly and then judges US for his screw-up? Is this rational on ANY level? T---H---I---N---K!!!!

It's a neat trick of the ego to manufacture it's own sense of humility to absolve and rationalize to itself its own tyranny. If you can imagine yourself submitting and supplicating to a god and it's fairly easy to distract yourself from the cold and authoritarian manner with which you deal with your fellow people.

 

[BurnItDwn]

There are plenty o Christian folks who do good for goodness sake. Look at the Morman church as a whole, they do amazing things for food security for a lot of people. Many church groups all over the country sent down crews to help rebuild and clean up around new Orleans after Katrina.

I agree that there are some truly evil things done in the name of religion, but, the other side of the coin is that there are many great people who help others who happen to be Christian.

 

[interchange]

If the atheist does good, and the theist does good, why undermine it by attacking each other?

 

[Red Hawk]

Again, he stated explicitly that the law is to be obeyed. He's supposed to be the banner that unites everybody; accept him as your deity and follow the law, and once everybody does that, the law will no longer be enforced.

Ya have to look at the whole shebang. Jesus is alluding to the seventh covenant, but that cannot come into play until the criteria are met, with him having stated that such is impossible. By saying that he's come to fulfill the law and the prophets (i.e, fulfill the prophecy in Jeremiah 31:31-34), it's going to be made null.

But that won't be done until everybody follows the law to the letter.

...no, he didn't. I just explained why he didn't. He was referring to the commands he was about to give, which often went against the letter of the OT law, as what needed to be obeyed. Did you miss that part of my post? Because you didn't address it.

Lets think about that rationally. I am an engineer. I create things, lots of things. When my creations fail, it is I who am judged for their failure not the creations themselves. I AM PUNISHED NOT MY CREATIONS.

In what kind of fucked up universe are we blamed for our creator's fuck ups? He made us badly and then judges US for his screw-up? Is this rational on ANY level? T---H---I---N---K!!!!

I'm pretty sure you've never designed a sapient being before. Which would you prefer, for God to force all of humanity to worship him, or to give everyone a choice?

 

[Moonbeam]

GagHalfrunt: Bullshit. Not seeing what isn't there is not arrogance, it's sanity.

M: I said you don't see because you look to the sky for a cargo cult plane that can't possibly fly while pronouncing yourself sane rather than stupidly arrogant. You are saying you can't see something that can't exist. Duh! No wonder, stupid.

G: If somebody you knew claimed they saw a giant purple walrus eating the Empire State Building despite the overwhelming evidence against it, like nobody else seeing it and the Empire State Building standing there completely un-nibbled, would you nod your head and say "sure, could be, could be" or would you feel they were disturbed, possibly dangerous and in need of help? Would you feel arrogant if it was option B?

M: I'm talking to somebody who says he didn't see such a creature and is all proud of himself. Duh, again.

G: If god wants me to believe he exists, it's up to him to provide evidence, not his self-appointed spokesmen to assure me he's real because a schizophrenic goat-herder told him so. That's not arrogance, it's intelligence, reason, rationality.

M: Even Christians who believe in the wisdom of goat-herders could refute that stupid idea. If God were to make you believe He exists it would deprive you of free will so even on the simplest of doctrinal matters you express a lack of intelligence, no reason, and an utterly irrational idea. That, however, just scratches the surface of the imbecility of this idea, but since you can't even handle the obvious there's no point in going further.

 

[interchange]

This is where we need Voltaire to exclaim: "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to create him"

Perhaps human beings have limitations, and perhaps the myriad ways we deal with them are to be celebrated. If a psychotic person made a beautiful painting and believed it was the embodiment of a demonic spirit that would consume the world, would it be any less beautiful a painting? Would appreciating the painting require you to believe the same?

 

[Moonbeam]

Lets think about that rationally. I am an engineer. I create things, lots of things. When my creations fail, it is I who am judged for their failure not the creations themselves. I AM PUNISHED NOT MY CREATIONS.

In what kind of fucked up universe are we blamed for our creator's fuck ups? He made us badly and then judges US for his screw-up? Is this rational on ANY level? T---H---I---N---K!!!!

This is based on a fundamentally flawed unconscious assumption that we were made badly. In te first place, you know that we evolved via natural selection acting on randomly mutated DNA and were not designed by some engineer. We are subject to a lot of back problems, for example, as a result or our recently evolved upright stance.

But you are talking about the matter of sin. The notion of sin is a mental construct that requires the abstraction of language to create. Language provides with the tools to talk about things that don't exist and a means to make others feel sinful for doing this or that. Believing that sin exists you could call our original sin. Actually, it is our capacity for knowledge, the ability to look at the world and see separate things in it rather than completely as a total unified field of awareness. We sin because we live in a world of duality, of good things, bad things, etc., when the world is actually perfect as we are also. We invented a lie and we believe it. The perfection of God can only be seen when that lie is abandoned. We feel the world is evil because we learned to hate who we are. Real knowledge is to be had, not by learning more, but by unlearning what we imagine we already know. But it's nice to know that everything that you longed for in religion, being loved and being happy in the folds of a supreme being, all that returns to the self when the lie is pried out and abandoned. This is what Jesus did and the sense that His truth was snatched away from is the source of your rage. It can never be taken; it can only be buried under a ton of shit. Go into the shit and reclaim it. You have always been perfect.

 

[ch33zw1z]

If the atheist does good, and the theist does good, why undermine it by attacking each other?

I don't agree that questioning motive is undermining any good works.

In my XP, atheist and theist work together on a regular basis to do good.

The question remains: Can a theist do good for others without the motive of fear being the root cause. On one hand, you have good deeds while striving to be Christ-like. On the other hand, you have good deeds due to fear of eternal damnation. It's impossible to escape the constant questioning of motivation.

When an Atheist does good deeds, there's similar questioning of motive, it's more or less assured that it wasn't due to fear of eternal damnation.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

If God were to make you believe He exists it would deprive you of free will...

Total horse shit. Nobody's free will was deprived when we were convinced of the existence of the distant planets or microscopic organisms or any other actually existent thing. You're just parroting a bullshit apologist argument without considering it critically.

 

[Moonbeam]

This is where we need Voltaire to exclaim: "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to create him"

Perhaps human beings have limitations, and perhaps the myriad ways we deal with them are to be celebrated. If a psychotic person made a beautiful painting and believed it was the embodiment of a demonic spirit that would consume the world, would it be any less beautiful a painting? Would appreciating the painting require you to believe the same?

Perhaps the need to create Him comes from the fact that if we forgot Him it would be necessary to remember Him.

As to celebration of limitations I hear judge not least we be judged. The psychological truth behind that, I believe, is that we project our self hate onto others and judge them to be evil, thus sealing our self contempt in place. It is only in forgiveness of others and appreciation of who they are that we can forgive ourselves at a deep and meaningful emotional level. It opens the door of our prison, the one we do not see we are in.

 

[ch33zw1z]

There is no such thing as free will. Assume you believe in God as Christians do, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. The alpha and omega, first and the last, the beginning and the end. He knows everything, is all powerful, and everywhere at the same time.

He knows what you will choose before you even choose it, yet still creates you, fully knowing what your choices in life will be...including the choice of heaven or hell.

Free will is an illusion.

 

[Red Hawk]

I don't agree that questioning motive is undermining any good works.

In my XP, atheist and theist work together on a regular basis to do good.

The question remains: Can a theist do good for others without the motive of fear being the root cause. On one hand, you have good deeds while striving to be Christ-like. On the other hand, you have good deeds due to fear of eternal damnation. It's impossible to escape the constant questioning of motivation.

When an Atheist does good deeds, there's similar questioning of motive, it's more or less assured that it wasn't due to fear of eternal damnation.

Christians don't do good deeds for fear of eternal damnation, though. The whole point of Christianity is salvation doesn't come through deeds. Once saved, we are called to do good deeds, but our salvation is not dependent on it.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

There is no such thing as free will. Assume you believe in God as Christians do, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. The alpha and omega, first and the last, the beginning and the end. He knows everything, is all powerful, and everywhere at the same time.

He knows what you will choose before you even choose it, yet still creates you, fully knowing what your choices in life will be...including the choice of heaven or hell.

Free will is an illusion.

Spoken like a true Calvinist. lol

 

[ch33zw1z]

Christians don't do good deeds for fear of eternal damnation, though. The whole point of Christianity is salvation doesn't come through deeds. Once saved, we are called to do good deeds, but our salvation is not dependent on it.

You have quite a road ahead educating your fellow "believers"

Your salvation is based on your devotion to following the teachings in the Bible. All of it.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Spoken like a true Calvinist. lol

I don't affiliate with any specific belief system.

Call it like I see it.

 

[Red Hawk]

You have quite a road ahead educating your fellow "believers"

Your salvation is based on your devotion to following the teachings in the Bible. All of it.

Salvation is by grace through faith. This is a basic Christian concept, man.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I don't affiliate with any specific belief system.

Call it like I see it.

I already gathered that. Just poking and having a little fun.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Salvation is by grace through faith. This is a basic Christian concept, man.

Jesus set forth the necessary and sufficient conditions for entering the kingdom of heaven, and it he made no mention of grace nor faith, so bullshit.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Salvation is by grace through faith. This is a basic Christian concept, man.

He's incapable of understanding anything at this point...it's just words to him just as mine are to you. My advice for both of you is to don't worry about others or your differences in perception of the world...believe what you want to believe and do it with every fiber of your being...and eventually you'll realize that most everything you think you know is illusion and that it's actually the innate human construct of ego that destroys you.

 

[bshole]

I'm pretty sure you've never designed a sapient being before. Which would you prefer, for God to force all of humanity to worship him, or to give everyone a choice?

A choice? Worship me or I will burn you for infinity? That is a choice?

Its worse than that though, we have no evidence of his existence and plenty of evidence against his existence. For example, what army was completely buried in the Red Sea without a single shred of archaeological evidence left for modern scientists to find? If God really took out the Pharaoh, he also went back and removed all the chariots, weapons and bodies from the bottom of the Red Sea to ensure that nobody would be able to prove that it happened. Conclusion: either God of the Bible lies, does not exist or MANIPULATES/REMOVES evidence after the event.

Christians don't do good deeds for fear of eternal damnation, though. The whole point of Christianity is salvation doesn't come through deeds. Once saved, we are called to do good deeds, but our salvation is not dependent on it.

I know. They do it for swag and bragging rights in heaven. That was my initial post where the Christian apologist did an entire web page explaining the reason for good works was to get extra swag in heaven so that Heaven could have a caste system like we have here on earth.

http://www.snopes.com/religion/redsea.asp

 

[ch33zw1z]

Salvation is by grace through faith. This is a basic Christian concept, man.

Actions speak louder than words. Basic rule of life.

Salvation by the grace of God through faith, interesting topic.

The grace of God. So, he creates a being in his likeness, who disobeys his command, and man is forever punished unless you come back and begs forgiveness...if not, you burn enternally.

Then there's faith. Faith in what exactly. First, faith that he exists. Second, faith the he is the genie in the bottle and has the power to do anything. Third, faith that you salvation is indeed real, and that you've lived in a way that reflects the teachings enough to save your ass from eternity in misery.

Sounds like a good deal.

 

[ch33zw1z]

He's incapable of understanding anything at this point...it's just words to him just as mine are to you. My advice for both of you is to don't worry about others or your differences in perception of the world...believe what you want to believe and do it with every fiber of your being...and eventually you'll realize that most everything you think you know is illusion and that it's actually the innate human construct of ego that destroys you.

You know me that well now?

The concepts from red hawk are not new to me. I was raised in christianity and chose to think for myself. Or did I.....

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

You know me that well now?

The concepts from red hawk are not new to me. I was raised in christianity and chose to think for myself. Or did I.....

I used to think I knew quite a lot sort of like you, but over the years it's become quite clear to me just how little I know. But by all means flail about and enjoy yourself. I hope you eventually find what you're not looking for.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Lol, ok...whatever. again, you think you really know me....it's obvious you dont. I never claimed to know everything.

Show me a reasonable train of thought proving your beliefs, that doesn't end in faith, and we can continue.

IRL, I am very open to anyone believing what they wish, with the caveat being it doesn't negatively affect the world around them. In fact, it's typically Christians who are the most abrasive, and feel like it's their duty to force salvation on as many people as possible.

I'm not here trying change anyone's mind, I pose the questions I do because everyone should think about it and decide what they want.