Wow, that is an interesting life story. I thought I had it weird, being abandoned in Greece at age 16. I too have led a charmed life in some ways.
I would say that it is not so much that prayers are answered. Rather, the prayers you would have made had you known enough to pray for that, are what is answered. I don't always get what I want, but I always get what I need.
I don't need to explain it. I don't need to say, definitively, this was God, that was coincidence. In the end, those are just stories we tell ourselves. The events themselves are their own meaning, there is nothing beyond that except what we tell ourselves. Or maybe there is something beyond that, but if there is, that is the point: it is beyond that, and can not be discerned from that.
That's what Christianity, or any spiritual path, should be. Real and practical.
I knew I might lose that bet, I have met a few really good Christians who were really kinda bad until they found Christ. But you know, although you can't control grace, you do have to be open to it for it to work. Right?
Oh for the love of... I'm angry at FredFredrickson for being a heartless tool. HERE we are still talking about the fridge. Do you need me to make you a colorful PowerPoint presentation with circles and arrows and labels done in Comic Sans?
Sorry, I didn't mean to insult Cory & Cory, they were awesome in that movie, but c'mon, they kinda both crashed and burned after that.
Doctorow, though, you leave that kid out in the rain, and a raindrop hits his forehead? He'll look up all slack-jawed until he drowns if you don't get him under some cover.
No. The customer is right unless them being right interferes with another, bigger customer being right. Or it interferes with a number of other customers being right. That's the way it really works.
The way it should work is, the customer is only right if they are not wrong. In most of Europe, if you go into an establishment looking to have your butt smooched and every single one of your sniffy little needs met, you will be shown the door rather than letting you waste the employee's and other customer's time.
Then hell can't be forever. I could go to hell for a day, decide I'd rather have God's love, wave buh-bye to the Devil, and settle in for an eternity of snuggling with God. Right?
No, I will not chalk it up to insanity! I absolutely LOVE Good Christians, are you kidding? You guys are awesome!
However. I am willing to bet that you would still be a good person even if you hadn't found Christianity. You would have found something, or invented something, that helped you be a good person, because that is what you wanted, before you'd even heard about Christ.
How can any intelligent decision NOT be an effect of environmental factors? What is it an effect of? And if you try to claim will is an uncaused cause, you'll need to back that claim up with some pretty solid reasoning, because uncaused causes are ridiculous.
Why do you hope we have free will? I don't even understand that hope. What does holding on to the idea of free will give you? Why even care?
I do know what I'm talking about. I know what YOUR beliefs are, and I know those aren't the beliefs I'm attacking. But if you try to pretend for one second that the beliefs I AM attacking are not incredibly popular, I'm going to have to laugh at you.
I know your proof, I tried it, and it didn't work for me. Sorry, been there, done that, bought the T shirt and moved on.
It isn't my religion, doofus. He's not my God, I don't go to hell. I bought a 'get out of hell free' card from God's sister, who runs a pawn shop in Satan's garage.
Buddhists often adopt the beliefs of other cultures. Hinduism developed the belief in karma and reincarnation. Buddhism reinterpreted that belief to refer to the individual moments of our lives.
A sense impression arrives at the 'sense gates,' an abstract way of looking at a part of pre-consciousness. Notable sense impressions, as determined by 'previous life karma,' otherwise known as the value judgments we have placed on previous moments, are promoted towards consciousness.
The sense impression (including sensation of thought forms, such as 'self,' 'other,' and 'banana split.') begins to become a conscious moment. Value judgments, if any, are applied and the moment is quickly reinterpreted in light of those judgments. The reinterpreted moment is then presented to the consciousness construct, which usually judges it according to a sort of mental virus comprised of a series of rules, a judge, and a criminal/victim. This is the generation of 'current life karma.'
Placing a value judgment of 'Unimportant' at this point is just harmful as placing a 'Good' or 'Bad' value judgment on the moment, because it essentially erases the moment from consciousness, and the presumptions that underlie thinking this moment was important enough to raise to consciousness in the first place, and then NOT important, essentially cancel out.
The judge reads from the book of the rules, sentences, and punishes the victim (i.e. a part of you.) The punishment you choose to keep inflicting on yourself because a mental virus told you to is 'future life karma.'
You are free to stop participating in this cycle during the 'present life karma' part of it, instead of creating more karma: positive, negative, or neutral; but that is really hard to do and takes lots of practice to do continually.
Listen Jimmy, if a zombie fire ant ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about! Zombie fire ants crawl in through your ear and feed on your brains while you're asleep, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL THEM ZOMBIES?
Have you ever read the essay, "Santaland Diaries," by David Sedaris? He worked as an elf in Santaland in the mall. Funny story, true story, one day a busload of mentally challenged folks came in. He couldn't tell for sure where in the line that busload ended and where the regular New Yorkers started up again.
"Everyone looks retarded if you put your mind to it." --David Sedaris
As social animals, we naturally have evolved an innate sense of justice and fairness, and a species wide private code for transmitting internal state that can be brought under conscious control, for most people, with concerted effort. Pathological liars, paranoid schizophrenics, sociopaths and psychopaths obviously excepted. There are also other, belief based reasons this internal state transmission can get messed up. But those strains the definition of 'messed up,' because one could argue that they are transmitting faulty internal state as accurately as possible.
It has to do with the caloric commitment required for true emotional release. And the fact that we have, surprise surprise, evolved eyes with whites, so we can see where other human's eyes are pointing. And a system that ties our direction of focus to our internal state. Neat, huh? It's almost like telepathy when it all works right.
But, internal state can get messed up by beliefs, resulting in the shut down of the belief firewalling, assimilation, and adjustment systems. What to do then, eh? You are pretty well screwed, my friend. Reality doesn't care what we believe. Well, maybe it cares in the sense that it generally tends to reward correct and punish incorrect beliefs. Unless those incorrect beliefs become so strong in a community that new members have no hope of avoiding assimilating them. We're genetically programmed to assimilate each other's beliefs and adjust our own according to the respect we give the holder of those beliefs. We have to learn not to trust just anyone, and the correct reason WHY not to trust everyone.
And can I get a 'Woot! Woot!' for the scientific method? Nice idea, human who came up with it! If I could verify who you were, dig you up and give you a pat on the back, I would. In fact, posthumous pats on the back for everyone who ever came up with the idea on their own, and a fine how do you do to all my brothers and sisters in the faith who have chosen to believe. Hallelujah! Amen.
There is no for sure for sure. There are beliefs held in accordance with the evidence supporting them, and their position in and overall support of the holistic belief structure; open to change as circumstances dictate.
The holistic, emotional circuitry isn't bad if it's kept tuned right by a logical side.
The logical side works pretty well if it has a solid holistic base to build from.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we are social animals each born into a social situation unique to us and yet to the most part, shared by billions substantially like us. And they all, every billion one of them over the age of two, have beliefs they are all too happy to share with us. Unsuspecting, we were all thrust into a veritable cesspit of strongly held bad ideas, with a few shit covered diamonds floating here and there, indistinguishable from the fetid mass until you find them and polish them off.
This is the point in the cartoon where I emerge from the cesspit, shrug my shoulders, and say, "Eh? It's a living."
Brahma and the Divas are Hinduism, not Buddhism. Buddha explicitly said, "Don't believe anything anyone tells you, even me, unless it agrees with your logic and understanding of the world."
Capitalizing 'Free Will' does not make it apparent. Free will (if it exists) is a curse, because we have no way of distinguishing God's will from that of a charlatan posing as the voice of God, be that voice internal or external. Supposedly, God judges us by these rules that we have no way of verifying. Punishes us infinitely, according to some faiths. We have to 'take it on faith' but we could be taking the word of an impostor, a false God, and thus doomed by the real God's rules.
Look, I understand what you've been taught. You don't need to explain it to me, it isn't as though I haven't given it serious consideration. I'm just not buying that the world works in any way remotely related to the way you think it does. Don't take it as an insult, in my way of looking at things, being deluded is just another state of mind. It isn't good or bad, it just is.
You don't even acknowledge or respond to my arguments, I don't know why I bother. Oh yes, because I like doing this. I have no way of knowing for sure that I am not the deluded one, so I always listen. But to believe in God, I would have to rearrange so many of my ideas, I don't even know where I would begin at this point.
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Wow, that is an interesting life story. I thought I had it weird, being abandoned in Greece at age 16. I too have led a charmed life in some ways.
I would say that it is not so much that prayers are answered. Rather, the prayers you would have made had you known enough to pray for that, are what is answered. I don't always get what I want, but I always get what I need.
I don't need to explain it. I don't need to say, definitively, this was God, that was coincidence. In the end, those are just stories we tell ourselves. The events themselves are their own meaning, there is nothing beyond that except what we tell ourselves. Or maybe there is something beyond that, but if there is, that is the point: it is beyond that, and can not be discerned from that.
Hahaha, I'm an American. YHBT, YHL, HAND.
How ya like my upmods, bitch? Who's yer Daddy? Say it, call me Daddy...
(Cartman voice) Sweeeeeet!
That's what Christianity, or any spiritual path, should be. Real and practical.
I knew I might lose that bet, I have met a few really good Christians who were really kinda bad until they found Christ. But you know, although you can't control grace, you do have to be open to it for it to work. Right?
You parsed that wrong. By 'bigger customer,' I did not mean 'bigger entity that is a customer,' I meant 'customer that buys more.'
Oh for the love of... I'm angry at FredFredrickson for being a heartless tool. HERE we are still talking about the fridge. Do you need me to make you a colorful PowerPoint presentation with circles and arrows and labels done in Comic Sans?
Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to snap at you.
Sorry, I didn't mean to insult Cory & Cory, they were awesome in that movie, but c'mon, they kinda both crashed and burned after that.
Doctorow, though, you leave that kid out in the rain, and a raindrop hits his forehead? He'll look up all slack-jawed until he drowns if you don't get him under some cover.
No. The customer is right unless them being right interferes with another, bigger customer being right. Or it interferes with a number of other customers being right. That's the way it really works.
The way it should work is, the customer is only right if they are not wrong. In most of Europe, if you go into an establishment looking to have your butt smooched and every single one of your sniffy little needs met, you will be shown the door rather than letting you waste the employee's and other customer's time.
Then hell can't be forever. I could go to hell for a day, decide I'd rather have God's love, wave buh-bye to the Devil, and settle in for an eternity of snuggling with God. Right?
No, I will not chalk it up to insanity! I absolutely LOVE Good Christians, are you kidding? You guys are awesome!
However. I am willing to bet that you would still be a good person even if you hadn't found Christianity. You would have found something, or invented something, that helped you be a good person, because that is what you wanted, before you'd even heard about Christ.
Do not name your child Cory. All Corys grow up to be dumb as posts. Corey Haim. Corey Feldman. Cory Doctorow, all of them.
How can any intelligent decision NOT be an effect of environmental factors? What is it an effect of? And if you try to claim will is an uncaused cause, you'll need to back that claim up with some pretty solid reasoning, because uncaused causes are ridiculous.
Why do you hope we have free will? I don't even understand that hope. What does holding on to the idea of free will give you? Why even care?
You are making so little sense I don't even know what you are talking about, or who you are angry at.
Follow the thread, lady, we aren't talking about the office fridge anymore. Stupid people who don't know how to read piss me off.
I do know what I'm talking about. I know what YOUR beliefs are, and I know those aren't the beliefs I'm attacking. But if you try to pretend for one second that the beliefs I AM attacking are not incredibly popular, I'm going to have to laugh at you.
I know your proof, I tried it, and it didn't work for me. Sorry, been there, done that, bought the T shirt and moved on.
It isn't my religion, doofus. He's not my God, I don't go to hell. I bought a 'get out of hell free' card from God's sister, who runs a pawn shop in Satan's garage.
Buddhists often adopt the beliefs of other cultures. Hinduism developed the belief in karma and reincarnation. Buddhism reinterpreted that belief to refer to the individual moments of our lives.
A sense impression arrives at the 'sense gates,' an abstract way of looking at a part of pre-consciousness. Notable sense impressions, as determined by 'previous life karma,' otherwise known as the value judgments we have placed on previous moments, are promoted towards consciousness.
The sense impression (including sensation of thought forms, such as 'self,' 'other,' and 'banana split.') begins to become a conscious moment. Value judgments, if any, are applied and the moment is quickly reinterpreted in light of those judgments. The reinterpreted moment is then presented to the consciousness construct, which usually judges it according to a sort of mental virus comprised of a series of rules, a judge, and a criminal/victim. This is the generation of 'current life karma.'
Placing a value judgment of 'Unimportant' at this point is just harmful as placing a 'Good' or 'Bad' value judgment on the moment, because it essentially erases the moment from consciousness, and the presumptions that underlie thinking this moment was important enough to raise to consciousness in the first place, and then NOT important, essentially cancel out.
The judge reads from the book of the rules, sentences, and punishes the victim (i.e. a part of you.) The punishment you choose to keep inflicting on yourself because a mental virus told you to is 'future life karma.'
You are free to stop participating in this cycle during the 'present life karma' part of it, instead of creating more karma: positive, negative, or neutral; but that is really hard to do and takes lots of practice to do continually.
Listen Jimmy, if a zombie fire ant ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about! Zombie fire ants crawl in through your ear and feed on your brains while you're asleep, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL THEM ZOMBIES?
Have you ever read the essay, "Santaland Diaries," by David Sedaris? He worked as an elf in Santaland in the mall. Funny story, true story, one day a busload of mentally challenged folks came in. He couldn't tell for sure where in the line that busload ended and where the regular New Yorkers started up again.
"Everyone looks retarded if you put your mind to it."
--David Sedaris
came for this. Thanks AC
No doubt. On behalf of all of us, I hereby grant the AC the "Most Appropriate Use of the 'I for one welcome..' Meme Ever" Award.
Ants, people. Ants in space... zombie fire ants... Would you like us a draw you a map, or a diagram of some kind? With colorful labels and arrows?
As social animals, we naturally have evolved an innate sense of justice and fairness, and a species wide private code for transmitting internal state that can be brought under conscious control, for most people, with concerted effort. Pathological liars, paranoid schizophrenics, sociopaths and psychopaths obviously excepted. There are also other, belief based reasons this internal state transmission can get messed up. But those strains the definition of 'messed up,' because one could argue that they are transmitting faulty internal state as accurately as possible.
It has to do with the caloric commitment required for true emotional release. And the fact that we have, surprise surprise, evolved eyes with whites, so we can see where other human's eyes are pointing. And a system that ties our direction of focus to our internal state. Neat, huh? It's almost like telepathy when it all works right.
But, internal state can get messed up by beliefs, resulting in the shut down of the belief firewalling, assimilation, and adjustment systems. What to do then, eh? You are pretty well screwed, my friend. Reality doesn't care what we believe. Well, maybe it cares in the sense that it generally tends to reward correct and punish incorrect beliefs. Unless those incorrect beliefs become so strong in a community that new members have no hope of avoiding assimilating them. We're genetically programmed to assimilate each other's beliefs and adjust our own according to the respect we give the holder of those beliefs. We have to learn not to trust just anyone, and the correct reason WHY not to trust everyone.
And can I get a 'Woot! Woot!' for the scientific method? Nice idea, human who came up with it! If I could verify who you were, dig you up and give you a pat on the back, I would. In fact, posthumous pats on the back for everyone who ever came up with the idea on their own, and a fine how do you do to all my brothers and sisters in the faith who have chosen to believe. Hallelujah! Amen.
There is no for sure for sure. There are beliefs held in accordance with the evidence supporting them, and their position in and overall support of the holistic belief structure; open to change as circumstances dictate.
The holistic, emotional circuitry isn't bad if it's kept tuned right by a logical side.
The logical side works pretty well if it has a solid holistic base to build from.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we are social animals each born into a social situation unique to us and yet to the most part, shared by billions substantially like us. And they all, every billion one of them over the age of two, have beliefs they are all too happy to share with us. Unsuspecting, we were all thrust into a veritable cesspit of strongly held bad ideas, with a few shit covered diamonds floating here and there, indistinguishable from the fetid mass until you find them and polish them off.
This is the point in the cartoon where I emerge from the cesspit, shrug my shoulders, and say, "Eh? It's a living."
Beliefs justified by evidence that can change if evidence dictates they change? Don't mind if I do!
Brahma and the Divas are Hinduism, not Buddhism. Buddha explicitly said, "Don't believe anything anyone tells you, even me, unless it agrees with your logic and understanding of the world."
Capitalizing 'Free Will' does not make it apparent. Free will (if it exists) is a curse, because we have no way of distinguishing God's will from that of a charlatan posing as the voice of God, be that voice internal or external. Supposedly, God judges us by these rules that we have no way of verifying. Punishes us infinitely, according to some faiths. We have to 'take it on faith' but we could be taking the word of an impostor, a false God, and thus doomed by the real God's rules.
Look, I understand what you've been taught. You don't need to explain it to me, it isn't as though I haven't given it serious consideration. I'm just not buying that the world works in any way remotely related to the way you think it does.
Don't take it as an insult, in my way of looking at things, being deluded is just another state of mind. It isn't good or bad, it just is.
You don't even acknowledge or respond to my arguments, I don't know why I bother. Oh yes, because I like doing this. I have no way of knowing for sure that I am not the deluded one, so I always listen. But to believe in God, I would have to rearrange so many of my ideas, I don't even know where I would begin at this point.