Hopeful Monsters

BGIC - the cross-post thing is unfortunate.

And the last thing I am talking about is you having a personal agenda. That's not what I'm trying to say - even remotely.

I mean (and obviously feel strongly) that people/humankind must have some agenda with themselves to feel they have to 'Come to know God' and 'Come to Christ' etc.

And that they are not doing something about it (look at the post of yours that set me off).

Given that God, Christ etc is just invented drivel - then what is the agenda?

I'll have to help you:

- self-punishment

- feeling that life is a trial and we are answerable

- paranoid feelings that we haven't made the grade with 'Christ'

- putting ourselves on a lifetime's tread mill with a huge rock on our back

I could go on making a long list - but I am not going to derail a Thread that raised other interesting issues itself.

As an Atheist, I am utterly tired of the 'What have you done to know and come to Christ?' stuff.

So leave it out. Leave it out. We're sick and tired of it.

Got that?

I'll derail this Thread no further.

Cross Examiner

Where did we get God 'craves human worship,' exactly? That aside, God has made himself known via the created world, often referred to as General Revelation. He has made Himself known (more specifically) via the Bible, often referred to as Special Revelation. Materialists are an extremely small percentage of the human population. For the rest of the human population, it is believed that there is something or someone beyond themselves that they may rightly call God. So, He is not 'hidden' since General Revelation sufficiently convinces the vast majority of human beings to search beyond themselves for Him. And even materialism is explained well by the Book of Romans, among other places in the Bible. It is dangerous to assume that your very reading of this is purely accidental.

Regards,
BGic

Cross Examiner

TruthIsTold, that name is becoming ironic, you keep writing:
Unfortunate? No, no. You are too hard on yourself. It is all my fault.

Then you shouldn't have written this:

"But you DIDN'T TELL ME WHAT THE REAL AGENDA IS DID YOU?

READ MY POST AGAIN AND ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION."

So, it is 'unfortunate' and there is no need to apologize to any of the lesser folk since your indictment that I have a 'personal agenda' should never have been inferred in the first place. I wonder where one ever got that wacky idea?

Interesting theory there. Are you familiar with the term 'properly basic belief?'

I see. It is my post that set you off. I am culpable for your ravings now?

Yes. Given.

If your conduct is an advertisement of what you have, that you can 'help' me with, then thanks but no thanks on the 'help.'

Then ignore it, live your life as you see fit and let freedom (i.e. of speech) ring. If you are 'utterly tired' of another's reasoning, then ignore it, and move on. You are clearly right in all your ways and have no need of another's counsel.

Abrasive. And what is all this about 'we?' Are you royalty or do you have a mouse in your pocket?

Regards,
BGic

EGGO

Woah, cool down a bit friend. Billy has been answering a lot of questions nice and calmly.

Just because he missed yours doesn't mean he doesn't hold it in regard (right?).

atheist_in_foxhole

Christianity: 2 billion
Islam: 1.3 billion
Hinduism: 900 million
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 850 million
Buddhism: 360 million
Chinese traditional religion: 225 million

Source: Adherents.com

Cross Examiner

Thanks for the stats atheist_in_foxhole. You don't infer that the w/x/y/z catch-all bin=# materialists ... right?

Interesting name. You're not literally in a foxhole, or near death's door in any way, right? At least we hope not

Regards,
BGic

Opera Nut

"Purring and farting on His throne."

---Mark Twain, somewhere from Letters From the Earth or maybe The Mysterious Stranger, I forget which.





:notworthy

Cross Examiner

Thanks for your contribution to this thread Opera Nut. People like quotes. I like quotes. Here are some quotes that I like:

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."
-- G. K. Chesterton

"Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power....."
-- Plato

�I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity. We can say to the authors of every other religion, you are neither gods or the agents of deity. You are but the agents of falsehood molded from the same clay as the rest of mortals. Your temples and priests proclaim your origin. But Jesus Christ astounds me and fills me with awe!�
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

"It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
-- Francis Bacon

"The atheists are for the most part imprudent and misguided scholars who reason badly who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis the eternity of things and of inevitability....."
-- Voltaire

"I believe Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
-- C.S. Lewis

"Moses could mediate on the law; Muhammed could brandish a sword; Buddha could give personal counsel;Confucius could offer wise sayings; but none of these men was qualified to offer an atonement for the sins of the world... Christ alone is worthy of unlimited devotion and service."
-- R.C. Sproul

"The Bible says that if you seek God with all your heart, then you will surely find him. Surley find him. It's the person who wants to know God that God reveals himself to. And if a person doesn't want to know God, well, God has created the world and the human mind in such a way that he doesn't have to."
-- Dallas Willard

""All if this can be boiled down to a three-word process: investigation....decision.....transformation..."
-- Lee Strobel

"How about that California recall eh?"
-- BGic

Singerian

The realist at last loses patience with ideals altogether, and sees in them only something to blind us, something to numb us, something to murder self in us, something whereby, instead of resisting death, we can disarm it by committing suicide. The idealist, who has taken refuge with the ideals because he hates himself and is ashamed of himself, thinks that all this is so much the better. The realist, who has come to have a deep respect for himself and faith in the validity of his own will, thinks it so much the worse. To the one, human nature, naturally corrupt, is held back from ruinous excesses only by self-denying conformity to the ideals. To the other these ideals are only swaddling clothes which man has outgrown, and which insufferably impede his movements. No wonder the two cannot agree. The idealist says, "Realism means egotism; and egotism means depravity." The realist declares that when a man abnegates the will to live and be free in a world of the living and free, seeking only to conform to ideals for the sake of being, not himself, but "a good man," then he is morally dead and rotten, and must be left unheeded to abide his resurrection, if that by good luck arrive before his bodily death. Unfortunately, this is the sort of speech that nobody but a realist understands.

--George Bernard Shaw

livius drusus

Lovely quotes all, but let's return to the issue, please. What is worship and how/why does (the presumably Christian) God like it?