emotional

I pity the child who assumes contact with his father only by mail. They write and reply but they don't feel or know each other at all.

If all God can do is pass us petrified letters (the alleged "Words of God", though by their contradiction with natural fact they show that they are clearly nothing of the sort), then excuuuuuse me.

Albert Cipriani

Davnet wrote:


Dear Devnet,
I pity the childish adult who assumes contact with his God must be on his terms and not God's. Such an adult sends angry smoke signals and God lets him fume. Then the childish adult wonders why he doesn't feel or know God.

If all grown adults can do is huff and puff about why God doesn't talk to them in the way that they, who make no claim to be all-knowing, wish God would talk to them, well then excuuuuuse yourself! <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> – Albert the Traditional Catholic 1/2/02

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Mind if I interject?

Assuming that God exists (which is something that I now do), it is quite clear that for now, the door to public revelation is closed. When was the last person who claimed to have a link with God, preached about some event about to come to be, and actually had it come to be? Over 2000 years ago. Need I say more?

I know you will be <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> at this, but that's the only logical explanation, especially if you consider christianity complete bunk like I do.

Albert Cipriani

Dear J.C.,
You confuse the superset of revelation for its subset of prophecy.

Revelation is information that we are not privy to. Ergo, if we are to get it (for example the Triune procession of a single God, the Incarnation) God had to reveal it. Hence, the name, revelation. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Optimistic

Kvalhion

"Talking to God" is a personal thing that cannot and should not be verified or validated by others. This is a good example:

This has personal relevance. Assuming a god exists within ourselves, who is to say that for this person, talking to God (reflecting within herself) didn't "work" by her finding an article at home. Whether or not you call it talking to God is irrelevant. It worked for her, so she has faith.

To me, the important concept is that the concept of God should not be One God above all. ImGod's wife cannot apply what worked for her to others. She cannot say "if you are debating an issue, pray and then look in the newspaper and it will be resolved." It worked for her and has relevance to her.

People who claim to talk to God come up with all sorts of ideas and justifications in the name of God's will. Yet oftentimes what people come up with are directly contradictory to each other, which only adds to the concept that personal revelation should be applied to the person and not to a population of people.

It is nonsensical to pick and choose who you believe is really talking to or inspired by god. If One God did exist, then the messages given to each person (if it were meant to be applied outside of themselves) would be consistent with each other. If you take a group of people and separately document what their revelations from God are on a variety of issues or subjects, the results will wildly vary. Unless you allow them to congregate beforehand to discuss them.

What else does mass belief in One God do, than dictate what God should be telling you, or telling you how to interpret such things to be consistent with whatever the Church's ideals are.
Just like Albert is pointing out, it is useless to try to have a conversation from God because Albert already knows what God is going to say! And if God doesn't say such things to do, well, you are obviously wrong (rather than the other way around).

People who try to talk to a One God are setting themselves up for a fall if they believe that they will actually hear something or be able to reconcile whatever they believe to have heard through verification and validation of others.

What would I do? Talk to God (also called self reflection or meditation) and do what is best for you. It may not be as nice as a comfortable myth of some supergod guiding your life, but at least you can find answers for yourself from within yourself without having to wonder what is wrong with yourself.

Vibr8gKiwi

Ok, so basically it seems the early Catholics noticed god didn't seem to be talking to them anymore but the scripture didn't explain why nobody was getting revelation anymore, and so they came up with the above ad hoc argument that the heavens must be closed.

Notice that what "Jesus did perfectly" apparently didn't include quite a few things Paul added. By the above "logic" all those books written by Paul must be thrown out as they are "additional public communication to man" after Jesus' public ministry. Or is it ok to add whatever you want if you just claim you had a vision of Jesus and what you're saying comes from Jesus/God?

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: Vibr8gKiwi ]</p>

doink-chan

When I was a Catholic, I prayed to God on a regular basis. God, however, did not talk to me at all. Nope, he didn't care about my prayers, he was just sitting on his big fat Godly ass, probably eating Raisin Bran(TM) and heavenly cheesecake(TM) in the process.

Since God never answered my prayers, it only added to my growing suspicion that God doesn't exist, and if he does, he's a sadistic doink who doesn't even care about answering prayers of his followers. Nope, he's just in it for the heavenly cheesecake(TM), and don't forget those sexy angel women...

doink "Give me another piece of cheesecake, Gabriel...oh, there's a prayer from doinkies? Well, I won't answer it, besides, I've already put doinkies on my 'People Going to Hell When They Die' list" chan

Albert Cipriani

Dear Vibr,
You can call it an "ad hoc argument" without getting an argument from me to the contrary. That perjorative adjective doesn't refute the cogency of the argument.

You argue:


The operative word is "added." At conception you yourself were perfectly formed informationally. The trillion cells added thereafter which constitutes your present form changed no information.

Likewise, Jesus perfectly communicated to us via His life and death. St. Pauls additions changed nothing. Ergo, no new revelation has been disclosed since the Word became Flesh. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

sandlewood

The analogy is more akin to a parent that disappears and has no contact with the child at all except to cause events to happen around the child. Is this what we normally think of as personal relationship? Is this the kind of personal relationship that parents have with children? As parents, do we speak in cryptic ways and expect our children to understand, and then simply tell our children "too bad, we must communicate on my terms"? Rather, I think we make every effort to communicate to our children on their terms. (I don't care much for the parent-child/God-human analogy)

Instead of speaking with God on his terms, in a personal relationship shouldn't we be meeting each other halfway? Allow me to be a bit presumptuous here and guess that you will say that God is indeed meeting us halfway but we are refusing to meet him halfway. But I don't think so. I'm not so unwilling to believe that god speaks to us through events and coincidences if that is really the way he communicates. But what I ask for at least is a way to tell the difference between events that are messages and events that are not messages. Which coincidences are really nothing more than coincidences? You might say that if I had an open mind I might see that these events we really communication from God. But I think to have an open mind means to consider all possibilities. And since this communication with God seems to be no different that if there were no communication, you may want to consider that there is in fact no communication at all. It is also a possibility, assuming you have an open mind.

Is it a test? Perhaps it is the case that we should be spending our lifetimes learning and understanding what God is saying. But we should not have to spend our lifetimes just to figure out what the method of communication is. That just doesn't make sense.