On the contrary, Christianity is about accepting reality, with all it’s paradoxes. It’s not whether you like it or not. Accepting what you are will make you like it. 
Augustine said that there is something greater than us within ourselves.
I found something that you might find interesting.
As for The Matrix, I was not talking about flying around and fighting robots, but I wanted to highlight the idea of the higher reality.
I agree. You restated exactly what I said. You believe it despite the fact that their is no reason to believe it and despite the fact that it is a paradox. What did you mean by that last sentence? Sounds kind of like what a Nazi might have said to a Jew during the haulocast!? Make sure that you are not just being brain washed by Christianity.
Your quote from Simone Weil is in direct contradiction of the scripture and I think you know that. Salvation is by Faith, not by works. An Atheist with a good heart goes to Hell! (Ghandi, Einstein, etc.) A christian that kills thousands of people goes to Heaven! (i.e. - The Inquisition, The Crusades, etc.)
Please check out these two sites. I implore you to read through them. I think that you will enjoy them.
Later,
Skeptic[/url]
I never said there’s no reason to believe it. I only said that believing it is paradoxical (i.e. the first shall be last, and the last shall be first… where’s the logic?). And yes, it is about accepting reality. Tell me reality isn’t paradoxical and you’ve said one of the greatest lies ever.
Ok. Maybe the last sentence you quoted wasn’t exactly well thought. It’s not about liking. Lot more than that. It’s enjoying The Whole.
I’ve also been thinking about logic’s validity. Here’s one point of view, a Christian following logics to the point of madness. Christ tells us that in order to win Him, we must sacrifice ourselves. But what is the greatest sacrifice one can do? Being deprived of Christ. So, in order to win Christ, we must deny Him.
Another point of view. Logics only shows relations between elements of The Whole, The Universe, be them abstract or concrete elements. It doesn’t explain, though, the reason of existence. Nor does it make possible the existence of free will (maybe it does, but I can’t see how…).
Hmm… What Simone Weil stated there may be wrong, but I think you’ve taken it too far.
Believing in Christ doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want, your place in Heaven is assured. But let’s not judge people.
Interesting links you posted there.
“Hell?”:
It’s partially what Cristians believe. Except for the ‘dont seek forgiveness from your deity’ thing. Yes, accepting responsabilty of your own actions. And not blaming the Devil for your sins.
As for Pascal’s Wager, he should study more religion (although I’m sure he’s already studied more than I have). No, I don’t agree to his rational way of looking at reality. You don’t choose if there is any God or not, according to your own pleasure. Maybe I’m understanding this wrong, but he values his life more than the truth.
Paradoxes are irrational and illogical. Believe whatever you want to, but until you can show me there is a rational reason to believe, then you can’t expect myself nor any other rational people to believe it. Would you agree that the Greek gods were irrational and paradoxical? how about Islam? Well, then why don’t you believe in them?
This is not paradoxical? It is just metaphorical. The extravagant and arrogant will be last in heaven, where as the meek and humble shall be first in heaven. It’s just too bad that most Christians have not figured that one out yet.
That’s the point, what reality are you referring to? The fake reality that bible has made up? or reality as we know it? Ok, are you ready? Reality isn’t paradoxical! There you go, I said it. I see no lie in saying so. You will have to explain what I lied about. You may feel that reality leaves you with questions but that is not a paradox; it just means that you are missing some answers. You just so happened to have filled the answers to those questions with your religion, just like every other religion tries to do. No difference.
Since when did you start speaking on behalf of all Christians?! Christians believe whatever they feel like believing. They have no basic set of beliefs because the bible leaves the rules at such an ambiguous level. So Christians can take it however they want to. It depends mostly on their personality.
You obviously didn’t read the whole page. The concept is ridiculous and Pascal realizes that. The point is that the Atheist cannot just choose to believe something. How do you believe something that isn’t true? Do you believe in Santa Clause? how about Zeus? how about the 300 million Hindu gods?
Here is an example that some one used on another board.
You continue to tell me that logic is not an issue. If it’s not then you will have to explain how I am expected to believe something without logic? If God created us, why did he create us with logical brains if he didn’t want us to use them? How else would he expect us to believe? Faith? I have faith that I can walk through a brick wall, but every time that I try to, I end up with a really bad headache.
Unless you are willing to have a conversation based on logic then we have nothing else to talk about. I think that I have already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christianity is an illusion. If you choose to believe otherwise then that is your problem.
Peace,
Jason
Dang it!!! I hate it when I forget to login! That was me…
Greek gods didn’t send their son to live the human tragedy of existing. If all gods were real, the God of Christinaity understands humas best.
Ok. If the first shall be the last part doesn’t seem paradoxical to you, try this one: you have to admit your mistake to be forgiven. This is the first one that came into my mind right now.
If the real reality isn’t paradoxical to you, keep looking. Ask yourself what Stephen Hawking asked : Why did the universe go through all the bother of existing?
Jesus says: ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.’ (John 13:34) John does not give us an account of the bread and wine, but instead depicts Jesus as washing the feet of his disciples. In the same chapter, in verse 13, Jesus says, ‘So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.’ What’s so ambiguous about this rule?
I’m only saying that if you put too much accent on logics, you won’t reach the truth. I’m not telling you to stop using your brain. I’m only telling you that logics does not explain it all, reality I mean.
You didn’t believe enough. I tried something simillar, but my will is too weak. 
I guess we’ve gotta keep trying 
There are examples of mystics who can do stuff like bilocation, like St. Anthony of Padua, St. Ambrose of Milan and Padre Pio of Italy.
I didn’t read the whole of Pascal’s Wager, because I didn’t have time. But I have read about it before, and it’s just an Atheist’s excuse for not believing. Do you think it’s ridiculous to believe in God? How about a man driving a car? To me, at least, that is pretty ridiculous. Just a man in a moving box, thinking cool because of the brand of his box. Ridiculous, but not impossible, I see it everyday.
I have a question to post to Skeptic. Have you ever heard about/witness Christians who have been handicapped/ill for years and some have even been declared by doctors to be incurrable. But under the grace of God they managed to become completely healed of their handicap/illness. In the book of John, he talked about Jesus healing people who were crippled/blind etc.; how do you explain this? After all an Atheist is defined as one who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods, therefore in my interpretation, he/she does not believe in the supernatural as well.
I often wonder whether there really are such things as spirits, good or evil. Watched ‘The Exorcist’? Do you really think these kind of a scenario never exists? If devils exist, then God should exist as well, afterall God created the devils right?
I know I wasn’t involved in this discussion and haven’t read all the above… but here I am, as always.
I don’t believe that till I see one myself. All those things I’ve heard can be false as far as I am concerned.
But… even if I see one (and a doctor of my choice exam the handicap before and than after the episode) I will doubt that it’s some kind of power of the mind or something. Like people who are able to bend spoons… forgot what they are called.
Definitely not. However, as I said, we cannot underestimate the power of our minds. We use only 5% of out brains, 95% is still obscure to us. Einstein is thought to be able to use 10% of his brain… reason why he was a genius maybe. Telekinesis and psychokinesis (remembered the name now) has nothing to do with believing or disbelieving in God(s).
It’s a film… it’s like saying that witches really existed. Now is thought that all that paranoia and hallucinations some people, who they said to be witches, had was a virus, a disease. So people who they thought to be possessed by evil were just ill.
I don't think this is a fair critique of Christianity at all. That vast majority of American spiritual people who aren't Christian criticize Christianity for being too dogmatic and rigid. If you want to find people who believe whatever they want, look to New Age people, and the neo-pagans.
There are people that claim to be Christian that believe some pretty odd stuff, but that's not a property of the faith itself- the tenets of Christianity are clearly defined, as is the source of those doctrines.
Well I’ll just have to tell you, this is true and has happenned many many times. You have never been to a church nor never have been a Christian yourself, that’s why you’ve never gotten a chance to witness it. There has been testimonies of people struck with elephantiasis, and upon prayers after prayers and faith, the enlarged tissue and flesh rotted and fell off, leaving them behind looking as normal as anyone around; all caught on film!
If telekinesis and psychokinesis is truely behind all the miraculous works done by God on the handicap/ill, then it’s amazing how so many pastors in the world are able to do this; without training and just mere prayer.
My church held their annual youth camp in Malaysia a few years ago. In one of the service, our pastor invite some spirits into our chapel. Some of those possessed starting vomitting, some who were well-known to be strong in their faith began to denounce their faith in Christ but upon ‘recovery’ were surprised at their own actions. Please do not be mislead over here, the objective of this event was just to allow the youths of our church to experience and witness that this is real, nothing ‘black-magic’ about this.
I meant ‘supernatural’ over here to mean something related to the paranormal.
oOpz… sorry for the many errors made in the language. I forgot to edit it. 
First of all, this is a ridiculous assumption as you know nothing about Clementine. That’s very disrespectful! Secondly, about miraculous recoveries, a loving God that does wonderful miracles, does not create deformed babies, long drawn-out suffering deaths, and senseless insane criminal minds that rape, abuse, and murder young people. Get a clue!
I really don’t know how to respond to this, so I am going to just leave it alone.
To Uccisore:
I think you missed my point Uccisore. No big deal though. I was stating that there is no single Christian doctrine. These days, there are 30,000 denominations and that number is still growing. I was just telling h2o that she can’t speak for everyone b/c everyone has a different perspective.
I would agree with you about some Christians believing ‘really odd stuff’ as I think the anonymous poster has shown us. But if Christianity were clearly defined, there would not be 30,000 denominations. Wouldn’t you agree?
I see your point, Skeptic, but I think that to an extent the number of denominations is evidence of the concrete, absolute nature of Christianity.
Now, I know that sounds counter-intuitive. What I mean, though, is this: Most of the denominations disagree about extremely minute, detailed things. The kinds of things the lay person doesn’t really need to care about. I think Christianity would need to be somewhat clearly defined for these kinds of discussions to occur. Science is the same way- scientists argue over all sorts of details, such that no two scientists agree about everything in a given field, or so it seems. Does this mean scientific knowledge isn’t clearly defined? No, it means that answers always lead to more questions, and that people who think the answers are important and have real meaning will argue over small details.
By contrast, if Christianity was poorly defined, and it’s tenets were generic and vague, there’d be no need for different camps because the detailed issues wouldn’t come up as much, and what’s more, nobody who took a stand on a detailed issue would have much to work with in proving they were right. People who are comfortable believing whatever makes them happy aren’t prone to argument and schism.
Really? How do you know that?
People assume so much these days…
Who filmed it? Can I rent it? Why were they filming, couldn’t it be all planned to happen? How reliable are the witness, the cameraman, the pastor, everything?
Do you know what elephantiasis is? The tissue can’t just fall off… it’s not like a wart…
Skeptic mentioned God there so i well do it too, if God created all this, why would he want to cure it, maybe they deserve it and acually curing it is an evil thing
I didn’t say pastors, and I didn’t say you need training. All people wishing the same thing at the same time could (note here that I am using the word COULD) evoke a greater power…
Oh please… still… power of the mind, hypnoses… Why would the person vomit for the ‘evil spirits’ to leave them… just to show ‘look here, we are leaving this body, but we gonna make them vomit for you to see how awful we are’… 
I think your sensationalist church is trying to win more disciples by impressing the humble people, so they join it and pay for the church’s trips to Malaysia.
As far as I know all the vomiting people could also be just part of a great scheme.
Yes, i am being very skeptical, but your leave me no other joice.
As you are anonymous, I assume that you are either joking or ashamed of your posts.
Skeptic:
In the beginning, Man was created flawless before the eyes of God. As you know Adam and Eve were His first human creation, unfortunately they succumb to temptation and ate the fruit of good and evil. This in my opinion started the whole trend of sin. God gave man the power of choice. God didn’t create them, he allowed them to happen. Afterall man was given a choice, doesn’t make sense to stop its happening or banish sin
altogether.
In my opinion, God allowed the stated scenarios to happen because he wants us to learn from other’s mistakes. Man would never understand what it means by ‘cruel’ and thus begin to show kindness to their loved ones. A child wouldn’t understand how dangerous it is to play with a knife unless he/she has been cut before.
Clementine:
Yes, we all know this cannot happen as defined by the laws of science, but it happened anyway and I don’t know why. The woman in the film was acting as a living testimonies to the believers and non-believers that Christians worship a God who has no limitations.
oh well, how’d I know how they function? I’m not a spirit…
My church isn’t trying to win disciples. Anyway, the ‘people’ in your term, are youths who have already joined the church for worship every week. The church camp was held during the school holidays in December. That particular service had the objective of allowing the youths to experience the phenomenon and that’s just it.
Oh well, these people are my friends themselves, and many of them know each and everyone of the youths who attended that camp. I doubt that it’s part of a scheme. In my opinion it might be a little naive to think so, it could well just be anybody’s excuse for dismissing the reality.
No i’m not joking or ashamed of my own post, it’s just that I was browsing through a search engine one night and happen to stumble upon this forum. I saw something interesting and decided to comment. Let’s just say to go through the trouble of registering and then post a reply just isn’t what a passer-by would normally do!
Well some close friends of mine happened to do that once. And it was cancer, last phase.
This is one of the often misunderstood things about God. He did not create evil. Man chose not to follow God’s word, that was evil. Also, Lucifer didn’t accept his status and went higher, imagining himself as God. Both cases, the creatures didn’t accept their status, of mere creatures.
Deformed babies wouldn’t be born if their parents or their grandparents would give up sin. Because sins are transmitted to progenitures, just as Adam gave us the original sin.
There are oriental therapies to cure cancer. Apparently it does cure it. It certainly cure back aches and stress, I assure you that.
But what about a handicap person? They were born with it, so it wasn’t any man who created it, the person was supposed to born like that, right? If so… it must have a reason… supposed this soul was evil… and didn’t follow God, so when God send it to earth it came out handicap. Why would God cure this soul…? Isn’t it chosen to be the way it is? Why forgive now, and not before? If he can forgive this one, why not forgive all of them an stop sending people to earth with the same problem?
What about the baby? It is not the babies fault that the parents are sinner, is it? So it’s like a revenge… ‘oh, you are an evil couple, so am gonna sacrifice this soul here, with a deformed body and condemned the baby because of YOUR sins’
Would it be easy to do something against the parents?
If Adam gave it to us… se why some of us are very healthy and live a happy life and others don’t if in the end we are all sinners?
Why would God save the handicap, and why would he save your friend that had cancer if in the end… we are indeed all sinners?
Yes, I know. But I am talking about Christians which by faith and prayer alone cured this guy. He was supposed to live 3 days at most.
A handicapped person is handicapped either because his parent’s sins, either because God wanted so. And people will not be judged after their looks, but after their deeds and faith.
No, his soul was not evil before birth, it didn’t have time to sin.
He saved him because of his faith.
I’m not God, nor any theologian, so I can’t give you a precise answer here. If I remember right, there is this verse in The Bible “Who are you to judge your God? Doesn’t the Creator create after his sole free will?” or something like that.
For instance, a person may be handicapped so that it would go closer to God, by not knowing pride. There are lots of scenarios. But we shouldn’t judge God.
Could be power of mind, as I said before… his faith and prayer could have acted like meditation and therapy and his will, and other around him, made him better.
What about those people who are mentally ill. I mean, those who can’t even communicate, they can’t understand God, or be taught faith and religion…
So if God wanted, then he is not at all good… It’s like saying ‘look, your parents killed a man, so we good arrest you for live too’
But according to what you said, you don’t need time to sin, you parents can sin for you. It’s like a Russian Roulette… if you happen to born from a sinner… then you are handicap or something. What is only one is the sinner? Just the father… he will have also to be punished… well… so then there are 2 innocent souls being punish because of one sinner.
But where is our free will then?
St. Paul said that this world is made out of sin and that’s what it is. You can try your best but you will never be able to be good, we lack goodness and are no responsible for being like we are at all, we are just a product of sin. What you could do is to suffer to get happiness in the end, that if God wants you to, otherwise, you won’t be saved.
But I think St. Paul was a completely deranged… but if he is right…and he must be, cos he is a Saint after all, right… we are not responsible for anything… so free will is irrelevant… and if I judge God, is alright, it’s not really my fault… it’s Adam’s who sinner for me and made me lack goodness.