Is God’s plan on track? Were we created to be sinners?

Greatest I Am

What apology? Show me where I apologized.

Define what to you is foolishness because I see some of your own.

Aside from that, that is your perception. I can certainly understand your need to cherry pick. I suppose, like many, you also do that when you scan the bible (that is, if you do that) looking for what suits you on that particular day. Many people do that.

I have not been to church for the longest time except for a funeral. You and I have something in common. We both hate pedophiles and want them put away.

I think that, for some reason, if you were to go to a church and saw the collection, this would probably come to your mind. I do not think that the majority of people would be thinking in those terms though. They would be supporting their church. It might be say for its physical upkeep and other sundry things.
But I can agree with you that it might be a good idea if more of them had that kind of awareness.

I have never heard a homily like this spoken. I did call a priest out once for saying that women who have abortions are all going to hell and I reported it. This was an exceptionally intelligent human being who taught at a university though he was an idiot. Our beliefs can do that to us. I have seen the faces of a number of women who just had abortions and they did the deed with many tears.

As I said, I have never heard that but you can point me to where you have. If I had ever heard that, you can be sure that I would have made a big stink about it and I am sure many other members of that church would too.
I suppose that somewhere some antiquated priest/minister/church may be like that. That is a church, the doors of which, I would like to chain up.

…and you need to read my words. I told you that I do not believe this stuff anymore. Much of it is superstition and christian myth. I was explaining christian belief.

No one actually HAS to forgive. It is up to him or her. This is all christian belief. Sometimes it is conducive and healthy emotionally and spiritually for a person to forgive but only if he/she is honest about it and knows that the other party is sorry/remorseful. They can still forgive if the person is NOT sorry but it would be a good idea to cut him loose.

Perhaps the church taught forgiveness as a way for the people to also realize that God is capable of forgiveness. I wonder what kind of a world we would have if no one ever forgave anyone else. I wonder how long the human species would last.

Prick? lol You have a way of making God so real.
That is your perception. Let us say that you were to take this as a fairy tale, could you not come to try to understand what the Story is trying to convey, to dig a little deeper for its real meaning? You are incapable of seeing Christ as being equal with the father and coming to his own decision about this in this scenario.

Actually you do not really need to but if you are going to put your own spin on it, make it a more fair and balanced one.

I do not ready the bible anymore. You keep thinking in human terms. I myself also could not think of giving up my children for the sake of the world.

Unfortunately, there was a time when many in the church, the hierarchy, did just that basically I think to preserve the church but also to protect their own which was absolutely immoral and vile. They did not see or even consider the victim and who would have even believed that such a thing could go on. Many people basically worshipped their priests, just second to their God. They were taught to do that by family and Church.

So you are speaking here of the christians who you believe support the pedophiles, et cetera, because they are still a part of the Church.
Are they supporting the pedophiles or are they simply supporting their Church, physical or otherwise, because of a sense of belonging to it and of needing it and their God. Those two thoughts can be mutually exclusive you know.

I do not believe in hell. That is a place to keep people “in tow”. I do not believe in heaven.
I also cannot live Pascal’s Wager. I am an agnostic. and what I cannot prove I will not believe.

I thought it was Jesus father who was evil and vile according to you ~~ not Jesus.

I can agree with this. On the other hand…

The church does not say that believers can abdicate their responsibility for wrongdoing and still go to heaven. You have it wrong there. That is being presumptuous and that is exactly what that sin is called…the sin of Presumption.
The Church says that a person has to be sorry and remorseful for the wrongdoing and to seek forgiveness and to vow not to commit the sin[s] again. No one gets to go to heaven just because they want to. God’s love/mercy/forgiveness does not extend to those who do not want to reform and who continually break His laws. That is the church teaching.

I do not know where you get your information but you yourself do seem to do a lot of cherry picking. You need to take some time to doubt some of the things you believe about the church’'s teachings. You are always throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Of course, having said all of that, and considering everything which has become known, it would appear to be more than a bit ludicrous to me to say what the church’s teachings are. But that does not mean that everyone in the Church is immoral or vile. There are still a great many really good priests, et cetera, who do try to and do follow the teachings.

It may seem to be one big mess and I would say that it is by far a great thing that this mess has been revealed but one does not get rid of the messy waters by throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You yourself seem to be throwing a great deal of mud at this baby.

And what is that?

No, I would not. But more to the point, I would give my life for my children with every fiber of my being in order to save them and if by chance I also did survive, there is no way in which I could ever see myself as being a scapegoat for having done that.

Well, if I actually believed in the devil and demons, I might just question which one of us is actually doing that work.
Having a belief in them is just one more way in which to give up responsibility for the things which we do and the consequences which they create. The devil made me do it.

Regardé
arc

The current human world of sin and death is actually a re-enactment of the dream Christ experienced while dying upon the cross. If, of course, only consciousness in the form of persons exist, the Judeo-Christian God exists, the Judeo-Christian God is an infinite consciousness that is the external world, and if we are imaginary characters within the mind of God whom, it turns out, has a cosmic form of dissociative identity disorder in which ‘he’ transitions into Crucified Christ, who right now is dreaming the experiences we are now having.

Never mind the above.

Too much anthropomorphism around here. Although it is human to have to name something in order to feel that it is known, Jesus is a force called Love, not a person to be accused of doing human things. God’s plan as evidenced in Nature is creative evolution of organisms. In this sense God is an active force, not a personality; and, science and religion are not compelled to balk over such spurious terms as supernatural. God is the glue that binds organic and inorganic cycles and ecosystems together. This is the way of the natural world. Our morality belongs to the active recognition that we are an integral part of the systems by which Nature thrives. Atheists and agnostics are still compelled to recognize they are part of the larger whole of nature and are obligated to seeing that the future is physically viable, not a waste land killed by ravages of ego.

That’s cool, but what if God is a person? When guessing (and that’s all we’re doing, as well as settling upon something that we find that we actually believe regardless of whether or not it is objectively true) about the nature of the external world, anything is possible (that’s logically possible).

Well if God is human then he cannot be omnipotent or omniscient or omnibenevolent or indeed any other omni
And so were this true there would be no reason to worship him and all those that are doing so would have to realise this - not that they would stop
The only thing one can be absolutely certain about him is that he represents the highest ideal of human imagination but beyond that nothing at all

While “biological” humans do not and perhaps cannot have “omni” qualities, a human consciousness qua a human consciousness perhaps can be “omni”, in a way in which a human or human-like consciousness can.

If a person has a belief that this being will provide and maintain one’s existence for all future time, and that the person will ensure the eternal existence is constantly and consistently happy, appreciation results in some that inspires or impels them to worship and adore the being.

You’re right. “Ideal”, if you take off the “l” spells “idea”. The only thing we know for certain about God is the idea of God and the idea of his qualities, abilities, and if there are any…limitations. But the same goes for anything that is believed or entertained to exist in the external world.

A natural God cannot be described by any single aspect of creation such as minds or the supernatural mythologies about how minds extend or could be. Natural God is realized in the creation and sustaining of the known universe. Natural God is experienced by every thing that exists. Natural God is pure activity with no need of human prayers and supplications in order to act. The God of Mind, constructed by the human ego, will be unable to prevent human interference in the operations of ecosystems . The God of Mind has never prevented natural disasters or mass suffering.

Ierrellus:

Natural God=Existence itself?

And yet the God of Mind, even if idealistically constructed by the human ego, could objectively exist and inform the human mind as to its existence and qualities around the “white noise” of human ego and the “doing of x in the name of God”.

In my Pantheopsychic Theism, the God of Mind accidentally and helplessly creates natural disasters and mass suffering in a non-lucid dream. Another personality of the God of Mind rectifies these in the afterlife or by intermittent interference.

Natural disasters and the ecosystem, by the way, are actually illusions of consciousness, as only the consciousness of persons exist, and the world we experience is actually a “hologram” or artificial reality made up of one’s consciousness. There is no objective world not made up of a person behind it.

Or so I believe (to pay homage to philosophical honesty, which decries assertions regarding the nature of the external world).

Where you and I disagree, p-g, is that the whole is a matter of consciousness. Try stopping a tsunami with your thoughts. Or for that matter prevent " man’s inhumanity to man" by thinking.

Everything may consist, in my view, of first-person subjective experience, but one does not have telekinetic control over the “made up of the substance of you” reality. A tsunami, though made up of your first-person subjective experience is still unstoppable as your consciousness or subjective experience assumes the form of an unstoppable force of water washing toward your first-person subject of experience. The tsunami disappears, as it was only made up of you anyway, when you become unconscious or die due to the way this particular “matrix” affected and altered the subject of the artificial reality (you) generating the “virtual tsunami” .

The artificial or virtual reality composed and constructed of your first-person experience is not under your control, but the control of something or Someone (Someones?) outside the artificial reality.

Ergo, consciousness being an artificial reality does not imply or entail the subject having control over the reality. The truth of my belief is indicated by the existence of death and sleep (if these exist). Something (your experience) winks out or disappears that once was there, as opposed to a mind-independent reality that cannot die or fall asleep and is not a creation of the brain. I do not believe a mind-independent reality exists or that brains create consciousness, but they are excellent analogies demonstrating that consciousness is an artificial reality including tsunami’s made up of one’s consciousness, regardless of whether or not a mind-independent doppelganger of the tsunami not coming from or created by one’s brain exists when your consciousness no longer creates the “virtual” tsunami.

But whatever floats our boats.

Too abstract for my taste. Give me a naturalistic, realistic response. Mind is a brain product. Thought is the interactivity of a few billion neurons.

As in, first-person subjective experience is the only form in which existence manifests or appears?

Mind is a brain product of brains not made out of mind or first-person subjective experience?

Thought is the same thing as neurons (star-shaped, electrified pieces of meat)? Thought is the same thing as electrons playing “Musical Chairs” between star-shaped pieces of meat that at the same time is an ephemeral first-person subjective experience of, say, a view of mountains on a hiking retreat?

Thought is the interactivity of billions of neurons not made out of first-person subjective experience?

You cannot be absolutely certain that consciousness is an artificial reality which is why you can only believe it to be so and nothing else
Logically the possibility must exist that that belief - like any belief - could be false and so alternatives should also be considered as well

Don’t get the horse before the cart. The hardware of brain neuronal activity operates prior to first person subjective experiences. It lends to the software mind
mythologies based on the experience of its activity. In other words mental stuff is mythologized physical, first-hand experiences.

Halt. This is a post-cartesian logocentric reductionalistic emergent materialism operating with the same linguistic confusions the platonists are guilty of.

Mind is not a product or entity or function. These are mereological fallacies. Mind is a description of behavior, nothing more.

“Are they supporting the pedophiles or are they simply supporting their Church, physical or otherwise, because of a sense of belonging to it and of needing it and their God.”

They are putting their personal needs and wants ahead of their moral sense and that is the way Republicans voted Trump into office. While holding their noses.

As to Christians abdicating their responsibility fort their sins, they have to or deny that Jesus is their savior.

You seem to think that Christians think they can be saved without their savior.

You might want to think again.

Regards
DL

So are the less astute religionists.

They are the majority, who are presently screwing up our world.

Those religionist fools expect god to save us from them.

Regards
DL

No argument against this.

Regards
DL

To surreptitious75:

To (conceptually) prove that consciousness is an artificial “SIMS” reality, let’s ignore my metaphysical beliefs for a moment.

Simply observe the common, everyday, and famous belief that:

1. The brain creates consciousness

2. Consciousness does not nor cannot exist unless there are brains that create consciousness

3. Consciousness does not exist until a brain forms and neurons making up the cerebral cortex of the brain begin to fire.

4. Consciousness ceases to exist when neurons making up the cerebral cortex no longer sufficiently fire to give rise to consciousness.

The brain is a fleshy organ trapped within a skull. Consciousness, that is for example the sight of one’s room when one wakes in the morning, with the sun streaming through one’s windows, certainly seems to be something residing outside one’s body and skull, as one has visual experience of the periphery of one’s body and the morning view itself seems to be something that surrounds, rather than is within, one’s body.

The beautiful morning view also cannot be mistaken for the brain, which is a baseball-glove shaped lump of glistening flesh hidden within the skull.

Yet, it is amazingly believed that the morning wakeful vista comes from the baseball-glove shaped lump of meat in one’s skull. The star-shaped pieces of flesh somehow have access to something other than just themselves, and piece together this emergent ‘extra’ (magically popping into existence from a former non-existence or there is a magical transformation of something that is not first-person subjective experience into first-person subjective experience), something that does not in the least visibly and tactilely resemble neurons, and somehow this visual experience that does not in the least resemble a brain or neurons or the innards of neurons sort of…ejects from within neurons to intangibly phase like the MCU’s Vision through the bony wall of the skull and skin over the forehead to, er, hang like a hologram before the eyes.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI7eZiZBRj0[/youtube]

Anyway, if the “hologram” of the morning view winks out completely replaced by nothing should one die while sitting in bed admiring the morning view, then the morning view is not the external world, but a “hologram” or artificial reality created by star-shaped pieces of flesh collectively forming a baseball-glove shaped lump of flesh trapped within a skull.

The same is true of the morning view if brains are like the Swamp Thing’s organs, that were discovered to have absolutely no function and were just sort of “there” to give the illusion that they perform something. The brain may be a “false machine” that is believed to create consciousness but does not, and something or Someone made up of first-person experience in the external world is the one truly responsible for forming my subjective experience and my subjective experience of a morning view.

You are right about (external world and some sensory) beliefs being falsifiable. But if our consciousness is not an artificial reality that winks out when the brain stops operating, what is it?

To Ierrellus:

The ‘hardware of brain neuronal activity’ you refer to is the mind-independent version, which may not exist. Brains observed in neuroscientific, medical, and criminal context are made up of first-person subjective experience. Everything we see, observe, have evidence of is the ephemeral “movie”…

…that appears on the projector screen from the stream of light emanating from the “movie projector”:

The “movie projector” may be anything in the external world, even an external world Person. The “movie projector”, however, is commonly believed to be mind-independent brains.

While mind-independent brains are believed to be the “movie projector” giving rise to the “movie” of our everyday experience barring unconsciousness or death, given that we have never encountered or experienced anything except first-person subjective experience and mind-independence is famously and generally believed to be something that is not first-person subjective experience, invoking mind-independence and mind-independent brains and asserting their “irrefutable, unquestionable” existence is the same thing as a religionist asserting the existence of God.

And…if ‘physical’=‘mind-independent’, there can be no such thing as ‘physical first-hand experiences’ as anything that is ‘physical’ is not and is not made up of subjective experience; the ‘physical’ is something other than subjective experience.