Religion is the servant of our masters, God the stick and the carrot.
Sorry, I’m in one-liner mode.
It would appear that this is the year for all to return to the roost.
Who in the world dug you up, Tab? lol Good to see you. I hope that life is treating you well. Good to see that you do not seem to have changed much - but then again, you would have had to after all of this time…perhaps.
Hey Arc, my kid got interested in the Dao, and that stirred up my philosophy brain. Thought I’d see how ILP was fairing after all the years. I’m pretty good, nice to see you still around too.
Change, me…? Wasn’t I perfect lol. 
I dunno, I got older I guess, and the things I thunk are probably the things I still think, might be better at getting them across now, but then there’s the question of patience to do so. We’ll see if anything tickles my fancy.
I think you take it that phrase to extreme and so deny all. Limited energy on this planet makes all a part of someone or some life. All animals and to some minor very minor extent plants , use energy/ electrical energy and other. All life is a composite of past energy life. You do habits or things that others have done before you. Not language but, quirks or unintentional behavior. The energy that is released with death absorbs into the earth and life. While I cannot at this time think of the technical words, there is some proof of energy moving to another living entity and affecting the information on a biological level. The energy in biology is transferable. If I can call you on a cell phone without wires to either of our phones, what do you think actually affects ?
I chat mostly with Christians who say they wish to serve Jesus, while he himself said he came to serve and not be served.
I want Christians to compare that to the ass kissing and serving they want to do to a god who does not want it.
If you were a god, which would you do?
Regards
DL
You seem to know of the Noble Lie that governments have propagated for so long. That religions are worthy of us.
Proof of course of that truth is in the inquisitions and jihads governments use.
Regards
DL
I was right. We should have ended above.
Of course energy is transferable.
Food works for me.
The point is that we are all in this together, alone.
When you think of the all as an entity, think of it as a mainframe computer and us as P Cs that can upload.
I do not recall if I told you of my apotheosis, but that is the impression the experience left.
Regards
DL
Welcome Tab, from another dinosaur.
I see God at work in the deterministic creativity of DNA. Serving or being served has nothing to do with it.
That is how God works, not necessarily the sum total of what God is.
Your god is inferior to nature and human morals.
Nature creates for the best possible end while your god crates for the worst end and his being infanticidal shows that clearly.
That is anti-natural.
The fact that his morals are inferior to yours is shown by you not being infanticidal or genocidal.
Do not worship what is beneath you.
Regards
DL
GIA, I don’t understand what God you are railing against. It’s certainly not mine who operates through nature via embedded creative evolution. Your God is the fantasy, being inexplicable by the laws of science and nature, which is where we live.
I rail against all supernatural gods as they are all fiction.
Who is your god?
If Yahweh, explain why you follow a genocidal and satanic god.
Regards
DL
Greatest I Am,
There was a time when I was a practicing Catholic/Christian that I felt the same way though I failed often enough. I wanted to serve Christ since for me he was the Son of God and I loved him. Christ supposedly wanted to serve humanity as that was His mission. Boy, have things changed since then. How could I ever have known? ILP has changed me. lol
When Christ uttered those words, could they have also not in part been a teaching of some sort, for humanity to follow His example and to also serve others? Also, He must have been quite a humble kind of guy, no? I do not mean a wimp or one who has little self-esteem but one who knows who he is and what he is about.
Would it be unreasonable to think/feel that someone who wanted to serve others could be the kind of person who one would also want to serve, especially if they felt that that person was Divine?
lol I just love the way in which you express yourself.
Honestly, I have no idea how to respond to the above. I will have to give it some thought.
I suppose you can call that a Catch 22 maybe.
Do you know all the words of Christ? How often does He use those words in the NT?
Is it possible that many of his words were conflicting in nature?
I think that your question requires some reflection because honestly in these moments I have no idea how to respond. Things are not so cut and dry, so black and white.
If I was a goddess, I might just want to conceal my very nature. But since I am not, how can I answer that? What would I be a goddess of, by the way? All of the universe, all of nature, et cetera?
Regards to you, too
Greatest I am
This is true. We cannot know this.
When the brain stops functioning, when it is kaput, we are dead. We are no more. We are simply shells.
What change are you speaking about? Dust? Dirt?
That is not us. We are gone.
If one is to think someone divine, and that divinity says he wants to serve you, if you respect that divinity, one would do as bid wouldn’t one? Or would one put their desire to serve ahead of the divinities desires to not be served?
What service can one do for a god who has by nature, no wants or needs?
Especially when scriptures say that we have no free will to change any ones mind as that change is controlled by god.
Regards
DL
We change from a sentient creature to dust and dirt, sure, but that does not tell us if our consciousness continues.
The religious con men posit an afterlife and that is their immoral hook for the gullible.
Regards
DL
Greatest I Am,
Hmmm 
That may be a difficult question to answer. I think that it might have to do with the kind of person who is listening to that divine one. That person would be the kind of person who respects the needs of others even though he/she might be uncomfortable in allowing his/her self to be served.
You could see that as a form of service in itself - allowing the divine to serve you.
Speaking for myself, I would say to be grateful for everything which one holds as having beauty and meaning in one’s life.
Another answer might be to leave that God alone, give it some breathing room.
Well, this is all I have to say about that ~~ who could even want to worship such a puppeteer as that?
But where does scripture say that, GIA?
We need to learn to think for ourselves!
Greatest I Am,
Do you see all religious or those who preach religion as con men?
There is such a thing as an honest belief, is there not? We all see things differently.
Regards to you too.
Ierrellus,
[/quote]
How can you be sure that is how God works? That is only your thinking.
Did God ordain that the world Become or was it some kind of an accident? Was there another world (universe) before this one?
Why are we so sure that we know who or what God is and the workings of this entity?
No one should wish to worship anyone, let alone a vile god like Yahweh.
I agree that we should all think for ourselves, after studying the issues.
As to our lack of a free will in Christianity. Please see this old O.P.
===========
Are non-believers doomed by Divine Design?
Scriptures say that God decides if a person will be a believer or non-believer. Those scriptures are shown in this link.
youtube.com/watch?v=byHYeHN4ZUQ
Those quotes seems to really screw up the free will notion that Christians say God gives us.
The free will that God offers is kind of a joke anyway given the number of people whose free will to live is ignored in the billions of adults, children and babies that God is shown to torture and murder in scriptures.
If the bible and Yahweh are to be believed, and as a non-believer, I, of course, cannot believe it, thanks to God, by God’s design and will against me, then why did God deny me belief or faith?
Even more important to believers, might be to answer the question of; did God make you a believer in things that you can only hope exists and can never confirm?
Are you happy with God ignoring or negating your free will to think as you please?
I have assumed that God’s work of creating both believers and non-believers is working. If that is so, and you believers must think it so, just as I as a non-believer cannot think it is working, — and Jesus said that those with faith could do all he did and more, — then the is is not even one believer or person of faith that has ever existed.
Either the bible and Christianity is all a lie, or there must be some who can do what Jesus did.
What is your choice of those two options?
Is the bible and Christianity a lie, or is God just not creating any people with faith, — which would make all Christians who say they have faith, — liars.
I mean no insult here but someone is definitely lying, if we read what is written and look at reality and listen to Christians.
What do you think is the truth?
Is it just for God to create people doomed to hell even if they wanted to believe?
Regards
DL