Re: virus: A few opening statements from a newcomer

Snow Leopard (juliet784@hotmail.com)
Fri, 19 Mar 1999 10:30:31 PST

>> Also, if a new religion is DESIGNED, than
>> it must have so many facts for a self-respecting God-seeker that it
>> would have to go above and beyond anything that could be created of
the
>> human imagination.
>
>This is an intriguing claim, but I'm not sure I fully understand it, so
>I'd like to ask you to elaborate on it.

A God-seeker is someone who looks for truth in reference to anything that cannot be explained by the standard 4-dimesional mind. If you say something, and can do nothing to prove it, it's your idea. If you could prove a few pieces of it or show some proof of your enlightenment, that's a different story entirely...

But I think that certain things are true for me. And because I don't happen to live in my very own universe, they must be applicable to everyone else. Now, if I know a way that I can get a $1 million check, and it applies to you, would you be terribly offended if I told you how? On the other hand, virtually every neutral debate a believer of anything gets into with a believer of another religion, or an atheist turns into a heated battle. (What's up with atheism anyhow? Think of how much time you've invested in fighting something you don't believe in.)

Logic can be applied to these things, but most of the time, people are working off incomplete knowledge. It's like asking a 6th grader who plans on becoming a physicist to prove gravity. It just isn't likely. Any Bible related questions, I will do my best to answer, but pardon me-- I don't know everything.

Now, I can't prove to you what's been proven to me. I WAS HEALED! I doubt I can e-mail you proof. However, I can tell you I had hydrocephilus, I was supposed to be a retard, but my IQ scores tend to disagree. It is therefore, impossible for me to believe that nothing is out there. My parents said to me, "We're Christians. We'd suggest the same for you, but first, look at everything else. Be equally critical with every belief system." I see more flaws in over meme-complexes than with Christianity. I've read the Bible 8 times, (working on 9) and I see flaws, but then I take the time to investigate. That's the piece of the scientific theory that this list seems to be missing. If something LOOKS wrong, it's automatically invalid, along with everything else in the meme-complex.

>> response to your trust vs. faith discussion,
>> I'd like to pose a completely different comparison, faith vs.
religion.
>
>I think that would be a valuable reframing of the debate, as much of
the
>evidence concerning the destructive nature of faith that gets presented
>in this discussion is actually a list of crimes committed by
>religio-political organizations. As the Catholic church played a role
>that was a close to that of a modern government as to the modern
>comception of a chuch durring the crusades and the inquisition, citing
>examples of the atrocities committed durring these periods is as much
an
>indictment of citizenship as it is of faith.
>
>> God-seekers are in your terms, looking to be infected by the most
true
>> belief system they can find (good luck to them), whereas your average
>> church-goer gives their religion a bad name by following a set of
rules
>> that may or may not benefit them.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by God-seekers. If you mean for this term to
>apply to people who take up religious practice because they have
>religious/spiritual feelings, inclinations, or experiences and not
>(primarily) for the social benefits, then I would caution against
>attempting to corral all such people under a generalized statement
about
>their motivations and desires. Still, you made some valuable
>observations and I look forward to getting some elaboration on them.

Get this- there are two kind of people in every church organizationthe religious, and the faithful. One says what there church says, plays mirror for some set of memes that mean nothing. The other examines their faith, looks for why it is true, makes sure that they haven't been douped.

I'm not quite sure where, but Paul encourages believers in one of his letters to check his words against the scpirtures. The religious have no faith, they just attend, do the ceremonies, talk the talk etc. They have no faith, or blind faith. Blind faith isn't really faith, it's stupidity. "It's right because the priest said so."

The faithful say, I want the truth. I think this is it, I'm going to keep checking, keep learning, prove this again and again and make sure that no one else is better. Not by tearing them down, but by checking them out.

Religion is to faith what an omlette is to eggs. An egg can be life, an omlette can only be eaten by others. Now, you take faith, abuse it, denaturate all of its characteristics, try to put it into a formula that sounds like "If you do this this, this and this, but not that, that and definatedly NOT THAT!" then it's not faith- its tradition that's supposed to keep the leaders of the religion happy and in power.

Eventually, I will explain that most of what make some of you think that faith is a disease isn't faith at all.
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