tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post5028016742185546344..comments2023-06-28T06:46:25.357-03:00Comments on Walking as Jesus Did: BustedChristopher D Drewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17302973340775716733noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-12121096120364717712011-04-07T08:15:09.019-03:002011-04-07T08:15:09.019-03:00I thought all evening on how to respond to your la...I thought all evening on how to respond to your last point. <br /><br />First let me say that I think you are right in something that you say. If we had the capacity to open our minds, to everything that is happening everywhere at any given moment awe would be the only appropriate response.<br /><br />However let me respond to two things that you said. Eternity does not have to mean no beginning and no end. It can mean that, but it doesn't have too. Eternity can in fact mean that something had a starting point and than continued on forever.<br /><br />Numbers are one such example, the universe itself may be another the jury seems to be still out on that one.<br /><br />Also even if your definition of eternity were true, I find I do not follow your jump from there, to 'that is why there is no God'. Simply repeating that the now is all there is does not prove your point. Nor does it make it true.<br /><br />I have never found time to be a very effective defeater for the existence of God. Be that too much time , which seems to be your point, or two little which seems to be Richard Dawkins.<br /><br />Thank you for spending time on the blog and engaging with me. Feel free to drop by again.Christopher D Drewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17302973340775716733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-45436556394205072132011-04-06T19:23:24.286-03:002011-04-06T19:23:24.286-03:00One more word. Shelby... the now is eternal. Etern...One more word. Shelby... the now is eternal. Eternity is a continuous present. (Eternity has no beginning and no ending... just a present.) There is not another eternity beginning at death.This one instant is it<br /><br />That is why, Christopher, there is no "God".The now... your now, my now, everybody's, every particle of matter... contains all there is.<br /><br />Yes, religious people do some good. Of course.But keeping the the flock in suspended animation, till death, telling them that they are sinners, that the things of the world are not worth the goods of heaven...causes them to abdicate their present human power... and fall prey to "heartless" people and corporation.<br /><br />this is the life all that are alive have.Albert Forcierhttp://www.anaturalphilosophy.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-65850717263555555412011-04-05T22:42:58.761-03:002011-04-05T22:42:58.761-03:00Shelby- First I will say thank you. Given your res...Shelby- First I will say thank you. Given your response clearly I have some work do to, but your admiration thus fair is appreciated.<br /><br />Second I will say I think you may need to reflect more critically on history. Without a doubt you could rattle off a number of atrocities that were either perpetrated by or allowed by people of faith. Christians who claimed to be salt and light of the earth, and the holders of the keys of the kingdom have some apologizing to do. <br /><br />However a great deal of good has also been done, and currently is being done. The church is the largest charity and aid organization in the world, we build schools, care of the poor, work with the sick. We go in to forgotten and desolate places and try to help. Christians have helped to create hospitals (St John of the Cross), public schools (there was Sunday school before public education), Christians were at the forefront of abolishing slavery. We run soup kitchens, clothing drives, and free foot clinics for those who living on the street. We have created systems to offer and manage micro loans to people in 3rd world countries so they can buy goats, chickens and farm equipment helping to end the cycle of poverty heartless corporations have trapped them in. <br /><br />Yes at times we have faltered. But to say that to net impact of Christianity on the world has been negative shows you have more reading to do.Christopher D Drewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17302973340775716733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-83586269168528487942011-04-05T22:26:33.459-03:002011-04-05T22:26:33.459-03:00Albert- You have a fair point. One can rightly cri...Albert- You have a fair point. One can rightly criticize Christians as believing that life begins after death. That the now, the present, is in some way of no or little value. <br /><br />However not every Christian would agree with that. I certainly do not. And that is not what Jesus taught. <br /><br />He taught that our choices, our actions in the present carry consequences for better or worse into eternity. And not just a choice (as in belief or disbelief in God), but all of our choices.<br /><br />In many ways we have forgotten that. That is why many Christians have been no friend of the environment. Because they felt that the earth and how we treat it doesn't matter since it is temporal. But I would argue that that line of thinking misses the point of who God is and his redemptive plan entirely.Christopher D Drewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17302973340775716733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-69606764454897900342011-04-05T21:43:18.137-03:002011-04-05T21:43:18.137-03:00Non-religious people have no sense of eternity, re...Non-religious people have no sense of eternity, religious people have no sense of urgency. Both have immense value... the problem is when one side succeeds in overwhelming/negating the other. For better or worse(probably the latter), religious communities have long been the most organized and ambitious and so the many people who live their lives on "auto-pilot" are told to believe that this life has no urgency and the fate of our world is not at all in our hands (read: an excuse to be ignorant/unchanging) <br />Now I would argue that the sheep of the world lack any sense of eternity, and their choices are made with too much urgency (fueled by greed, or some immoderate arbitrary passion) and so we are left with the opposite problem but many of the same symptoms (an impending sense of doom and no meaningful connection with/respect for mother nature). <br /><br />I would praise God with you, Christopher, for all the same reasons, if I did not feel that the foundations of your established religious doctrine were among the greatest and most manipulative scams ever pulled over the hearts of man. I commend you for working within the confines of this difficult framework to expand your spiritual well being (and more admirably, the people around you). <br /><br />-Shelby DropeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-62396891238274867532011-04-05T21:25:53.051-03:002011-04-05T21:25:53.051-03:00The next sentence was the answer. (All) is there,i...The next sentence was the answer. (All) is there,in this moment. What we capture... with our senses, with our mind, with our experience of being... is the point, the purpose of being alive (now).<br /><br />(On the attack now!): But the religious person looking to an exalted after-death MOMENT diminishes the present moment, and she/he is left saying:"is this all there is?" Never to know... what this moment is capable of meaning.(Thus, the great damage cause by religion.)Albert Forcierhttp://www.anaturalphilosophy.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-59345474482668326302011-04-05T14:44:10.111-03:002011-04-05T14:44:10.111-03:00I appreciate, even enjoy the poetry and romance of...I appreciate, even enjoy the poetry and romance of that idea, that every moment of every thing shines with the brightness of a thousand stars, containing within it the sum total of the universe.<br /><br />But you did not answer your own question, what is the point? Is the point to experience it? The experience will one day be lost forever. The point of existence, cannot be 'to exist'. <br /><br />And even if it could be sooner or later we will not exist. We will have failed to hold on to the point. The universe is not eternal, though it is long lived. It is finite. And if all there is, is finite, nothing can have everlasting meaning.Christopher D Drewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17302973340775716733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-72332340535572818722011-04-05T14:14:34.508-03:002011-04-05T14:14:34.508-03:00Yes... But what is the point of all forms? They co...Yes... But what is the point of all forms? They come, they shine for a moment, they go. Not even to be remembered. <br /><br />In all of these moments... is inscribed ALL that exists. Even in the life span of a grain of sand.Albert Forcierhttp://www.anaturalphilosophy.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-4373003041226325972011-04-05T08:10:18.022-03:002011-04-05T08:10:18.022-03:00I get that people cannot be believers. There are l...I get that people cannot be believers. There are lots of reasons for disbelief in my system, and any number of reasons to believe in others, or in nothing at all.<br /><br />I think that most art, science, religion and charity are attempts to participate in something that is bigger than ourselves. We want to make a lasting impact. We want something to out last us. <br /><br />I have no doubt that you and lots of others find purpose and meaning in lots of things. I don't mean to belittle the happiness you have found. <br /><br />My point is that the mission we self assign if there is no God is doomed to failure. Sooner or later whatever we did, whatever monument we built will fade away.<br /><br />Living in the moment, enjoying the instant may bring a great deal of satisfaction. But sooner or later you run out of moments.<br /><br />I think it is a far question to ask if nothing lasts does anything matter?<br /><br />I like the poem Ozymandias I think it says a lot,<br /><br />I met a traveller from an antique land<br />Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone<br />Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,<br />Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown<br />And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command<br />Tell that its sculptor well those passions read<br />Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear:<br />`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:<br />Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'<br />Nothing beside remains. Round the decay<br />Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,<br />The lone and level sands stretch far away".Christopher D Drewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17302973340775716733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155774195996917188.post-55492323392565170632011-04-05T03:44:28.135-03:002011-04-05T03:44:28.135-03:00Christopher,
I, like you, am fairly new at this ...Christopher,<br /> <br />I, like you, am fairly new at this tweeting thing and never too sure... what's next.<br /><br />I was a bit surprise to see you following an "atheist". I am curious why you would do so? Fine by me. <br /><br />But I don't think that religious people get that a person can not be a believer. Just a comment on one of your assertion.<br /><br />It is a fallacy to say that as an atheist, i have no purpose. I have the purpose I give myself. And it is not by vanity, it is by design. Natural design.And it brings me meaning.<br />Also, it irritate me when life is reduced to ...just a few years on earth, then death? why bother? It demeans the commentator.<br /><br />Why do you have this instant to live... if you reject it as worthless? This instant exists for this instant.What you find in it is the purpose of your existence. When you get that...Albert Forcierhttp://www.anaturalphilosophy.comnoreply@blogger.com