Science can, and does, say “We don’t know…yet.” All you’ve got is a “God Of The Gaps”. Gods are the worst default response to not knowing something I could possibly think of.
A core part of religion is that it’s wrong. If a belief is true it’s not a religious belief; it’s a fact.
If God actually existed, believing in him would not be a religious belief.
Of course one can differentiate between objective physical reality and objective moral reality. One is not however required to.
I agree. But note that the imperative to, if not prevent harm, then to at least minimize it, is itself a moral impulse. We get to a “it’s turtles all the way down” point place pretty quickly.
Actually I do no believe that polygamy was what God originally intended. In the garden of Eden he created Adam and Eve. He did not create multiple wives for Adam. Jesus and Paul seem to reaffirm that one man and one wife is Gods will in the new testament. The old testament contains examples of polygamy among the patriarchal figures these are presented as human actions not divine endorsement. Not every thing that’s in the bible is God will. Human beings back then just as now have free will. The bible records a great deal of things. It does not mean this is what God wanted or commanded. Also we do have to to understand that polygamy was not actually the statistical norm. It was something practiced by the elite as it required significant wealth.
Polygamy in the bible is not prescriptive, but rather descriptive.
further more later jews in the intertestamental period started to reject polygamy. It shows that this was never something from God, but rather something certain rich powerful people were doing on their own.
I may need to go back and read the story of Lot, but I do not remember any part of that story saying God was okay with it or told him to do it. In fact Lots daughters did rape him later on and its never mentioned or implied that God was cool with that or down with it.
Again this story is descriptive rather than prescriptive and an example of human free will. Because something took place in the bible does not automatically mean God was just fine with it.
Well, almost none of this stuff happened, so what the priests who put the Bible together put in was kind of prescriptive. Of course they endorsed polygamy - it was common among the rich, as you say, and the king did it, and the king probably would be unhappy if his living arrangements were considered sinful.
I brought up Lot to illustrate that my Bible believing friend never read the story or understood it, and therefore thought Lot was virtuous. Did God think so? Well, God did let him escape from the city, so probably.
Things in the Bible are a bit more ambiguous than you might think. David was condemned by Nathan for his dalliance with Bathsheba - but the fruit of that dalliance, Solomon, was the most beloved king who got to build the temple. Or so it says.
FWIW I think it is part of why the stories endure? The characters of Torah are … complicated. Including the character “God” …
No I am not sure that any one did not get drunk. I am also not sure that any one did get drunk either. I am going to say its not impossible to have a gathering with alcohol and no one get drunk.
In any case Jesus would not be at fault for turning the water into wine. Wine is a gift from God. Its up to people to use it responsibly.
In some cases it was safer for people to drink alcohol back in those times than water. The water back then was not as safe as what we have now. It could often times be contaminated and the brewing process killed harmful pathogens. Ber and wine were preferred because the fermentation process and alcohol content made them less prone to bacteria and viruses
If only there had been an actual god that could explain Pasteurizing water by boiling but alas no such god with such knowledge is in evidence during that time period.
You may be interested in a preacher named Swedon Borg. He is a Christian but had very different ideas about the bible than modern Christianity. He wrote a number of books and there is a channel on you tube that breaks down a lot of what he taught in more simple terms. I think the channel is off the left eye.
Swedon Borg,
I still prefer Swedon Ferengi.
Hmm - per the wiki link he “considered himself receiving scientific knowledge in a spontaneous manner from angels” so likely not my secular Jewish pantheistic scientific method lovin’ cuppa tea.
Thanks though!
Of the rough time period my preference is for Spinoza.
To be honest bro I did not come here to convince any one or have my own opinion changed. I just came here to have a discussion. Despite what you may think I am actually very interested in what you and other people have to say. I will admit that I some times like to have discussions with people who I know will not agree with me on a specific subject.
I love the massive pushback. At the end of the day I have lots of people talking about things that interest me whether they agree with me or not.
Swedenborg considered his theology to be the true, revealed form of Christianity that had been hidden throughout the centuries, as any new denomination typically considers itself to be. He believed that the entirety of the Bible was an allegory regarding humanity’s journey from the material to the spiritual realm, a liberation of the soul, if you will. Swedenborg also posited that everything supposedly about mankind found in the Bible could also be related to the story of Jesus Christ, specifically how Christ represented the liberation of man’s soul from the materialistic realm and man’s entry into the divine.[3] If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
Now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long time… a long time.
When I was a teen, I used to devour book about the occult, UFOs and other fortean phenomenons…
I got better.
Once I realized that all those never amounted or led to new discoveries or better explanations about what was found before or after.
Arguably, Swedenborg most important discoveries came from his experiences with mines, mining, and metallurgy. Hardly subjects of woo. But as he was what then could be called an engineer:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo
An engineer is a professional trained in the invention, design, and construction of various useful items, from roads and bridges to computer software.[2] In other words, engineering puts science into practice, designing the stuff that makes civilization.[note 1]
Most individual engineers are as sensible and reasonable as anyone, but engineers as a group have a noted tendency to pontificate on things well outside their area of expertise, to the point of actual fallacy. This phenomenon is so prevalent that users of talk.origins have come up with the Salem Hypothesis, which predicts that any creationist claiming scientific expertise or advanced degrees is likely to be an engineer.[3] Of course, this does NOT mean that engineers are likely to be creationists.
It’s appropriate in a way, that engineers, being people charged with building things, might have a predisposition toward crankery.
The phenomenon also applies to some fields of computer science, such as software engineering, which are more applied mathematics than science.
You got the name wrong, the statement that he is still alive wrong, and what the hell does “I think the channel is off the left eye” even mean?
Very true. But back over 100 years ago someone should have reminded the WCTU that Evian water did not transubstantiate into the blood of Jesus.
And if only Jesus didn’t say that washing hands before meals was a dumb idea. Or did another of the early Christians say that?
“I think the channel is Off The Left Eye”
And
I believe stretches the definition of faith to start to include personal life experience. Certainly plenty of real life testimony, and biblical examples. i.e. was Moses’s talking to God face to face still faith? Is my talking to a man on the street corner yesterday faith? Neither are provable (barring security cameras ect.). But witness seems to be a step beyond faith.
Real life testimony only means that someone in real life testified. It doesn’t lend any credence to that testimony. The person could be mistaken, or hallucinating, or misremembering someone else’s testimony as their own (which happens a lot more than we think), or that person could be lying. Sometimes a tall tale is told so often that the mind adopts it as a “real” memory. If you are told often enough that imaginary things exist, then there is a good chance you will sincerely think you see them too.
The OP has been experiencing recurring dreams, and waking “visions,” which have several potential explanations, including:
- The OP is suffering from some sort of hallucination or, possibly, an emotional or mental issue.
- The OP is experiencing visitations from an actual demon.
The OP is very insistent that it’s #2: that his experiences are that of an actual, real demon speaking to him. His faith is what’s causing him to interpret his “personal life experience” in that particular way.