Was the title of this thread supposed to be “Friend of God convert me”? Or do you expect God to personally convert you (according to most Christians, God has a thing about doing the dirty work)?
Gee thanks, Poly. And here I’ve been deluding myself by thinking doing the right thing was actually worthwhile. Glad to be disabused of that notion! 
Every little bit helps, as the old woman said when she pissed in the sea. 
This analogy is cute but really doesn’t work (though I think I agree in general with your sentiment).
Still, just to be a cheese, I’d like to point out that, if I climb the hill after you to see if there’s really a resort there, I can then go back to minding my own business if it turns out you’re a loon. It also doesn’t require me to do much more than I’m doing now.
Most importantly, however, it doesn’t ask me to discard the evidence of reason and my own senses, as “faith” does.
I find it very difficult to believe that there is a great spirit out there who is completely benign yet still wants me to jump through special little hoops designed by long-dead, mistranslated writers.
Show me a beach towel with the resort’s name on it and I might climb the hill for a look. So far I haven’t even seen a cocktail napkin.
You’re right. If there’s no God, then clearly life is meaningless because life itself is the be-all and end all of our existance. If there is a God, then life is deeply meaningful, because it’s just the brief, unimportant preqel to eternal existance.
Clearly there’s absolutly NO basis for morality or ethics without an external judge holding rewards or punishments over us. After all, morality wihtout hope of reward would just be silly.
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“So, Satan wins, eh?”
Okay, the whole Kant thing is my fault for half quoting the first categorical imperative. Let me set the record straight here…
The categorical/hypothetical imperative is merely Kant’s interpretation of a much older moral code and a dubious interpretation at that. Kant’s five forms of the categorical imperative all say essentially the same thing, however Kant extended their meaning to dennounce suicide, revolution against the state, masturbation, homosexuality and the selling of your own hair for wig making.
Now the last of these is clearly evil beyond evil but branding the other acts as sins does not exactly embrace the “Love thy neighbor…” attitude.
It is only logical to restrict your actions to ones which you would expect to be the recipient of. This includes expecting a lesser application of this same code by people who have limited intelligence, just as you would expect people more intelligent than yourself to extend you the same courtesy.
This rule is common to all religions, albeit in various different guises. Organised religions, when attempting to convert people with opposing beliefs, are therefore flouting this same rule, unless they would wish to be subjected to the same themselves. Therefore, the very nature of organised religion is immoral.
There is no need whatsoever for any other ‘rules’ in order to create an harmonious society.
Aw, Ura-Maru, don’t give Poly a hard time. (That’s my job! ) He doesn’t really think that atheists have no reason to be moral, he just phrased his statement a bit too ambiguously.
Thanks, Gaudere – I think! 
To all the atheists I pissed off with that remark, my apologies – I think you caught that it was with reference to your individual future, not the world as a whole. (And I respect the moral atheists who work for a better world, knowing that when they go, they’ve at least left something more worthwhile behind them!)
Scupper, the evidence is available. I’ve got these parchment cocktail napkins, anecdotal accounts of what the resort is like from peaceful honest people ™ – Lib. among them! – all sorts of stuff. The trouble is, none of the evidence is conclusive by a fair skeptical analysis. We’ve been down that road in far too many threads to rehash it, but I do see your point.
Like any analogy, it has its limits. But there’s a certain amount of “go to the top of the ridge and see if he’s a loony” available, and there’s also the question of whether the person suggesting the report seems to be a loony by your experience of him as regards other topics where you have a referent to cross-check his veracity.
I see your point, Ura-Maru. But my point of address was with reference to JM’s tortured analysis of the Golden Rule. Life is what you make of it, whether or not there’s reward or punishment beyond it. I’m on record here that I’d continue to advance the same views I hold on matters such as gay rights, the preservation of freedom, the Law of Love, etc., if somebody convincingly disproved the existence of God to me. And I reject the “Divine Weasel” – the vindictive evil entity with a fondness for twisting the truth advanced for the job title by one class of fundamentalist.
That is something of a non sequitur to say the least. The time we spend alive is ultimately significant precisely because it is all we can be certain we have. Whether anything else happens to us before or after we die is purely a matter of faith.
Another non sequitur. How can the fact that something is unimportant make it meaningful? And what if you turned out to be wrong and there was no after-life? You would have wasted your entire life.
That judge is the rest of the society in which we live. When we act immorally, we are punished for our actions (e.g. if we murder, we are sent to prison).
No, the rewards are immediately apparent - put simply, if you act nicely to other people, then you will find other people will act the same way in return (eventually).
Someone needs to change the batteries in their Sarcasm Detector…
Uh, mothra, I was attempting to be sarcastic. I do that. Obvioulsly I’m not very good at it. Your responses were pretty what my argument actually was.
You’re, right, Gaudre. That was uncalled for. I’m not having good day. Sorry, Polycarp.
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“Brought to you by Vermont. The other, smaller Wisconson.”
You may wish to know that the position contrary to Polycarp’s and which Ura-Maru is (sarcastically) expressing is known as existentialism. It is essentially the belief that the here and now is relevant, and that the world we are inhabiting now is more important than whatever alternate plane of existence we may go to when we die.
Actually, it’s after midnight where I am so they’re in the recharger.
Rest assured, they will be fully recharged by the morning…
Polycarp
But none of the people that are describing the resort have actually been there. Why should I care what someone’s WAG about the resort is? How is that a form of “evidence”?
Falcon: Thank you.
Satan: You know Brian, you have a point. Many people on this board helped me wake up and smell the coffee. I think my change was a little bit less drastic than say…David B. becoming the next Billy Graham though. The closest thing I’ve seen to actual change in belief on this board is what happened to Glitch (where is he by the way?) in the “Could you believe?” thread. And even that amounted to nothing. (Unfortunately)
Darn, I’d love to get deep into this thread, but you know…real life gets in the way.
Sqrl: We do agree, and I just want to add one point. Think of how much it bothers you when people witness to you and then act evil, or do wrong. It makes you angry because they are hypocrites. Just imagine how it makes me feel. I’m not asking for your pity, I just want to say that it makes me sad when people do such things in the “name of God.” It hurts the entire witness of Jesus.
Wow! What a long post. So far you’ve gotten responses from everyone except the person you addressed it to! I didn’t have enough time to read everyone’s comments. For the moment let me quote one of your early posts:
I hate to say it, but you’ve pretty much just told me openly that you aren’t really open to being converted and are not interested in it for your personal benefit. Therefore, sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t think I will respond. I want to spend my time with those who are open.
It wouldn’t have helped anyway. So-called “forced converstions” have happened … and in every case I’ve seen they damaged people rather than helped them. In reality, a “forced” conversion isn’t a conversion. True conversion is a personal choice.
And by the way, your topic says “Friend of God, convert me”. I guarantee that if I convert you, your life will be royally messed up :). Believe me, the only one that you want to convert you is God.
Acxtually, as I pointed out, the thread title is “Friend or God convert me”. But if God were to convert someone, wouldn’t that be interference in the world?
On the contrary, I am here now, sonning quite nicely, thanks.
Priceless, Lib.! Thanks!
[Clinton voice]
It all depends on what you mean by “there.”
[/Clinton voice]
If you’re referring to the cartoon image of Heaven as “the place good people go when they die,” well, yeah, right. I don’t have a clue what God has in mind for me, and I don’t care. You see, I trust him…
If it’s a happy, fulfilled life on this planet, I can adduce Gaudere to demonstrate that a life in Christ is not absolutely essential to such an existence, but I can adduce Tris., Lib., RT, myself to show that “having His presence in your life” sure helps. And that was what I was analogizing, not pie in the sky when you die.
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” — Luke 17:20-21
Going back to the camp issue. Granted it is an interesting analogy. “Me: Hey, just over this ridge is an absolutely beautiful luxury resort…
Other Person: I don’t have any proof that there is such a resort…”
Well the pagan “camp” doesn’t care if you are invited into the afterlife by anyone. Good, bad, or indifferent everyone will have an afterlife that will survive them in what Christians would call our heaven. To make things even more convoluted a person’s beliefs don’t need to be identical to ours in order to go there.
Also, as an animist of some kind seeing the universe as divine is like being in heaven. We see divinity in everything and only in Christian heaven is that an identical situation. In Druidic belief this can even become stranger where the lines between the otherlife and this one are blurred and one is able to walk between the two quite easily. I believe Shamanic beliefs follow this thinking as well where one can traverse the otherworld and this one with meditations, drugs (in Shamanic instances primarily…I don’t do drugs), incantations, or simply by having some form of peak experience. In the Mabinogean evidence is given when Pwyll (the Prince of Dyfed) goes out hunting and suddenly two dogs the colours never seen on the Earth appear one red and the other white. This symbolizes the crossover into Annwn (the otherworld). The lines between this world and Annwn are blurred to a point where one can flow seemlessly from one to the other. Neither world is more divine than the other since both are equally divine.
Friend of God, you don’t want to convert me? Your whole purpose for being here is to convert people. I have never seen you post anywhere else that wasn’t some form of prosthelization. I don’t want your god to convert me. Frankly, I think your god is a bit loony. I know not to judge the whole religion on the basis of a few so I know it is a good religion for those it speaks to but for me it says nothing. My religion isn’t so closed as I believe I said earlier, if I ever feel I lack some sort of spiritual teaching in one place then I can easily pick up some sort of reading from any source that is deemed necessary.
HUGS
Sqrl