kanicbird, I’m issuing you a warning for this. Accusing another poster of lying is expressing forbidden in Great Debates. Don’t do it again.
I want to thank you for pointing it out, till this I really have not considered how such a statement can be taken by another and do agree it was hitting below the belt and I do apologize to the poster simster. I don’t expect it to happen again.
If God gives my neighbor a vision – say, a golden staircase such as was shown to Jacob – but I am not given to see it, why would you argue that these are two separate “realities?” One is a vision, but not necessarily a reality.
'm still trying to figure out how they knew what Stephen saw - its not like he had time to tell anyone.
“Remember, this is for posterity - how did that make you feel?”
It’s always hard to tell with kanicbird, but my guess is that he’s talking about Multiverse Theory, as in the (yet unproven) M-Theory branch of science.
And to play Devil’s Advocate, it’s my personal “faith” that the Christian God (whether or not he exists) does not have the power to “split reality” – certainly, he never claimed that power anywhere in the Bible – but the God Beyond God (i.e. God’s God) does have that power. Happens all the time, and we humans rarely, if ever, notice it.
Now, to play Angel’s Advocate:
How in God’s Green Earth did you read any kind of “split reality” into those verses? Even taken as fiction, both stories are purely linear.
C’mon kanic, you can do better than this. If you don’t know the answer, at least make up something that’s too dense & elliptical for we mere mortals to parse.
So - God again directly causes people to believe a lie - where’s the love in that?
Well, in the passage quoted, he cries out aloud and tells everyone what he saw.
Of course, so does Rummy Jim, the old alkie who panhandles by the railroad tracks. “Bats! Bats and snakes! Big teethy bats!”
Bats? I thought that was in Fear and Loathing. Lots of reality-splitting going on in that book. No one could split up reality as well as the gonzo guy. Holy crap, does that mean
Hunter S. Thompson was god?
I know you believe your teachings are from God but you have no way to prove your actions are from God anymore than Hitler and any other human.
As I stated many times belief is not fact, you have yet to prove what your belief comes from God any more than people who do evil or Kill in God’s name. The fanatics who are suicide Bombers etc. Truly believe they are doing Gods’ work
. Your beliefs help you to live a better life then fine. But it is only your own mind convincing you it is from God. I don’t pretend that God is advising me, or anyone else, if that were so , there would be no divisions among religions, all would be the same. A woman (and there have been many) who have killed their children because they believed it was God telling them to do so.
I could claim God is telling me you are wrong, but I know my thoughts and beliefs are from my own life experiences and what I was taught, and read, or heard from others. all humans accept what they want to be.
The Bible is not proof of anything except it is in the Bible anymore than the Koran is a direct dictation from an Angel to Mohammed. It is still just taking the word of some human like yourself who believes it is God. You sound like a good person but your logic doesn’t mesh.
I said it would take me some time to find it, 2 Kings 6: 12-20, shows 2 or perhaps 3 levels of reality, controllable by a child of God (God in oneness with man, thus helping explain the trinity):
You obviously do not understand what is being asked of you, so I am not going to press the matter.
Well if you won’t I will, as long as the mods allow me to without getting warnings.
As I believe this is part of the trinity mystery, I believe I can claim this under witnessing but I am very hesitant and scared at to even looking into GD in discussing anything on the SD regarding the warning received ad I have considered leaving the SDMB as I felt the ‘official permanent recorded’ warning that received was overly harsh as a official warning, I do feel that many others would have just been given a reminder, not a mark on their SD record, I feel that is very unfair.
My point to you is that not 2 individual realities expressed, one that a child of God gets and one that ‘mankind’ gets. And are they interrelated? How is that not 2 related, and if interrelated how is that not split reality?
Ok, think I get what you’re trying to describe here (aside from the “child of God” part, only the devil & the universe can parse that crazy part…)
You’re talking about how people remember events differently. How eyewitness accounts frequently disagree about the color of a hit-and-run vehicle, or what time of night they heard the gun go off. In a way, that does mesh pretty nice with Multiverse Theory – every human’s conscious experience (as well as non-humans, including God, if he weren’t completely imaginary) can be construed as a “parallel universe”, whereby 97.5% of our individual universes are the same (i.e. “consensus reality”) but the other 2.5% is up for grabs…usually concerning hot-topic matters like abortion, 2nd-amendment rights, SMM, etc.
It also explains why most humans can’t ever agree on anything, except obvious things like gravity.
How’d I do, kanic? Am I anywhere near correct? 
So the God you believe in is a monster who makes people delude them selves? What an insult to a loving Being. God creates evil and puts an obstacle in their way so they can’t know the truth? It sure sounds like a Myth to me, and speaks not of an all knowing ,loving, being what a sad description of your God.
Can you think of a possible reason of hiding the ‘truth’ from someone as a loving act of mercy?
Not really. I think you are describing another thing I do believe happens, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.
Here God has created a reality for ‘man’ (aka mankind) that is a subset of another larger reality. The man’s reality is a splitoff of the main one - splitting reality.
The tie in to the trinity, is that we are men but also children of God, so we have access to the larger reality, what really happens and why. But in that we need to reconize our ‘god self’ or else we are just in the one and can not see the other.
“hiding the truth” does not equal 'causing delusions to cause someone to believe a lie" -
secondly - we’re talking about GOD here - there should never be a reason it (as a loving god) would need to lie or hide the truth - if its all about love.
But that’s exactly what I’m talking about – except the ‘split reality’ is not created by God, but by the individual person. (Some people can’t see the forest for the trees, etc.)
If I’m still wrong, why don’t you at least attempt to explain what you’re talking about?
Agreed. And another example of this is where Jesus said (proudly!) that he only spoke in parables to prevent too many people from understanding him. Such love!
When you’re about to step off a cliff – into eternal fire, no less – if I try to warn you in Balearic Whistling Language instead of the English I know you understand, I am not performing an act of mercy, but an act of vicious spite.
If Jesus knows we’re in danger of hellfire, and he says, “There was this old man, see, who once sent his son out to buy some groceries,” he is doing less than he could to save us. This is a really shitty way to demonstrate “love.”