Jazzns' History of Belief

Thanks for reading. "He" by the way.I think you can cut them some slack. They are well meaning. I am not offended. I do think it is a good point that iano is assuming that I had a "cultural Christianity". While it was a little bit disjointed, the sincerity expressed for religion during my upbringing was very real. I "found" christianity despite a divided household, I didn't inherit it. I did inherit the sense that I needed some kind of faith, but I originally found it on my own.

I admit as much directly. As I stated though, my lack of sure footing does not make up for the positive discoveries I made while trying to remedy my ignorance. My rejection of faith is founded in knowledge and study and not just metaphysics. I cannot "unring that bell" so to speak. I certainly and sincerely sought to do that. Of one thing I am sure, if there is such a thing, it most certainly is not contained within the Bible. This goes back to the above which I feel I addressed adequatly in "A Failure of Weak Faith?". Some people discover that the Bible is false starting from a quite strong founding in faith. Bart Eherman for example. Just because I didn't travel on a path similar to his does not change the fact that half of the New Testament, including 2 of the 3 verses you quoted above, are from dubious origins. Well yes! And I am in fact NOT pursuaded, either that there is such a Creator or that even if there was that he would have the right to establish who is deserving of life! There is absolutly no definition of "righteousness" that I could accept that would be sufficient to absolve any theoretical entity of genocide. And there we will have to disagree. Thank you very much for your time and thoughts.

Hi Iano,Thanks for your reply. First off, I think it is interesting that you refer to Gentiles and pagans are irreligious. It was the Christians that were referred to as "atheists" during their early years.I could go into a lot about Paul. I started to write a whole bunch but I'll just ask this instead. People are in need of salvation from what exactly? As I indicated to hooah, I believe that is something you are reading into my message. Perhaps I am not being clear in that section.My young faith was very much my own and, according to my feelings at the time, was very sincere. My stumbling block was knowledge but I only realized that in hind sight. I don't believe that the other people around me at the time had the same stumbling block as I did. Holiness is very poorly defined in the Bible. In fact, there are multiple contradictory definitions of holiness in the Bible and in fact the interpretation of that has varied with nearly every generation since Christianity was born. Again this is based on the assumption of the "false", "inherited", or "casual" nature of my early faith. Holiness most certainly was a concern in my life. I was quite the guilt striken young adult.I deal with my "unholiness" now by understanding the complete bankruptcy of the concept of holiness. Holiness is a completely vacuous word. People use it as a substitute for everything from chastity to murder. [qs]In his opening statements on the Mount, Jesus gives the characteristics of those who will enter the kingdom of God.
Blessed are the poor in spirit*, he says, for theirs is the kingdom of God. It's not "blessed are the poor in money.."I won't quote your whole section on wealth and money but just use this to root my reply. My point was less about money that it was generally about the division advocated by Jesus and Paul between "this" world and the "kingdom of God". You seemingly think that the kingdom is spritual and perhaps that it is already here? I believe that a straight forwarding reading of the Bible shows that Paul and Jesus did not believe that to be true. I don't want to get off on too much a tangent so I will just reiterate that that section was more than just about money. There is a central division between the two worlds. I understand that there are different interpretations but I do not subscribe to them. I consider the spiritual argument to be merely an apologetic. The entire REAL body of work of Paul is anethema to the idea of a current kingdom or a spiritual kingdom in my opinion. Because it is not founded on anything. It is a fake struggle. A take home point might be that the concept of being "lost" is a false concept. I believe I have rejected the notion that I need to be "found".Thanks again for reading and for your thoughts.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

Hmm, this seems to have been slighly resurrected. Well then why did you ask the question? You posed it as if the resolution of the question provides light into some deeper dilemma.You have done this a couple of times now in our conversations (by the way I am still intending to reply to you in the other thread). You sort of imply something with a semi-rhetorical question and then back off when challenged about the substance of the question.Who between the christian and atheist giver is acting more in accord with the bible? My reply is that the question itself is useless and irrelevant. Despite abandoning much of the bible, you are making an arbitrary choice to measure meaning by your own distortion of it. I cannot fathom how that choice is any way better (and I can think of many ways in which it could be worse) than any other standard you could have picked. Well, you are defining moral attributes and then saying that you cant believe they come from a non-moral source. You have created a tautology that no one disagrees with and are seemingly very pleased with it. I just dont think that it tells us anything at all, least of which is an insight into the presence of a deity.Morality derives from moral actors. Yes. I think anyone can agree with that. Subjective perhaps, but unsubstantiated or equi-probable, no. Ill argue that the substance backing my decision gives strength to my choice. Its only highly probable that the vast majority of the bible is distorted hogwash. While it is still subjective to choose to throw away the faith that was based upon that hogwash I would argue that I have a much firmer footing that I did while I was trying to salvage any tini bits of truth as it all slipped through my fingers. Right! Which is why it would be useless to ask how moral Hitler was being if he gave $100 to an orphanage because the bible told him to; versus if he did it just to be a nice guy. The absurdity is clear to me.

What understanding do you derive from forgery in the bible? What understanding do you get when you extract some useful philosophy from a piece of known fiction?Moreover, how is that any different from deriving a handy philosophy from any other work of quasi-historical fiction? Lots of people took a lot of meaning from A Million Little Pieces before we learned it was all faked. But what you are saying is that we should cut the liars some slack and find profound meaning in what it represents in some abstract sense. Why? What good is that? But atheists don't believe that. We have told you that we don't believe that and you still continue to spew that line as if it means something or help you in some way. Nobody (sane) believes that intelligence and morality derives from non-intelligent and non-moral sources.
You think you have some kind of silver bullet with that one line but once again you completely missed the point. How about the parts that are lies made by liars with an obvious agenda to support their own self-interest? Well what you have is one nice statement (Micah) that YOU are using to join together themes from two forgeries (Ephesians and Isaiah) and a fairy tale (Revelations). You have no information to suggest that these should go together other than your own opinion. One could just aseasily imagine taking quotes from Beowulf to support the heroism and determination in the Illiad and the Lord of the Rings. If its not real, who cares? I can get my life lessons from books of fiction that are way more interesting than some fragmented ramblings of barely historic, racist authoritarian assholes. There is that great equalizer again. What I am suggesting is simply that people believe what they can percieve. You are asking them to believe in much more and at a much greater cost. So while you wish to make your point of view just one more opinon amongst many, I maintain to you that subjective is also inherantly unequal.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

I have been pretty busy with school but I have enjoyed watching this debate about altruism when I can get to it.You may very well have talked about this elsewhere GDR but I have to ask, what is your best guess as to what is going to happen to me when I die given my change in faith?Am I going to hell?
Am I going to heaven?
Do I simply cease to exist?I am not asking for certainty, simply what you have so often focuses on which is your subjective opinion.And if it is not too much to ask, what support do you have for your opinion on that matter?

Thats okay Chuck. If you get the gist of my first few posts then I think your opinion is valid.GDR's position is a little nuanced so I was curious about his response but I am curious about yours too.I am not looking for any validation. I am quite comfortable with my choices but I think it is still enlightening to get other's viewpoints. Hopefully I'll get around to responding to GDR tomorrow.

My gut response was to say further but after reading what you meant by this question I will have a different answer. I would say that my beliefs lie upon a tangent to the spectrum of "closer or further" from god. In short, I reject the question. It doesn't make sense even in your definitional setting where all "good" things are closer to god and all "bad" things are not. And yet all I see when you talk about "His ideals" is a projection of your own ideals onto your understanding of this particular mythology. You don't have any reason for why love for these ideals must be externalized to a person. Given what you say later, perhaps it doesn't matter. Presumably, in your ethos, someone who is just tries to be a good person their entire life will do just fine in the after life without the need to attribute their values to a deity. What if I reject both? What if I reject the notion that what is considered "good" should be defined by ancient mythology? I still believe in charity and community but I sure am not going to give a thief my coat or let a guy punch me in the face. Where does that put me on the spectrum of being "closer" to god? Ultimatly, you are just begging the question. I can't answer that in the spirit that it was asked without assuming that one of the god's is real. You are just coloring the world with gods instead of the standard adjectives for what we consider good and bad. They don't even have an identity, they just represent amorphus ideals that align with your own morality. You quote Lewis and you say it is a choice but what is interesting about the standard Christian belief is that the choice must be made in ignorance of the true nature of the afterlife. Will those who were selfish during their life be able to see their error and be saved during judgement? If the content of our character is what matters, what is so special about the massivly insignificant time that we spend as mortals that it should determine our fortune for eternity?Can our character not change in the afterlife? Can someone who spends the equivalent of a mortal lifetime in hell not simply come to the heartfelt conclusion that they were wrong and then be saved?Explain how this choice works exactly and how do you know? But what do you do with the majority of the people in this community who quite likely reject your somewhat deist interpretation of Christianity? Its sort of like being a Log Cabin Republican. These people don't believe like you do. Christians that I am familiar with believe in salvation by baptism and repentence according to a much more literal understanding of the same mythology you are using to suggest that a total heretic could still be saved.Are there not better communities that align with your sense of faith? Do you have a community of believers that think like you do or are you a part of a community where you are unique in your views?As a followup to the theme of my original questions, what is hell going to be like for those that do go there? Is it forever? How bad/painful/lonley is it? How do you know?

Hey Phat, I was digging up a link to this thread for someone and I realized that I never responded to you. Very sorry about that. Between going to school and playing with kids, my time for message boards if very volatile. I still struggle with this notion that I need to be described by what I don't believe. Although I first rejected the term atheist, I currently accept it but only because it just seems like a useless intellectual struggle to fight it. Plus, it is plainly a useful word for communicating to others.But under the hood, the core of my current belief is not that I believe that god does not exist. It is also not that I don't know. The first is a usless extreme. The second implies ignorance and unwarranted uncertainty.I simply DO believe in things that are evidenced. Anything else is irrelevant, boring, not worth my intellectual effort to consider. My current activity regarding god and the bible are simply of personal and historical interest now.So its not as much of a "bold step" that you claim because I am not taking a firm position whatsoever concerning god. In fact, I am taking quite a mundane position. It might be more accuratly described by the phrase "meh?" Why accept an unknown? That would be a better question and more from the perspective I am coming from. In the math of infinity, no matter how much finite time people are given to "decide", an infinity of suffering is still immesurably unfair and cruel. A lifetime of a million years is just as small as a lifetime of 75 years when measured against the scale of eternity.And imagine if we are able to one day extend our lifetimes reliably to 100 years. For the hardliners, a person in the past who died a sinner of plague at the age of 18 who did nothing more than lie to his parents will spend eternity, ETERNITY mind you, in the same torment as some future person who spend his century on earth commiting the worst possible moral outrages. Indeed, how much time is enough?Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

As I said to Phat, I am sorry that I dropped your post. School and life got hectic. I know we have another disucssion going on elsewhere but I thought I would at least give you the courtesy of a reply in case you wanted to continue. None of which has anything to do with being "closer" to god whatever that means. Its a false dichotomy; a false spectrum perhaps. Thats an honest answer. And surprisingly not too far off from where I am except for the whole praying part. What matters is there here and now and how we act while in this life. Its the praying part that is extra. I guess its not more of a waste than the other things we do on a regular basis that tend to be meaningless. I just don't think there is anything about what you said that requires god to be in the picture. First off, the selfishness you mention is assumed. I certainly have not gone out on any while endorphin benders of any sorts since the change. If anything I have tried much harder to contribute to this world because I recognize that it really is the only one we have.Second, similar to Phat, I find it a bit mind boggling that according to "humble justice", that anyone could rightly entertain the notion of eternal punishment based on ignorance and mystery. It would be one thing if god were to come down, lay down the law, and have people knowingly reject him. But to expect that we must make the right decision in pure ignorance when the stakes are eternity is the height of absurdity. There is a society in "hell"? I am genuinly puzzled by the things you said you are ignorant of (duration, pain, lonliness, etc) and yet what you chose to mention that it will be a place characterized by "love of self"?Truthfully though, you seem to believe hell exists in some manner and I can guess that you mean the people will go there for some length of time. Perhaps longer than they were alive on this earth? Is that a proper characterization of your position?If you HAD to place a wager, would you bet on me going to this place after I die?