Choosing a faith

Give me a break. I have done more than skim wiki pages. Yes, just like everyone else here I find quotes that are consistent with my conclusions.

Absolutely and along with the suffering and death I see a life form that is called to minimize suffering.I also understand a world where there is only physical death and not the death of the self.Do you see a world where intelligence exists that is not the result of intelligence?

Obviously you see the end of life as we know it to be the absolute end. After death it is timeless oblivion.
Let's assume you are correct. Do you wish you had never been born. I'd suggest that the vast majority of people are glad they have been given the life even if this is all there is. You can count me in on that and I have been able to be involved in a number of happy descendants.Yes, I believe that my consciousness in some way lives on but either way I am grateful to have been born.None of this is meant to minimize the suffering that does exist but also we shouldn't ignore the joy people have in their lives. Just look at the joy that Tanypteryx is experiencing with the birth of his first great grand child.

I understand that you do not believe in a universal intelligence. Will you agree that you believe in materialism in that there is nothing beyond that which can be physically identified. Or do you hold the agnostic view in that it can't be known. I suppose I'm agnostic from that way of looking at it, however theism, IMHO does represent the most reasonable response to what it is that we can believe. Do you have another option? The situation that we are discussing is the existence or non-existence of a universal intelligence that is the first cause of our existence. I agree that there is no scientific evidence for my beliefs, Nor however, is there any scientific evidence to show that I am wrong. It is what I believe best represents the truth of things. I don't care how many layers of scientific evidence are ultimately discovered. Scientific evidence tells us how things happened which I find fascinating, but it won't give us a first cause. We can only draw our subjective conclusions based on what we do know.The fact that life exists in the form that it does with intelligence, with emotions and with an understanding of right and wrong leads me to believe that we are the result of a pre-existing intelligence. Is it conclusive? No. Is it reasonable? Yes. ..and you also said Thanks for that. Your knowledge in this field obviously far exceeds mine. My point though is that there is randomness in creation through both evolutionary processes as well as what happens as a result of conscious thought.I contend that with this randomness the future is open. For example I contend that there is no way of knowing what I will have for lunch a week from now. It is something that simply isn't there to be known. Given all the facts available we might make an educated guess and possibly even come up with something probable but it can't be known even by any deity.

In a sense that fits in with why I started this thread. My point was that it isn't about the name we assign to a deity but what matters is the nature of that which we deify.The problem with most of religion is that we are looking for a god to serve our own personal needs. We used to have a sign on oir fridge that said this: "Most People Want to Serve God but Only in an Advisory Capacity". ")

I use wiki as a source so as to try and stay clear of quoting people who have a biased view. It seems to me that wiki is as close as I can get to presenting an unbiased view.

I just said life. I didn't specify human life. My personal belief, right or wrong, is that consciousness , (soul, spirit or whatever), is eternal. As I get older I find that it is still just me. The same me as I was when I was 19. Sure, my body is subject to entropy and decay, but I'm not. Make of that what you want. I certainly understand why this is a probelm for you and I agree that you have nailed the biggest problem that Christians have to seal with and why over the centuries the majority of deities have been angry ones that need to be appeasaed.My point was that there is suffering but there is also a lot of joy to be found.I'll make a couple of points. I don't think I'm any different than you in this so I would say that when we see people in Sudan suffering as they are now we empathize with them and to some degree suffer with them. We don't want the world to be like that. Why, is that? Sure we are culturally conditioned but, and I know we disagree, I believe that there is more to it than that. Why does our culture care at all?We know that there are creatures including humans that are prepared to suffer in order to minimize the suffering of others.Also, I do see this world as being a precursor, or entry point to a renewed existence that does not know suffering and where metaphorically speaking the wolf lays down with the lamb and where the law of the land is peace and love.In the end Christianity as I understand it makes more sense to me than any other religious or non-religious belief about or lives and the world we live in.

Just a few thoughts for you.Firstly the Bible is not "a" book. It is a collection of 66 books written over roughly 7 centuries by who knows how many authors. There is no reason whatsoever to dicount the Gospel stories by not taking the Genesis accounts literally. Each book was written at different times in different circumstances, with different objectives.The clearest and most significant problem is with the OT accounts of Yahweh commanding and committing genocide and ordering public stoning for something as simple as picking up firewood on the Sabbath. Then in the NT Jesus tells us to :
1/ Love our enemy
2/ Let he who is without sin cast the first stone
3/ Turn the other cheek
4/ Go the extra mile
5/ He who lives by the sword dies by the sword - etc.The OT and the NT cannot both represent God.Nest let's look at what John says in the first chapter of John. He sys that the Word became flesh. He did not say that the Word became a book or a library of books.So you are left with a choice. Do you believe what we have quoted by Jesus in the NT or what the ancients wrote in the OT? It can't be both.So how should we read the Bible as a whole. I suggest that it should be read as a narrative telling the story of the Israelites climaxing in Jesus. In it we can see that over the generations there is a progressive understanding of the nature of Yahweh up to the time of Jesus.I would also say the the OT and the NT have a symbiotic relationship. We need the OT to understand the NT as the NT is full of quotes and references to what is in the OT.. At the same time we need the NT to sort out the true nature of God in order to understand much of the OT.This goes back to my point of this thread. What ultimately matters is not the name of our deity but the nature of our deity. If you are prepared to worship a god that can order public stonings and genocide then although we both call ourselves Christian we are not worshipping the same god.Paul writes that all scripture is God breathed or inspired. That is no reason to understand the Bible like a newspaper account. A metaphor can just as easily be inspired as a literal account. I would add that by trying to read it literally we actual miss what God would have us understand from what was written.
Cheers

For Candle 2. I looked into the beliefs of the United Church of God and found that the following was one of its basic tenants.

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Military Service and War: UCG holds that Christians are forbidden by the commandments of God from taking a life. Christians are viewed as being called out of this world, having their citizenship in heaven, and discouraged from participating too closely in worldly affairs. John 18:36 is often used to defend this position, “Jesus stated, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants fight…’ ” Also, because most militaries require you to sign away certain rights, UCG strongly dissuades members from enlisting and voluntarily giving away their freedom to serve God to the best of their ability.

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I also read that one of the foundational beliefs of your church is that the Bible is inerrant. With that in mind how do you square those beliefs with the following Biblical passages?from KJV Deuteronomy 7:2

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and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.

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and from Deuteronomy 20: 16-18:

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16 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

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17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:

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18 That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God.

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and Samuel 15:13:

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Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’”

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In Mark 3:29 This was in the response to those that claimed that His power came from the work of Satan.The unforgivable sin then is to assign the work of the goodness of God to Satan or simply to evil. Jesus tells us that we are to love our enemies as he campaigned for a non-violent revolution against the Romans in opposition to those who wanted Him or someone else to mount of an army to militarily drive the Romans out. He was all about defeating evil with the power of God's love.With all that in mind it seems to me that is what your view of inerrancy does is to contravene Jesus by declaring genocide, and public stoning for that matter, to be the work of God.What you are doing is making a false idol of the Bible and your religion although called Christianity is much more akin to Bibleianity by prioritizing an inerrant Bible over the teachings of Jesus.I doubt that you will respond to this, and that you will ignore as you did. with my previous post Message 2456. I understand your reluctance. You can't square belief in a genocidal god with the teachings of Jesus.

Sure all life suffers physical death but of course the Christian message is that physical death is not the same as the death of consciousness. Ya, I've heard that and some people still believe that life exists, against all odds, because of blind mindless good luck.

We have enough of these discussions that you know that I have previously said that this is the biggest issue that Christians have to face. So certainly it is a matter of faith, but it is part of the Christian faith. Of course I don't know that it rep[resents the truth but I do believe it.However, true or not, I still believe that we are called as humans to do all that we can to mitigate death and suffering.

Just as you believe what you want to believe.
​ I agree and as our cultures are predominately materialistic it does make sense that your culture has biased you in favour of materialism. You believe what you want to believe. Can you not see how irrational it is to believe that we are nothing but that life exists, against all odds, because of blind mindless good luck.

You keep repeating that point concerning false equivalents. I'm not claiming an equivalence at all between the two as we essentially hold divergent view which are based on our beliefs. Both of us believe that our individual beliefs are more rationally true.We both agree that the animals didn't go into the ark two by two. I doubt either of us really care about whether an ark even existed at all, except in my case the whole story taken as literally true leaves in my view a distorted picture of the Christian faith. Certainly our culture influences what we believe. In my case I was agnostic for about 20 years and then came to the conclusion that there was value and truth to be found in Christianity, which does not mean that other beliefs are completely wrong. I would however have a problem with other beliefs that don't see the "Golden Rule" as being fundamental which does give me issues with the more militant side of some forms of Christianity.Christian doctrine has evolved over the years and I would suggest that right now the church is evolving due to a its shedding much of the Greco-Roman influences that made their way into the church in the time of Constantine, and for a period of time after that. Sure. Neither of us "know" but we do have our beliefs. Actually I agree with that. However I would say that I believe that the "still small voice of God" is a non-physical reality that has gradually influenced us over the centuries, and is resulting in a progressive understanding of the nature of God and what it means to our lives. I contend that our understanding will continue to evolve until such time as we manage to blow ourselves up, create a virus that dooms us or find novel new ways to end civilization.

Thanks for your post. I did read the whole post including the link. My physics background is based on reading authors such as Brian Greene and what posters on this forum have written so I am fully aware that I am opening myself up to consider ridicule..I'd like to run a couple of thoughts by you.
Firstly even though I am a Christian style theist, I'm not convinced that God created the universe, or the world for that matter. I do believe that God is responsible for the existence of life, and that one aspect of the life created, through a long series of processes, resulted in beings that perceive their world in a specific entropic way.This is ultra speculative but it seems to me, that as the universe as we perceive it, is expanding away from us to the point that there is an event horizon beyond which we can not perceive anything as it's speed away from us exceeds the speed of light.As we know our measurement of time is based on relative motion and if we move at the speed of light time stands still. With all that in mind it seems to me that we could consider the universe to be infinitely large or conversely infinitely small. This leads me to think that the universe could also be considered infinite.That goes back then to my thought that God worked with what always was to bring about creatures that perceive the world in a 4 dimensional way, as an emergent property of a greater infinite universe.I kinda doubt it, but do you think that makes any sense at all? AbE: Here is a bit from an interview of Roger Penrose.

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Roger Penrose : Yes I think physicists would agree that the feeling of time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real. It has something to do with our perceptions.

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Narrator : Illusion or not, our perceptions emerge somewhere between the cosmic scale of Relativity where the flow of time is frozen and the quantum scale, where flow descends to uncertainty.Our world is on a scale governed by a mixture of chance and necessity.

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Roger Penrose : My view is that there is some large scale quantum activity going on in the brain.Physics does not say that Quantum Mechanics takes place in small areas, but also take place over larger areas. I think this has to do with the consciousness. I think we need a new way to look at time, not either Quantum Mechanics or Relativity.

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Narrator : If Quantum Mechanics is taking place in the brain then the same randomness of outcome and unpredictability might explain our ability to make sometime random choices. Opening up the future to the possibility of change would provide the first step of restoring to physics the flow of time it currently denies.

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Physicist : I don't think time flows, I feel that time flows, but I feel we can only understand this if we have a better understanding of how consciousness works. I think human consciousness probably has the secrets as to how and why we think of time as going by.

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Roger Penrose : I don't think we have the tools, I don't think we have the physical picture to accommodate these things yet. We're not very close to it.

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I'd say that it is, just not as quickly as we would like, but don't forget that it is just one voice amongst the many voices that lead us to be only concerned with ourselves.