Choosing a faith

GDR writes:You guys sit around congratulating each other for your atheistic beliefs but my beliefs are bollox, embarrassing, wasteful and irrelevant.If you guys want this forum to be an atheistic forum where you can sit around congratulating yourselves for not falling for all that religious nonsense then let me know and I'll be out of your hair with my drivel.

But maybe I'm wrong to be thinking in that direction. There are all those books and movies that are in essence about adding up people's scores to see if they get into heaven. The oldest one I'm aware of is Heaven Can Wait in 1943 starring Don Ameche, but it's a very common theme, there must be older.

Stile writes:So I'll just scrap it all and start over:
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1. A purpose feels strong and good and right if it is something you personally hold as a priority.
-the more the purpose aligns with your own personal feeling on it's priority, the stronger the sense of "this is right" will be
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2. If you can find a purpose that aligns with something that you personally hold as the highest of all priorities, this will then be your "ultimate purpose" because you will be taking action in directions that align with your highest of all possible priorities.
-like bad-ass Stone Mason Stile making bad-ass ornaments
-like GDR and sacrificial love
-like Roman leaders and trying to "bring Rome to the world"
-like baseball-lovers trying to get everyone to play baseball
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3. My point is: It's possible to become aware of a purpose from an outside source that matches your personal feelings on priority. But with the nuance that comes along with "personal feelings of priority" it's highly likely that it's not going to match exactly or possibly not match at all.
However, if you do some inner-soul-searching and discover for yourself exactly what your personal feelings on priorities actually are... and then create a purpose for yourself that matches your highest priority... it will, by definition, match EXACTLY, and therefore have a much greater chance (100%, actually) of being your "ultimate purpose" rather than any other purpose found from any other external source (even an all-powerful, creator God.)
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This is the context I'm coming from when I'm saying God's purpose can only match our own "ultimate purpose" and can never exceed it. Because "purpose" comes from our own feelings on priorities. God can provide an idea that matches our own feelings on priorities... but never exceed them, since ultimate-purpose/feelings-on-highest-priorities come from within.
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This is where I'm coming from when I say that claiming other-information can be an "ultimate purpose" simply doesn't understand what purpose actually is.
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If you do not agree, and still think ultimate purpose can come from any external source (even God,) I would expect something along showing me that #1 or #2 is wrong above, and that isn't actually what "purpose" is and "purpose" is something else.
-this would involve you actually defining/identifying what "purpose" is and how your explanation is more accurate (closer to reality) than mine.
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That is mostly correct but what I mean by ultimate is when this world is fully recreated sacrificial love will be freely chosen as the norm.
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If you want to argue that "ultimate purpose" is "ultimate nice/love/sacrificial-love..." on some made up scale (even if made up by God Himself) I find that argument easily shown to be incongruent with reality as many people have "ultimate purpose" in things that do not involve people at all (like my example of bad-ass Stone Mason Stile) and this is immediately disproven if you have any respect for how many people live their lives in reality.
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To me, this reads as "what I think is best is ultimate for everyone because I really like what I think is best."
-it's nothing but arrogance and ego
-it's easily proven to be false
-why should anyone agree with you unless they already happen to agree with you before you even talk to them?
-it is entirely unpersuasive from an objective, outsider position

PaulK writes:But the end of the events is God’s intervention, and that is when it occurs.

PaulK writes:The revolt is still earthly.

PaulK writes:The Resurrection isn’t even part of this.

PaulK writes:he Maccabean revolt is the right date - but for some reason you confused it with the end of the Hasmonean dynasty. In reality the Maccabean revolt lead to the foundation of that dynasty.

PaulK writes:That is likely fiction. And nearly half the chapter is the explanation of the “dream” (verses 15-28)

PaulK writes:Since we don’t have Jesus’ exact words he could have been just emphasising his humanity, since that is the meaning of that phrase.
Or even sometimes speaking of humanity in general.

26 “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

27 The kingship and dominion
and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven
shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High;
their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom,
and all dominions shall serve and obey them.”

Tangle writes:I know, it's really unfair, a non-Christian historian researching and writing about Christianity. Progress hurts.

Tangle writes:I've read a lot of stuff written by Christians - who are "hardly impartial sources" - there is almost nothing else. I suggest you read Carrier if you want a less biased view. His book 'On the Historicity of Jesus' is peer reviewed and fully referenced so you can check the sources yourself and you will have seen another side of the argument.

Tangle writes:There were in fact dozens of apocalyptic cults based on the fictitious Daniel prophecies that were supposed to come true in the 1st century CE. The only way the Christians could continue against the Romans was to invent the idea of a virtual victory through resurrection. It's a smart move. Or at least it would have been if it had any semblance of fact. It's all myth and propaganda. You can't even show that the main character in the story actually existed, let alone all the stuff that he was supposed to have done. You haven't even started.

GDR writes:It is no different than A Christian writing on atheism. He is not an unbiased researcher, and holds views that there is virtually no agreement with amongst other non-Christian researchers.

So you want me to read an entire book by Carriere who is hardly impartial but yet you ignore the wiki article I sent you that does shows that Carriere's views are outside the norm for historical scholars.

Tangle writes:It seems that you've abandoned everything in the bible apart from the nice stuff that you prefer to believe. You also add that it's not important which god you believe in so long as it has all these nice attributes.

Tangle writes:But all this leaves you is a general belief to live by the Golden Rule. Under that regime there is no need for all the paraphernalia of any particular religion; worship, preaching, scripture, beliefs etc etc.
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It seems that under your scheme atheists get to heaven too to why the need for any religious belief at all?

GDR writes: You seem to believe that the whole point of religion, and specifically Christianity, is to wind up in the good place.

I suppose that is important

but IMHO that is not at all the main point of Christianity. Christianity is a calling on our lives to live lives based on love of the other, or the Golden Rule works fine.

The thing is yes, you don't need Christianity

but, I know that in my pre-Christian days my priority was, (aside from my family which came first), promotion, getting an increase in pay, a better house, parties etc. That was what I got from the secular world.

I do find that as a Christian I'm less self focused, (got a long way to go though), than I had been. I am involved in projects with both my time and money that I wouldn't have been in without Christianity.

As you seem to be focused on what happens next I do accept the possibility the belief that new creation is for all creation but, that does not mean that this life does not have an impact on our lives to come. I have no idea what that might look like.

GDR writes: ...
Tony did say something that I particularly relate to. He said on page 102:

quote:

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As I see it, the Gospel writers were not as interested in the details of Jesus' life as they were in the truth of it. Like their Old Testament counterparts, they carefully constructed their stories to give their readers insights about the meaning and purpose of life. To ask if this or that really happened the way it's described is to miss the point. What matters isn't whether each of those accounts is scrupulously accurate and consistent with all the others. WHAT MATTERS IS WHAT THEY COLLECTIVELY REVEAL ABOUT THE NATURE OF GOD.

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Percy writes:What matters is that where they didn't have details, which was everywhere, they made things up. What that reveals about the nature of their God is that they constructed him themselves by making up stories that communicated the message they wanted people to accept about their God.

Percy writes: There's never been any there for any of them, but for some reason you believe that just this one religion that happens to be the one you believe in was special. The miraculous and/or incredible tales it tells were about something real and true.

Phat writes:Humans are far from ready to venture outside our world and explore.

GDR writes:You guys make my case. My case was that most of you use mockery, put downs, insults etc. as a form of debate. IMHO that is usually an indication of a weak position.