Quote:
Originally Posted by fwellers 
12345,
I know I am harsh with you. Sorry for that. Having escaped from the clutches of christianity, I have real issues with it, and I always try to get my jabs in on Christians whenever I see an opportunity.
Come on man, eternal hell ? If you've been hanging around this forum for a while, how can you believe in eternal hell ? How can a personal God, be so vindictive as to make humans imperfect, ( flesh is weak ), ( you can never satisify God without the Spirit [which is also a given gift btw] ), etc.., and then punish them for all of eternity without any hope of reprieve or parole, because they were too stupid to believe in him during this blink of an eye physical existence.
To me, if anyone steps out of the trap for a second, they can see how silly and outright mean such beliefs are, and how ugly, and tyrannical of a god that is.
Oh well. Peace on you anyway.  |
I don't know if I would exactly qualify as a Christian, but I do appreciate Christ's teachings.
I think you have it all wrong. Christ was all about freeing people from this reward/punishment system. He taught people to see things as God sees them, which is through unconditional love. He taught them to create as God creates, which is through faith.
If you take a look in most areas of this forum, people refer again and again that it's what you believe that matters. People's problems arise from self-defeating and nihilistic beliefs. People become enslaved to money, sex, work, food and so on because they believe they need these things. People's reality becomes whatever they believe themselves to be. Reasoning can only conform to whatever it is we believe. Reason can not create, it can only dissect, analyze, categorize, compute. Change the central belief and a whole new lattice of rationale is constructed.
Whatever I am, I have always been a man of faith. And in that capacity, I have never understood the man of reason. We are subjective, creative, feeling creatures and instead of utilizing that we want to be objective, reductionist, insensitive, mechanistic. That's what I find interesting: the man who so dearly wishes he was his machines.