The Spirit

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 25 2013,23:15)

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 25 2013,21:07)

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 25 2013,18:35)

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 25 2013,15:57)

“I let myself be sought by those who did not ask for me; I let myself be found by those who did not seek me. I said, 'Here I am! Here I am!' to a nation that did not call on my name.”
Isaiah 65:1

No surprise you are confused then.

Stuart

Stuart I am confused. What are you saying, lol.

Don't ask me. I'm not the one spinning confused conspiracy theories of Imaginary Friends running the universe like some tinpot totalitarian dictatorship.

Stuart

Stuart, there are no 'Imaginary Friends running the universe like some tinpot totalitarian dictatorships.'

God is spirit and God is unseen. God is in our hearts if we allow him to be. But these days are the times of trouble, and there are many phonies, and they have become very clever indeed. Truth has fled and people believe a lie.

Anyway, hope you are well. keep watching and pay attention.

Take care.

March 26, 2013 at 6:20 am#339634

Participant

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 26 2013,08:10)

Stuart I am confused. What are you saying, lol.[/quote]
Don't ask me. I'm not the one spinning confused conspiracy theories of Imaginary Friends running the universe like some tinpot totalitarian dictatorship.

Stuart[/quote]
Stuart, there are no 'Imaginary Friends running the universe like some tinpot totalitarian dictatorships.'

Well, why didn't you say so earlier? Welcome to atheism.

Your first task is to kneel down and worship Richard Dawkins.

Or so some christians keep telling me.

Stuart

March 26, 2013 at 9:10 am#339660

Participant

Stuart, do you ever feel alone without a higher power?
Do you ever wonder why we are here?

March 27, 2013 at 2:01 am#339732

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 25 2013,15:10)

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 25 2013,14:18)

Stu……….It seem you missed my point , I could have cared less about the money, it had nothing to do with money for myself

But you did get money as a result of praying, right?

Stuart

Stu……..again it had nothing to do with me getting money for a personal gain , the proof of an unseen God, revealing himself to me was all that mattered. I had enough money to get by on fine, I only wanted proof of our unseen God , and that was all I wanted was proof , I needed my own evidence not the evidence of others. God gave me that evidence I needed of his existence.

Paul said ” tell me this He that works miricales among you, does He do it by work of law or by the hearing of your faith.”

True Faith produces much in a persons life , but to have it, it has to start some where so it can grow, seek God earnestly , because He said ” I am found by those who diligently seek me.”

God is not about playing games with you Stu I believe if you are sincere
He will reveal himself to you.

Peace and love to you and yours Stu…………………………..gene

March 27, 2013 at 4:18 am#339744

Participant

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 26 2013,20:10)

Stuart, do you ever feel alone without a higher power?

It has never occurred to me that I should feel lonely in regards to the non-existence of gods.

Quote

Do you ever wonder why we are here?

I used to wonder that, of course. But I have learned enough about biology and cosmology to have what I think is a pretty good set of answers now.

Thanks for asking.

Stuart

March 27, 2013 at 4:20 am#339745

Participant

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 27 2013,13:01)

God is not about playing games with you Stu I believe if you are sincere
He will reveal himself to you.

Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy. If you god doesn't reveal itself to me (with or without lottery winnings) then I wasn't sincere enough.

Stuart

March 27, 2013 at 8:12 am#339783

Ed J

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 27 2013,15:20)

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 27 2013,13:01)

God is not about playing games with you Stu I believe if you are sincere
He will reveal himself to you.

Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy. If you god doesn't reveal itself to me (with or without lottery winnings) then I wasn't sincere enough.

Stuart

Hi Stuart,

He will if you ask “Audibly”.

God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

March 27, 2013 at 9:31 am#339793

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 27 2013,17:18)

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 26 2013,20:10)

Stuart, do you ever feel alone without a higher power?

It has never occurred to me that I should feel lonely in regards to the non-existence of gods.

Quote

Do you ever wonder why we are here?

I used to wonder that, of course. But I have learned enough about biology and cosmology to have what I think is a pretty good set of answers now.

Thanks for asking.

Stuart

gods. Hmm.

What if I told you that there was only one God, and one source of all things.

I grew up in a christian family and so i have always believed in God but i never knew that God. I knew OF Him but I think that apart form the occasional prayers, I never knew God.

Often times i would go to God as I grew older and I never ever, that I remember, had an answer to my prayers (not that I knew of). Though I do remember one incident where I was scared as a Kid and I asked God to help me, and that if He did I would never ever ask for another thing again, and I promised that! I was only five.

Anyway, I knew that God existed but I did not think that that God cared much for me at all.

Decades went by, and then all of a sudden and from nowhere and for no particular reason that I can think of, God's reality was made known to me, and that revelation has continued for years.

I can say to you that it is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Just saying.

I was wondering the other day WHY God had nothing to do with me for most of my life, and I felt sad. Was I THAT bad? I thought. I was shown then that there is a reason for everything. I would not have learnt compassion etc if I had not been through the things that I had gone through.

Call me delusional or whatever, it's okay.

March 27, 2013 at 10:32 am#339798

Participant

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 27 2013,20:31)

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 27 2013,17:18)

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 26 2013,20:10)

Stuart, do you ever feel alone without a higher power?

It has never occurred to me that I should feel lonely in regards to the non-existence of gods.

Quote

Do you ever wonder why we are here?

I used to wonder that, of course. But I have learned enough about biology and cosmology to have what I think is a pretty good set of answers now.

Thanks for asking.

Stuart

gods. Hmm.

What if I told you that there was only one God, and one source of all things.

I’d ask you why you have rejected so many gods.

Quote

I grew up in a christian family and so i have always believed in God but i never knew that God. I knew OF Him but I think that apart form the occasional prayers, I never knew God.

You grew up in a family where some people were christians. I think it is abusive to call children christians (or atheists) without their permission (or better still their informed consent). Of course the reason it happens is because it is so widespread and few parents stop to think whether their children might not agree with their religious views. It really is seriously abusive when parents deny their children their rights to freedom from religion, for example some fundamentalist sects that ban television and newspapers in their homes and seek to limit their children’s access to their friends for religious reasons.

Quote

Anyway, I knew that God existed but I did not think that that God cared much for me at all.

Decades went by, and then all of a sudden and from nowhere and for no particular reason that I can think of, God's reality was made known to me, and that revelation has continued for years.

I can say to you that it is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Just saying.

I don’t think you have said anything yet. As you might appreciate, I’m not that impressed by anecdote, and I don’t expect others to be impressed by my anecdotes. Your god exists as a concept in your head for you for whatever reasons you need it to. Outside that, there is no unambiguous evidence whatever for your god claims, and I think unambiguous evidence is the only basis on which we should expect others to agree with us.

Quote

Call me delusional or whatever, it's okay.

You should count yourself lucky that your god has never had anything to do with you, and never will. This is good news, not bad news. Whichever of the 39,000+ christian sects you identify with, there’s bound to be some Calvanism mixed in there; you are nothing but a worm. Then there will be the immoral scapegoating of your sins onto the sacrifice of Jesus; there is the mindless insistence that there is some being that made you and thus is in credit to you even though it is dictating some purpose that you must follow on pain of burning in sulfur.

It could have been better to get all this the other way round, wouldn’t it. Saul of Tarsus had one thing right in his words to Corinth: when you grow up put the things of childhood behind you. It’s a shame he couldn’t take his own advice. He kept his own ghouls and demons and Imaginary Superheroes into his adulthood. Well I suppose it was common as it still is today. Unlike Saul, you could have revised your five year old thoughts and seen them as the normal fearful aspects of early human development then come to appreciate that actually there is no reason whatever to think there is any kind of creating / controlling / father figure running the universe, to whom we owe debt (despite its alleged genocide). Our brains tell us all sorts of things they like to hear, but the brutal and beautiful reality is that we should grow up and accept our possible galactic loneliness but realise that natural selection has left us in the astonishing position of being the only species that we know can have some understanding of our place in the scheme of things. We are the way the universe knows itself.

Conspiracy theories of Imaginary Beings that have a bizarre obsession with the reproductive habits of humans, and are unhealthily interested in the saucy details of our thoughts are childish concepts , and they rob us of our humanity and they substitute nonsense for genuine curiosity (in fact the very first story about humans in Genesis is about the punishment of natural human curiosity). These stories of a 2D parochial god that never speaks are irrelevant to living a decent existence, and they contain stories of cheques that are drawn on banks which cannot be shown to exist.

I’m not sure whether you were suggesting this specifically, but I don’t think your religious beliefs have made any difference to your compassion – I have no reason to doubt that you are a compassionate and considerate person, and you will know as well as me or anyone that there are people who give their god credit for their personal qualities just as there are those who never entertained the idea of Imaginary Sky Beings who are just as compassionate, and there are many who have been inspired by their christianity to be anything but compassionate when perhaps they would have been more so without that religion.

By the way, I do think you are delusional. The reason I don’t need you locked up is because you haven’t followed the contents of your scripture as written and so you are not that much of a danger to the rest of the population. And I live in a different country anyway

Stuart

March 27, 2013 at 3:19 pm#339816

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 27 2013,15:20)

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 27 2013,13:01)

God is not about playing games with you Stu I believe if you are sincere
He will reveal himself to you.

Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy. If you god doesn't reveal itself to me (with or without lottery winnings) then I wasn't sincere enough.

Stuart

Stu…….again you have completely missed the point I was driving at, which is, Faith in the real God is a personal revelation by that real God.

Stu that is why you or no one else can move me away from God , because I have REAL EVIDENCE not just suppositions produced by what others say about Him. This hard evidence is the anchor of my soul, I have not even the lest doubt of his existence.

If I were to deny his real existence , then I would be a liar, like all who preach against his true existence, and would be denying all the proof afforded me in my life

Because you have never had proof afforded you or have denied it when it came because of your atheist convictions or whatever, but to think everyone else has has no proofs is just an unproved assumption on your part and the rest of your atheistic “religious”
followers.

You gloat in what you call science evidence , when in fact the science community does not completely throw out the idea of creation demanding a creator , because a design always requires a designer and more and more discovered scientific evidence is proving it also. So your false “religion” seems to be crumbling all around you stu.

Peace and love to you, and good luck , your going to need it IMO……….gene

March 28, 2013 at 9:43 am#339911

Participant

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 28 2013,02:19)

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 27 2013,15:20)

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 27 2013,13:01)

God is not about playing games with you Stu I believe if you are sincere
He will reveal himself to you.

Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy. If you god doesn't reveal itself to me (with or without lottery winnings) then I wasn't sincere enough.

Stuart

Stu…….again you have completely missed the point I was driving at, which is, Faith in the real God is a personal revelation by that real God.

If I were to deny his real existence , then I would be a liar, like all who preach against his true existence, and would be denying all the proof afforded me in my life

Peace and love to you, and good luck , your going to need it IMO……….gene

Is that last part another threat on behalf of your monstrous Imaginary Friend?

This is desperate stuff, isn't it. You've got no idea how science works and you've got little idea how your own brain can fool you.

Stuart

March 28, 2013 at 10:44 am#339922

Participant

Stuart,
The only reason that I wrote to you with that 'story' which was very short, is because I have never been an atheist, so I cannot (no matter how hard I try) put myself into the shoes of an Atheist in that way.

One thing that I have done is questioned everything.

Despite God revealing Himself to me years ago, and despite all of the amazing things that happened to me, I did turn my back on God the deeper I thought about things. I could not understand a lot of things in scripture especially in the old testament. To me it sounded just as you say. And then was the eternal conscious torment doctrines, and even the words in scripture that seemed to prove it. To me, that was not a God of love but some monstrous being that demanded us to worship Him and if we did not then we would be ETERNALLY tormented. Well, what kind of a God WAS THAT? And what kind of people WERE CHRISTIANS? It scared me that humans could think so inhumanely, to worship a God who would do that to us. So, the more I thought about it, the less I liked that God and I walked away. I still believed that God existed, but I just felt the opposite and was quite disturbed by things.

But, Stuart, here is the thing. God soon showed me that this teaching of man was false. It was a hideous thing to believe about God, who is love, and anybody who believes this does not know God because God is love, and i believe this because I have felt it, and witnessed it through creation, life, scriptures, and knowing God.

1st John 4:16

[8] He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.
[16] So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
[17] In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world.
[18] There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.

And then I looked into it more and found verses which showed the opposite, and I learnt the Greek words which supported the opposite.

I will leave it at that for now.

March 28, 2013 at 11:03 am#339925

Spock

Participant

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 28 2013,21:44)

One thing that I have done is questioned everything.

1st John 4:16

And then I looked into it more and found verses which showed the opposite, and I learnt the Greek words which supported the opposite.

I will leave it at that for now.

2besee,

You are just casting your pearls before swine. I've dealt with Stu on multiple forums for years now, many have opened their hearts to him and he just stabs back. He is NOT a sincere seeker of “truth” rather it is his hobby to pick arguments with religious people in a mean spirited way.

You are dealing with “the darkness.”

Colter

March 28, 2013 at 12:25 pm#339933

Participant

Thanks Colter.
Still looking into that Urantia and other things. will post more when I am able.

March 28, 2013 at 2:47 pm#339938

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 28 2013,20:43)

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 28 2013,02:19)

Quote (Stu @ Mar. 27 2013,15:20)

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 27 2013,13:01)

God is not about playing games with you Stu I believe if you are sincere
He will reveal himself to you.

Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy. If you god doesn't reveal itself to me (with or without lottery winnings) then I wasn't sincere enough.

Stuart

Stu…….again you have completely missed the point I was driving at, which is, Faith in the real God is a personal revelation by that real God.

If I were to deny his real existence , then I would be a liar, like all who preach against his true existence, and would be denying all the proof afforded me in my life

Peace and love to you, and good luck , your going to need it IMO……….gene

Is that last part another threat on behalf of your monstrous Imaginary Friend?

This is desperate stuff, isn't it. You've got no idea how science works and you've got little idea how your own brain can fool you.

Stuart

Stu….. And do you know how your own mind is fooling you? You boast of evolution but can't find one of the trillion of changes it would take to bring about a gradual change of all the millions of different species on this earth .

Then you have the audosity to say I am delusional and don't understand science when in fact it is you who can't produce your proof of a “theory” which has never been proven and full of “missing links” . You my pride yourself on your understanding of true science, but in that you appear completely delusional yourself. IMO

Peace and love to you and yours……………………..gene

March 29, 2013 at 12:09 am#339961

Participant

Quote (Colter @ Mar. 28 2013,22:03)

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 28 2013,21:44)

One thing that I have done is questioned everything.

1st John 4:16

And then I looked into it more and found verses which showed the opposite, and I learnt the Greek words which supported the opposite.

I will leave it at that for now.

2besee,

You are dealing with “the darkness.”

Colter

There's nothing quite like attacking the man rather than the ball, is there Colter.

Stuart

March 29, 2013 at 12:18 am#339962

Participant

Quote (2besee @ Mar. 28 2013,21:44)

I don’t think you have tried very hard then. I think I can put myself in the shoes of a christian and see why you would believe all that. There are very many non-believers who have been able to put themselves in those same shoes and analyse the situation in great detail.

On the other hand, why do you think christianity inflicts such a disability of lack of empathy on you?

Quote

One thing that I have done is questioned everything.

I disagree strongly.

Quote

I don’t think your disagreement is with me as much as it is with other believers in your ancient Mesopotamian man-god celestial conspiracy theory.

I will leave it at that for now.

Stuart

March 29, 2013 at 12:44 am#339964

Participant

Quote (Gene Balthrop @ Mar. 29 2013,01:47)

Stu….. And do you know how your own mind is fooling you?

I can close one eye and be completely unaware of the blindspot caused by the exit of the optic nerve from the retina, and yet can also demonstrate the existence of that blindspot, leading to the conclusion that my brain is making up the missing part in my vision. I can hear the sound of hooves in the night and imagine all sorts of fanciful possibilities, perhaps zebras or unicorns, then can look outside and see that it was horses after all. I can watch videos like this one:

Quote

You boast of evolution but can't find one of the trillion of changes it would take to bring about a gradual change of all the millions of different species on this earth .

I showed you a whole series of them in relation to the evolution of the eye. Did you read that, or are you just in broadcast mode?

You are a bit like those with no love as outlined by Saul of Tarsus in Corinthians 13. You have no love of the reality around you. It would be fine if you never mentioned natural history, but when you do your voice is a clanging bell.

Quote

Then you have the idosity to say I am delusional and don't understand science when in fact it is you who can't produce your proof of a “theory” which has never been proven and full of “missing links” .

Science doesn’t deal in “proof”, it deals in empirical evidence. As for missing links, now you are making a joke of yourself in the eyes of any reasonably educated person. Your kind of creationism follows this logic: every time a new intermediate species is found, you will say that there used to be one missing link and now there are two.

By the way, what does “idosity” mean?

Stuart

March 29, 2013 at 4:46 pm#340040

Participant

Stu……..Sorry about the misspelled word, i meant Audacity , and i do know what it means.

So where can you point us to find the trillions of gradual skeletal fossils that should be scattered every on this earth showing all the billions of years of “gradual” changes taking place , has they all just disappeared or vanished some how? And tell us this, “O” SELF Made wise one, if you can, What came first the chicken or the egg , have you ever figured that out yet?. My bet is on the Chicken how about you Stu?

peace and love ………………………………………..gene

March 29, 2013 at 8:18 pm#340052