It should be noted that an ad hominem approach (let's refrain from my earlier use of "attack") does not necessarily imply an insult. Ad hominem simply means you're arguing the person instead of the topic. Things like, "Of course he feels that way; he's a Democrat." That's ad hominem. It does not address whether the person is correct in his thinking or incorrect, whether his position has validity or not. It dismisses his argument based on who he is, not on what he argues.
Whether Paul meant to say that the natural man is unable to understand the things of the spirit or unwilling to understand the things of the spirit makes no difference in terms of ad hominem. It's ad hominem either way. Whether one is more insulting than the other, I really don't know. My reason for bringing up ability v. willingness had nothing to do with ad hominem. Rather, it had everything to do with the appropriateness/inappropriateness of the "magic decoder ring" analogy. That analogy would not apply is the issue is unwillingness.
For whatever that's worth.
Gotcha. I mean lawyers do it on cross examination pretty consistently. Attacking the character of a witness to refute the story.
There seems to be a fair amount of success with that as people tend to believe the things that are “most like them”.
“If the glove does not fit you must acquit” lol.
Yes in logic rules ad hominem is not a direct handling of the argument but an attention shift off of the main point of discussion onto an evaluation of the messenger.
I personally feel like Paul was teaching a perspective there to followers as opposed to trying to alienate 99% of the known world. Teaching about focusing on virtue as opposed to getting bound up in other approaches.
The old “keys” we used to look at were to whom addressed. I guess there are varying views as to who the audience was at the time and to what extent messages apply to an audience.
I feel like this is a common problem in fundamentalism. It led to very twisted rules regarding finances in TWI to the point you have idiots teaching that year lease on a place is not debt but a 30 year mortgage is debt. Or a 7 year car note is debt but a 4 year car note called a “lease” is not debt.
I personally feel like Paul was teaching a perspective there to followers as opposed to trying to alienate 99% of the known world. Teaching about focusing on virtue as opposed to getting bound up in other approaches.
I absolutely agree. Back to the original analogy, a vaccine is injected into the healthy body. It is not sprayed in areas where the infecting virus might be.
I can think of another "vaccine" that is peculiar to Wierwille, not Christianity in general. It's when he says Eve's first mistake is "considering" what the devil had to say. Man, imagine you could block off all dissent by making it a fundamental error to even CONSIDER that you might be wrong. Whoo-whee!
Can I ask you something?” a young man inquired after learning that I am a physicist. “About quantum mechanics,” he added, shyly. I was all ready to debate the measurement postulate and the pitfalls of multipartite entanglement, but I was not prepared for the question that followed: “A shaman told me that my grandmother is still alive. Because of quantum mechanics. She is just not alive here and now. Is this right?”
As you can tell, I am still thinking about this. The brief answer is, it’s not totally wrong. The long answer will follow in chapter 1, but before I get to the quantum mechanics of deceased grandmothers, I want to tell you why I’m writing this book.
During more than a decade in public outreach, I noticed that phys-icists are really good at answering questions, but really bad at explain-ing why anyone should care about their answers. In some research areas, a study’s purpose reveals itself, eventually, in a marketable product. But in the foundations of physics—where I do most of my research—the primary product is knowledge. And all too often, my colleagues and I present this knowledge in ways so abstract that no one understands why we looked for it in the first place.
Not that this is specific to physics. The disconnect between experts and non-experts is so widespread that the sociologist Steve Fuller claims that academics use incomprehensible terminology to keep insights sparse and thereby more valuable. As the American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof complained, academics encode “insights into turgid prose” and “as a double protection against public consumption, this gobbledygook is then sometimes hidden in obscure journals.”
Case in point: People don’t care much whether quantum mechanics is predictable; they want to know whether their own behavior is predictable. They don’t care much whether black holes destroy information; they want to know what will happen to the collected infor- mation of human civilization. They don’t care much whether galactic filaments resemble neuronal networks; they want to know if the universe can think. People are people. Who’d have thought?
Of course, I want to know these things too. But somewhere along my path through academia I learned to avoid asking such questions, not to mention answering them. After all, I’m just a physicist. I’m not competent to speak about consciousness and human behavior and such.
Nevertheless, the young man’s question drove home to me that physicists do know some things, if not about consciousness itself, then about the physical laws that everything in the universe—including you and I and your grandmother—must respect. Not all ideas about life and death and the origin of human existence are compatible with the foundations of physics. That’s knowledge we should not hide in obscure journals using incomprehensible prose. [...]
However, my aim here is not merely to expose pseudoscience for what it is. I also want to convey that some spiritual ideas are perfectly compatible with modern physics, and others are, indeed, supported by it. And why not? That physics has something to say about our connection to the universe is not so surprising. Science and religion have the same roots, and still today they tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know?
When it comes to these questions, physicists have learned a lot in the past century. Their progress makes clear that the limits of science are not fixed; they move as we learn more about the world. Correspondingly, some belief-based explanations that once aided sensemaking and gave comfort we now know to be just wrong. The idea, for example, that certain objects are alive because they are endowed with a special substance (Henri Bergson’s “élan vital”) was entirely compatible with scientific fact two hundred years ago. But it no longer is.
****
Not that I'm at all qualified to expound on the dichotomy between science and religion, but I find Dr Hossenfelder's insight compelling.
Then there's Michio Kaku's book, The God Equation. Which I read and reviewed on Goodreads almost a year ago
Clearly, I'm no physicist, though I did take physics (instead of chemistry) in HS... more than half a century ago.
Kaku's book does kinda make sense to me, at least a little bit. But it really is over my head.
Near the last few pages, he writes: So why is there something rather than nothing? Because our universe originally came from quantum fluctuations in Nothing.
Much of the meaningfulness of Kaku's book (IMO) lies in or comes from the philosophical questions he sets the stage for and ultimately poses. Like, Will this theory of everything give us the meaning of life?... "However, I do believe the theory of everything might have something to say about the meaning of the universe," Kaku writes.
Thankfully, Michio Kaku is not like the Sheldon Cooper character on the Big Bang Theory television show. However like the TV show and other literary artistic expressions, Kaku uses numerous illustrations to make abstract concepts more understandable for people like me.
It's also important to realize this book is about the QUEST for a theory of everything which has not yet been discovered or figured out. Maybe one of your descendants or mine will be instrumental in finding such a beautiful, elegant, symmetry that can more fully enlighten us.
Is it also possible Paul (or various bible translators) just didn't have words to express the message in ways humans could understand? Rather than the verse being the equivalent of Paul thumbing his nose at people who didn't want to believe him?
Frankly, I VERY MUCH appreciate Hossenfelder's reflection on the situation (in the YouTube short post I posted in the thread about 45 minutes ago.
I'm not claiming to be right. I don't need to "win." Rather, I'd prefer to expand the discussion on this subject.
Can I ask you something?” a young man inquired after learning that I am a physicist. “About quantum mechanics,” he added, shyly. I was all ready to debate the measurement postulate and the pitfalls of multipartite entanglement, but I was not prepared for the question that followed: “A shaman told me that my grandmother is still alive. Because of quantum mechanics. She is just not alive here and now. Is this right?”
As you can tell, I am still thinking about this. The brief answer is, it’s not totally wrong. The long answer will follow in chapter 1, but before I get to the quantum mechanics of deceased grandmothers, I want to tell you why I’m writing this book.
During more than a decade in public outreach, I noticed that phys-icists are really good at answering questions, but really bad at explain-ing why anyone should care about their answers. In some research areas, a study’s purpose reveals itself, eventually, in a marketable product. But in the foundations of physics—where I do most of my research—the primary product is knowledge. And all too often, my colleagues and I present this knowledge in ways so abstract that no one understands why we looked for it in the first place.
Not that this is specific to physics. The disconnect between experts and non-experts is so widespread that the sociologist Steve Fuller claims that academics use incomprehensible terminology to keep insights sparse and thereby more valuable. As the American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof complained, academics encode “insights into turgid prose” and “as a double protection against public consumption, this gobbledygook is then sometimes hidden in obscure journals.”
Case in point: People don’t care much whether quantum mechanics is predictable; they want to know whether their own behavior is predictable. They don’t care much whether black holes destroy information; they want to know what will happen to the collected infor- mation of human civilization. They don’t care much whether galactic filaments resemble neuronal networks; they want to know if the universe can think. People are people. Who’d have thought?
Rocky thanks for the book recommendation on physics.
Seems to me the things thought foolish might be looked into a bit further if seeking spiritual understanding. Reminds me of vpw being against spiritualism, could be that he never understood
I spent over 20 years looking into seeking spiritual understanding via TWI. You can argue they are a cult, were a counterfit, and only their only interest was promoting VPW’s sex life. But I spent 9 years with the RC’s and a few years with a local church seeking spiritual understanding, but always came up empty. Why wasn’t I seeing so called signs, miracles, and wonders? Maybe 1 person being raised from the dead or 1 person with AIDS being cured would have convinced me there really was spiritual understanding. I never even saw a cold cured in 30 years.
I did see TWI leaders killed in a car accident, but didn ‘t see them brought back to life. Our fellowship followed the WOW handbook and barely saw any results. My best friend was a RC believer, but died young from cancer. We prayed and prayed for him to be cured, but he died. I gave 15% of my money to the church for God to bless me financially, but only found myself 15% poorer.
When I compare actual life to what the bible says it should be, the bible comes up short. I had no choice but to accept reality, and forget about god, at least the one in the bible. I have been apart of seances, levitations, and operating ouija boards, that didn’t require any training or praying to perform them. We just decided to do them and they produced results. That is the best I can compare to spiritual understanding.
I find it tempting, constantly, to answer every objection to every point I make, until every point is exhausted. i'm deliberately avoiding that temptation here. Truth is, I have no idea what to say to Rocky's post. I'm not even sure what is being asserted there.
But sometimes "arguments" (for lack of a better word) don't need to be "won." Sometimes the victory is in realizing you've made your point and you do not need the last word to succeed in your original endeavor.
I am grateful to everyone who participated in this thread.
Truth is, I have no idea what to say to Rocky's post. I'm not even sure what is being asserted there.
But sometimes "arguments" (for lack of a better word) don't need to be "won." Sometimes the victory is in realizing you've made your point and you do not need the last word to succeed in your original endeavor.
I am grateful to everyone who participated in this thread.
That's kinda what I was trying to assert. Discussions, even when including one or more arguments, should not necessarily be about winning. Rather, about expanding our understanding and imagination about the possibilities.
I find it tempting, constantly, to answer every objection to every point I make, until every point is exhausted. i'm deliberately avoiding that temptation here. Truth is, I have no idea what to say to Rocky's post. I'm not even sure what is being asserted there.
But sometimes "arguments" (for lack of a better word) don't need to be "won." Sometimes the victory is in realizing you've made your point and you do not need the last word to succeed in your original endeavor.
I am grateful to everyone who participated in this thread.
I find it tempting, constantly, to answer every objection to every point I make, until every point is exhausted. i'm deliberately avoiding that temptation here. Truth is, I have no idea what to say to Rocky's post. I'm not even sure what is being asserted there.
But sometimes "arguments" (for lack of a better word) don't need to be "won." Sometimes the victory is in realizing you've made your point and you do not need the last word to succeed in your original endeavor.
I am grateful to everyone who participated in this thread.
After reading this I think I certainly am influenced by people baiting me into arguing for the last word. I do feel the dual nature of answering a fool according to his folly or not.
I think most of us are “winning” by living well free of the clutches of TWI. That shouldn’t be happening by their explanation we should be experiencing all sorts of consequences from leaving “da ministry that taught us da verd”.
When it comes to these questions, physicists have learned a lot in the past century. Their progress makes clear that the limits of science are not fixed; they move as we learn more about the world. Correspondingly, some belief-based explanations that once aided sensemaking and gave comfort we now know to be just wrong. ...
****
Not that I'm at all qualified to expound on the dichotomy between science and religion, but I find Dr Hossenfelder's insight compelling.
I wonder... if human perception which has obvious limits causes humankind to recognize some things without being able to investigate the scientific bases for the given phenomenon. This YT clip is long, but not as long, yet still understandable (or at least a listener can follow the words) by speeding it up. I find 1.75x workable for this purpose.
Brian Greene is a scientist, author, and a darn good teacher. At least he tries to make things accessible for people who are not physicists. (yes... er, NO, this is not a homework assignment.) If you're interested, fine. If not, also fine.
I just visited a relative who has been diagnosed with dementia. Not only is her mind being diminished, but her muscles are also. She must go to a physical therapist three times a week just to maintain the ability to move about. She asked, “why is God allowing this to happen to me?” In her next breath she said, “oh well, I guess He has a good reason putting me through this.”
My immediate thought went to this thread and thinking, she has to have been vaccinated for the reason virus.
How can a loving heavenly father allow his daughter to suffer like this? Absolutely no sane worldly father would even consider letting his daughter suffer like this, especially if they had the power to prevent it.
Remember God created the devil, who God blames for causing all the havoc in the world. From a logical point of view, no earthly father would setup an obstacle for their child to fail, especially one that the child has no control over.
Supposedly God was so in need of love, he decided to create people who would have the opportunity to love Him. But, this God who is in need of love, put conditions on those who would love him. But if the created people did not meet the conditions set forth by God, they will be punished. Why create people who God, in His for knowledge, KNEW would not love him? Then, He must punish those who did not love Him by giving them over to the flawed Devil, whom He created?
Alot of people who received a Covid shot, flu shot, etc, also received the vaccine for the Reason Virus.
If a father acted like God he would be arrested and convicted a child abuse.
In her next breath she said, “oh well, I guess He has a good reason putting me through this.”
Humans, even those not suffering any form of dementia, are quite often prone to misguided rationalizations.
It also has occurred to me over the last day or so that Christianity (and plenty of other religious belief systems) present/impose an adversarial worldview to any and everyone who embrace it.
I'm not saying I completely disbelieve God, but reflecting on my last four or five decades, I can't say I've benefitted from this particular adversarial framework.
Many of the wars fought throughout history, and certainly those of the present time, are carried out in the name of religion. It really doesn’t matter what religion it, at some point they have murdered others in the name of their god. The death, destruction and pain inflicted upon their adversarial religions, are not the actions of those worshipping a loving god.
One has to ask why did these so called loving gods create an adversarial god, that would under all circumstances, oppose them? Supposedly it is because this creating god was so lonely for love, he made little creatures in his image. And these creatures would be put through tests to determine if they loved this god. If they failed the test, they would be turned over to the adversarial god for eternal destruction. Does not make sense from a logical point of view.
I wonder if John Lennon could really “Imagine” fulfilling all the points he sang about in that song? It is certainly difficult to see where he “had no possessions,” in his life. Lennon was one of those who lived by, do as I say, not as I do.
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Stayed Too Long
Heb 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. This is one reference of the word faith in the bible and clearly states that whatever is hoped for is n
Stayed Too Long
I spent over 20 years looking into seeking spiritual understanding via TWI. You can argue they are a cult, were a counterfit, and only their only interest was promoting VPW’s sex life. But I spent 9
TLC
While it might not always be that obvious or apparent or easy to identify, all logic and reason starts with and builds on a premise that is simply accepted and presumed to be true, regardless of wheth
Posted Images
chockfull
Gotcha. I mean lawyers do it on cross examination pretty consistently. Attacking the character of a witness to refute the story.
There seems to be a fair amount of success with that as people tend to believe the things that are “most like them”.
“If the glove does not fit you must acquit” lol.
Yes in logic rules ad hominem is not a direct handling of the argument but an attention shift off of the main point of discussion onto an evaluation of the messenger.
I personally feel like Paul was teaching a perspective there to followers as opposed to trying to alienate 99% of the known world. Teaching about focusing on virtue as opposed to getting bound up in other approaches.
The old “keys” we used to look at were to whom addressed. I guess there are varying views as to who the audience was at the time and to what extent messages apply to an audience.
I feel like this is a common problem in fundamentalism. It led to very twisted rules regarding finances in TWI to the point you have idiots teaching that year lease on a place is not debt but a 30 year mortgage is debt. Or a 7 year car note is debt but a 4 year car note called a “lease” is not debt.
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Raf
I absolutely agree. Back to the original analogy, a vaccine is injected into the healthy body. It is not sprayed in areas where the infecting virus might be.
I can think of another "vaccine" that is peculiar to Wierwille, not Christianity in general. It's when he says Eve's first mistake is "considering" what the devil had to say. Man, imagine you could block off all dissent by making it a fundamental error to even CONSIDER that you might be wrong. Whoo-whee!
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waysider
Yikes! Who would ever do that? That would just be crazy.
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Nathan_Jr
Rely NOT on your own consideration. Let someone else with a bracelet do the considering for you.
Seek to BELEEEVE, not to find out, not to understand, not to know, not to see.
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Rocky
https://sabinehossenfelder.com/
Edited by RockyIt seems, Raf, you might be taking a harshly dogmatic approach to the subject of this thread.
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Rocky
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59695048-existential-physics
Can I ask you something?” a young man inquired after learning that I am a physicist. “About quantum mechanics,” he added, shyly. I was all ready to debate the measurement postulate and the pitfalls of multipartite entanglement, but I was not prepared for the question that followed: “A shaman told me that my grandmother is still alive. Because of quantum mechanics. She is just not alive here and now. Is this right?”
As you can tell, I am still thinking about this. The brief answer is, it’s not totally wrong. The long answer will follow in chapter 1, but before I get to the quantum mechanics of deceased grandmothers, I want to tell you why I’m writing this book.
During more than a decade in public outreach, I noticed that phys-icists are really good at answering questions, but really bad at explain-ing why anyone should care about their answers. In some research areas, a study’s purpose reveals itself, eventually, in a marketable product. But in the foundations of physics—where I do most of my research—the primary product is knowledge. And all too often, my colleagues and I present this knowledge in ways so abstract that no one understands why we looked for it in the first place.
Not that this is specific to physics. The disconnect between experts and non-experts is so widespread that the sociologist Steve Fuller claims that academics use incomprehensible terminology to keep insights sparse and thereby more valuable. As the American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof complained, academics encode “insights into turgid prose” and “as a double protection against public consumption, this gobbledygook is then sometimes hidden in obscure journals.”
Case in point: People don’t care much whether quantum mechanics is predictable; they want to know whether their own behavior is predictable. They don’t care much whether black holes destroy information; they want to know what will happen to the collected infor- mation of human civilization. They don’t care much whether galactic filaments resemble neuronal networks; they want to know if the universe can think. People are people. Who’d have thought?
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Rocky
More of the excerpt shared above, which I found at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/616868/existential-physics-by-sabine-hossenfelder/
Of course, I want to know these things too. But somewhere along my path through academia I learned to avoid asking such questions, not to mention answering them. After all, I’m just a physicist. I’m not competent to speak about consciousness and human behavior and such.
Nevertheless, the young man’s question drove home to me that physicists do know some things, if not about consciousness itself, then about the physical laws that everything in the universe—including you and I and your grandmother—must respect. Not all ideas about life and death and the origin of human existence are compatible with the foundations of physics. That’s knowledge we should not hide in obscure journals using incomprehensible prose. [...]
However, my aim here is not merely to expose pseudoscience for what it is. I also want to convey that some spiritual ideas are perfectly compatible with modern physics, and others are, indeed, supported by it. And why not? That physics has something to say about our connection to the universe is not so surprising. Science and religion have the same roots, and still today they tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know?
When it comes to these questions, physicists have learned a lot in the past century. Their progress makes clear that the limits of science are not fixed; they move as we learn more about the world. Correspondingly, some belief-based explanations that once aided sensemaking and gave comfort we now know to be just wrong. The idea, for example, that certain objects are alive because they are endowed with a special substance (Henri Bergson’s “élan vital”) was entirely compatible with scientific fact two hundred years ago. But it no longer is.
****
Not that I'm at all qualified to expound on the dichotomy between science and religion, but I find Dr Hossenfelder's insight compelling.
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Rocky
Then there's Michio Kaku's book, The God Equation. Which I read and reviewed on Goodreads almost a year ago
Clearly, I'm no physicist, though I did take physics (instead of chemistry) in HS... more than half a century ago.
Kaku's book does kinda make sense to me, at least a little bit. But it really is over my head.
Near the last few pages, he writes:
So why is there something rather than nothing? Because our universe originally came from quantum fluctuations in Nothing.
Much of the meaningfulness of Kaku's book (IMO) lies in or comes from the philosophical questions he sets the stage for and ultimately poses. Like, Will this theory of everything give us the meaning of life?... "However, I do believe the theory of everything might have something to say about the meaning of the universe," Kaku writes.
Thankfully, Michio Kaku is not like the Sheldon Cooper character on the Big Bang Theory television show. However like the TV show and other literary artistic expressions, Kaku uses numerous illustrations to make abstract concepts more understandable for people like me.
It's also important to realize this book is about the QUEST for a theory of everything which has not yet been discovered or figured out. Maybe one of your descendants or mine will be instrumental in finding such a beautiful, elegant, symmetry that can more fully enlighten us.
Is it also possible Paul (or various bible translators) just didn't have words to express the message in ways humans could understand? Rather than the verse being the equivalent of Paul thumbing his nose at people who didn't want to believe him?
Frankly, I VERY MUCH appreciate Hossenfelder's reflection on the situation (in the YouTube short post I posted in the thread about 45 minutes ago.
I'm not claiming to be right. I don't need to "win." Rather, I'd prefer to expand the discussion on this subject.
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chockfull
Rocky thanks for the book recommendation on physics.
It should rank on up there with my favorite
HG2G
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
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Stayed Too Long
I spent over 20 years looking into seeking spiritual understanding via TWI. You can argue they are a cult, were a counterfit, and only their only interest was promoting VPW’s sex life. But I spent 9 years with the RC’s and a few years with a local church seeking spiritual understanding, but always came up empty. Why wasn’t I seeing so called signs, miracles, and wonders? Maybe 1 person being raised from the dead or 1 person with AIDS being cured would have convinced me there really was spiritual understanding. I never even saw a cold cured in 30 years.
I did see TWI leaders killed in a car accident, but didn ‘t see them brought back to life. Our fellowship followed the WOW handbook and barely saw any results. My best friend was a RC believer, but died young from cancer. We prayed and prayed for him to be cured, but he died. I gave 15% of my money to the church for God to bless me financially, but only found myself 15% poorer.
When I compare actual life to what the bible says it should be, the bible comes up short. I had no choice but to accept reality, and forget about god, at least the one in the bible. I have been apart of seances, levitations, and operating ouija boards, that didn’t require any training or praying to perform them. We just decided to do them and they produced results. That is the best I can compare to spiritual understanding.
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cman
Thinking of spiritualism, I wasn't thinking of that stuff, I was thinking about eastern religions.
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Raf
Confession:
I find it tempting, constantly, to answer every objection to every point I make, until every point is exhausted. i'm deliberately avoiding that temptation here. Truth is, I have no idea what to say to Rocky's post. I'm not even sure what is being asserted there.
But sometimes "arguments" (for lack of a better word) don't need to be "won." Sometimes the victory is in realizing you've made your point and you do not need the last word to succeed in your original endeavor.
I am grateful to everyone who participated in this thread.
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Rocky
That's kinda what I was trying to assert. Discussions, even when including one or more arguments, should not necessarily be about winning. Rather, about expanding our understanding and imagination about the possibilities.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Raf.
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oldiesman
Agree
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chockfull
After reading this I think I certainly am influenced by people baiting me into arguing for the last word. I do feel the dual nature of answering a fool according to his folly or not.
I think most of us are “winning” by living well free of the clutches of TWI. That shouldn’t be happening by their explanation we should be experiencing all sorts of consequences from leaving “da ministry that taught us da verd”.
We should all be greasespots at midnight.
But we aren’t.
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Stayed Too Long
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Stayed Too Long
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Rocky
I wonder... if human perception which has obvious limits causes humankind to recognize some things without being able to investigate the scientific bases for the given phenomenon. This YT clip is long, but not as long, yet still understandable (or at least a listener can follow the words) by speeding it up. I find 1.75x workable for this purpose.
Brian Greene is a scientist, author, and a darn good teacher. At least he tries to make things accessible for people who are not physicists. (yes... er, NO, this is not a homework assignment.) If you're interested, fine. If not, also fine.
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Stayed Too Long
I just visited a relative who has been diagnosed with dementia. Not only is her mind being diminished, but her muscles are also. She must go to a physical therapist three times a week just to maintain the ability to move about. She asked, “why is God allowing this to happen to me?” In her next breath she said, “oh well, I guess He has a good reason putting me through this.”
My immediate thought went to this thread and thinking, she has to have been vaccinated for the reason virus.
How can a loving heavenly father allow his daughter to suffer like this? Absolutely no sane worldly father would even consider letting his daughter suffer like this, especially if they had the power to prevent it.
Remember God created the devil, who God blames for causing all the havoc in the world. From a logical point of view, no earthly father would setup an obstacle for their child to fail, especially one that the child has no control over.
Supposedly God was so in need of love, he decided to create people who would have the opportunity to love Him. But, this God who is in need of love, put conditions on those who would love him. But if the created people did not meet the conditions set forth by God, they will be punished. Why create people who God, in His for knowledge, KNEW would not love him? Then, He must punish those who did not love Him by giving them over to the flawed Devil, whom He created?
Alot of people who received a Covid shot, flu shot, etc, also received the vaccine for the Reason Virus.
If a father acted like God he would be arrested and convicted a child abuse.
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Rocky
Humans, even those not suffering any form of dementia, are quite often prone to misguided rationalizations.
It also has occurred to me over the last day or so that Christianity (and plenty of other religious belief systems) present/impose an adversarial worldview to any and everyone who embrace it.
I'm not saying I completely disbelieve God, but reflecting on my last four or five decades, I can't say I've benefitted from this particular adversarial framework.
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Stayed Too Long
Many of the wars fought throughout history, and certainly those of the present time, are carried out in the name of religion. It really doesn’t matter what religion it, at some point they have murdered others in the name of their god. The death, destruction and pain inflicted upon their adversarial religions, are not the actions of those worshipping a loving god.
One has to ask why did these so called loving gods create an adversarial god, that would under all circumstances, oppose them? Supposedly it is because this creating god was so lonely for love, he made little creatures in his image. And these creatures would be put through tests to determine if they loved this god. If they failed the test, they would be turned over to the adversarial god for eternal destruction. Does not make sense from a logical point of view.
I wonder if John Lennon could really “Imagine” fulfilling all the points he sang about in that song? It is certainly difficult to see where he “had no possessions,” in his life. Lennon was one of those who lived by, do as I say, not as I do.
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cman
do you want to understand or are you convinced that there is no understanding, maybe there is some missing pieces....
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Nathan_Jr
What are the missing pieces?
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Stayed Too Long
Sure, if you can point out the errors in my logic please do so. Thanks
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