attempt to understand

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You're making the assumption that "miracles", by definition, require some law of physics to be violated, when that needs not be the case... A miracle can be something as simple as reconciliation of a long-standing feud between relatives, a freak occurance (such as the odds of it occurring are over 1,000,000:1) where a man discovers his long-lost father... things like that...


Just so you're aware, henriksson has an established pattern that is similar to that of Sand...

I'm sorry, but improbables do not fall into the class of miracles which are impossible.

It's amazing really... my parents never forced me to go to church, and yet I'm much more involved now... I get the idea that, at least in the US where Christianity is dominant, many people today who are extremely against Christianity were the folks dragged to church by overly conservative parents to listen to some freak ramble on about God hating this or that for an hour... no wonder these people have such a negative opinion even against more normal christians...


To be honest, I'm still in the church that I'm in because the people there accept me without prejudice... unlike the REST OF THE ENTIRE f*****g WORLD that would rather I just crawl off to some corner to die...


Again, only the conservative christians are the ones that are ranting about God's wrath and all that BS... Most christians I know in real life usually understand that God's love is for all... The father never stopped loving the prodigal son, no matter what...


I'm already alienated by the rest of society... the church is all I have left...


Just because one is a christian doesn't mean that they shouldn't stop looking for answers themselves. Jesus, when asked for a prophetic sign by the religious leaders of his time, basically said "figure it out yourself"... Aside from that, there have been plenty of religious people out there that have made great advances in science... Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo are the first two that come to mind... Religion and science are two completely unrelated concepts... ideally, neither should make claims against the other... Religion explains the "why" of the universe, while science explains the "how"...


I guess you could call that an extension of the Fermi Paradox... if there's life after death, why isn't it evident? To be honest, nobody actually knows for sure what happens to the consciousness after death... maybe after I die I'll come back and tell you...

Where does it say that miracles have to be absolutely otherwise impossible?

Well, in that case everything we do are miracles, because the odds of it happening are extremely small, considering what other possibilities could happen.

You explicitely stated in the OP:



So you're seemingly not interested in my view on that.

To me, the why has never been addressed: Why would/did god make the universe?

One would think that that most fundamentally important question would be answered by the religious doctrine. But none of the, Christian or otherwise, seems to.

EXIT GENESIS

"I have," said God.
"A nice idea,
A thing that could be fun."
So he twiddled 'round
With time and space
And fuddled up the Sun.

"Now, that's quite neat!",
He said with heat.
"I'll make a couple more."
And he tumbled out a quantity
'Til it became a bore.

But suns put out a lot of junk
Like planets, dust and gas.
And God, with red-rimmed eyes looked 'round
At all this messy jazz.

It made God twitch,
It made God sneeze,
It gave him water on the knees,
It gave Him pimples on his face.
And so, He said, "To hell with this!"
And went some other place.

Neither did mine, nor very many other parents outside the most fundamentalist of sects. But there remains the peer-pressure factor. It's like the argument against school prayer. "What's the big deal? If a child doesn't want to pray she doesn't have to." This is factually true. But if that child doesn't participate in the activity that all his other peers participate in and take for granted as something that good people do that child will likely face untold bullying and further alienation.

Likewise, I at age 3, 5, 8, Aspie and already trying to show my parents I'm not the freakish embarrassment they think I am, am not about to add to my burden by saying, "The existence of our god seems even less likely than the existence of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny and I don't want to Church anymore. Hire me a babysitter while you go."

Same thing with threat of hell. A hippy-Episcopal church isn't a place where you'll find a fire and brimstone sermon. But at the end of the day, it's right there in the bible with everything else that made me cringe. Gays and foreigners are bad, women are lesser people than men, thou shalt have no other gods before me. The Sunday school teacher might be conveniently skimming over those bits but for those of us 8 year olds who actually did read the bible cover to cover, paying particular attention to the parts we normally skip over, the fact remains:

X is in the bible. We call all of the bible good and the will of God. Therefore X is the will of God, no matter how much we try to ignore it or how much I personally find it distasteful.

And to be honest, that's your decision... I don't hold anything against you for doing that... even if some of my more close-minded brothers wouldn't agree...


Are you sure they're not just actually rebranded conservative? I've not once heard anything about God hating this or that in my church... if anything, the sermons more often about loving others... "Love thy neighbor" is one of the two great commandments in the new testament that serve as a heuristic for all the other laws in the Christian faith... therefore, anyone who talks about hating this or that is in direct contradiction with the core of Christian teachings, whether it be the crusaders of medieval times, or the Fred Phelps crowd of today...

Well where else would His pet "human" project reside? According to the theology of all the Abrahamic religions, humanity carries a special importance not found outside the theology...

You are assuming you can read the mind and determine the motivations of a being that is as far advanced above human as a human is above a bedbug. I doubt any bedbug could psychoanalyze a human so why do you think you could understand the motives of a God?

I'm merely trying to offer a possible explanation here based on the theology, not offer a complete psychoanalysis on God...

And did the theology totally analyze God so one could definitely indicate what His motives are? Where did they get those profound answers?

ok... thank you for the confusing post henrikkson... and sand; please stop this; i am trying to learn, and seperating the wheat from the chaff is tough enough without certain people fighting me...

Regarding other posts;

I was dragged to chruch (through actual wind, rain and snow) by my parents from the age of about ... well, birth! Went to a fairly conservative, but very traditionalist Anglican church by my home, and suffered though many a "thou" and "thee" for nearly 18 years - was able to recite each and every passage of the service by the end of this time; and i still can given the correct prompts and lead ins.

University provided the vehicle by which i was able to "duck out" of church, but i had lost my faith a long time before that - specifically at the age of 14, I was going through the process of "coming out" as gay, and i unfortunately picked up a damning leaflet entitled "homosexuality and christianity" which was basically "fire and brimstone and hell; oh my!". I lost what faith my parents had fostered upon me at that point.

I didnt have much in terms of religious faith (rather focusing on mathematics and science over religion), but i felt comfort in the existance of "God". When i read that leaflet, I felt like I had made a decision that ultimately meant that I could never have God's love, and so I turned away from Christianity, and threw myself into maths and science to a huge amount. I did look into the other religions that I knew of at that time in my life, but each of them had something I couldn't believe in or live by - usually the gay thing, but some also brought about some difficult questions that I couldn't answer.

So, I settled on an eclectic mix of ethics and morals that i learnt through study of philosophy and i found that in my life, I could then live with myself quite comfortably. I admit, it wasn't perfect, but it was good for me at that time in my life; it was basically something that seemed quite close to the idea of Transhumanism, coupled with a Spinozan idea of the infinite (Def 6 of his Ethics). I still had some yearnings of faith; I tried to explain it with an analogy of "mind" - the spark of conciousness that people carry with them. Perhaps this can be described as an atheistic point of view, or perhaps an agnostic point of view, but my thougths didnt really ever focus on God or the existance of God, simply more the material world around us, coupled with this Cartesian duality of physical and metaphysical.

Anyway; i lived like this for a few years, until I met my current (and loving) partner. He is gay, and he is Christian (with a strong faith and stronger convictions than I ever had while coming out in a religious context). I went to church with him a few weeks ago, and I just felt so angry with myself - I didnt know why!! ! Upon reflection I felt that I had never actually resolved my own questions about my faith and my sexuality, and simply knowing him (my partner), I find that these questions, ones that he faced and resolved, I instead ignored and turned away from them.

He is stronger than I am, and I know he would help me with this (and I know he hs been following this thread, and he has advised me in my contact with those ... less than helpful posters), but I want to get some ideas myself before I feel strong enough to actually face these questions myself.

This is what has prompted this search and self-discovery...

I hope that posting this means that peoples replies can be more accurately informed in what information I am seeking.
(EDITED for typos)

Sorry to have disturbed you. You have to make up your own mind as to the acceptability of religious beliefs. As you can see, I have more or less decided for myself. You seem to be in trouble because your friend has beliefs that do not coincide with yours and you are looking for some way to change yours so that you can maintain your relationship. I cannot help you with that.