Originally posted by sonship
Rank, I expect to be called away to some meanings that my wife has for me at any moment. So replies will be in fragments.

[quote] im sure there are atheists who battle with 'meaning'. being an atheist is not being part of a club, we do not all agree on all things. in fact there is only one thing we are sure to agree on. i personally disagree with those ...[text shortened]...

Would you say that Jesus Christ was one of these depressed "larger meaning" searcher types ?

possibly. if i were to imagine the fictional character of the bible was a real person then i would say they were suffering from some sort of personality disorder, probably delusional, possibly a psychopath.

Originally posted by Eladar
Wow, so you think you have a view of reality that applies to all people.

Now you are proselytzing. You have gone way past just wanting to talk and debate about theism vs non theism but now you are actively pushing your POV.

You are clearly not interested in atheistic POV's, only showing how your theism is manifestly superior to atheism.

Originally posted by sonship

[b]Two things:

1 I have no idea what this means.

2 You have not explained why this gives meaning to anything.

For #1 the point is taken that I wrote something which you do not understand.

As to your second point, oh no, in this thread the atheists have the burden to do some explaining. My question - "If no God ...[text shortened]... y of it goes unjudged.

Ie. Adolf Hitler, Caligula, Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, etc.

I don't know about Caligula, but the other three were judged.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
I don't know about Caligula, but the other three were judged.

I don't know about Caligula, but the other three were judged.

Remember, I said perfect judgment.

Granted, in this life many people were judged by society or human laws.
Some were well judged.
Some were falsely judged.
Man is imperfect, knows some of the facts, can be mistaken, can even be bribed or misjudge, or under judge or over judge. Man may be biased.

This is why you are able to argue "What moral code in letters is able to cover all possible circumstances ? There cannot be any absolute moral code booked for humans to keep."

But there can be a mark, like a target or bull's eye of a target. The word SIN is derived from a word picture meaning to "miss the mark" as in archery. You simply miss the bull's eye of the moral target.

"All have sinned [missed the mark] and fallen short of the glory of God. " God has perfect knowledge of the mark to be hit. He knows how far off our arrow strayed and why.

Yes, I grant you that for some of the known crimes of Adolf Hitler, some imperfect retribution resulted in his defeat and probable suicide.

But he nor you nor I have yet come before Perfect judgment, missing nothing and knowing the bull's eye of the target we may have missed.

God is the Righteous Judge at the end, whose examination is without any possible flaw. It is infallible.

But there is good news. There is a perfect redemption for the whole world in the atoning death on behalf of all sinners in the Son of God.

[ a very short post ]

Originally posted by sonship

I don't know about Caligula, but the other three were judged.

Remember, I said [b]perfect judgment.

Granted, in this life many people were judged by society or human laws.
Some were well judged.
Some were falsely judged.
Man is imperfect, knows some of the facts, can be mistaken, can even be bribed or misjudge, or under jud ...[text shortened]... orld in the atoning death on behalf of all sinners in the Son of God.

[ a very short post ][/b]

and what are the results of 'perfect judgement'? what is its purpose?

Originally posted by stellspalfie

and what are the results of 'perfect judgement'? what is its purpose?

Right now I would only reply that to ask this question reveals that we just do not realize what kind of eternal God lies behind this universe.

He is terrible in perfection. He is terrible in holiness.

But He is awesome in His redemptive love equally.

To ask this question may indicate that one has not considered the other side of everlasting love. There is also the leaving of no trace whatsoever of wrong doing not corrected.

If you are a theist you may appreciate the side of God which is eternal love and mercy which endures forever. But there is the other side of the same God - the cleaning up of iniquity which is infinite, eternal, perfect.

Not left an "atom," a miniscule "quark" of unrighteousness not dealt with by the Creator, the King.

Originally posted by stellspalfie
and what are the results of 'perfect judgement'? what is its purpose?

To separate the wheat from the chaff, righteous from unrighteous, what else?

Originally posted by stellspalfie

possibly. if i were to imagine the fictional character of the bible was a real person then i would say they were suffering from some sort of personality disorder, probably delusional, possibly a psychopath.

What disorder, what delusional behavior, what psychopathic tendencies were able to cause Jesus to be born in Bethlehem as had been predicted such a Person would be born ?

How was His disorder able to pull that off ?

" ... behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, Saying, Where is He who has been born King of the Jews ?

And when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

And they said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written through the prophet: [Micah]

"And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, by no means are you the least among the princes of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a Ruler, One who will shepherd My people Israel." (Matt. 2:1b-6)

How did this disorder of mind allow Jesus to orchestrate the place of His own birth ? He lived and acted like that one Micah spoke of " ... and His goings forth are from ancient times, From the days of eternity."

Is there an "arrange your own birth place" and/or a "be born there and act like one whose pre-existence is eternal " disorder cataloged in your psychology texts somewhere ?

hard for you. hard for me to think the opposite.

You mean it is hard for you to see plan, purpose, scheme in the function of DNA ? You mean it is hard for you to conceive any wisdom or knowledge behind this splendid accident of pure luck.

I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

yes dna coding has no more meaning than any other chemical reaction. would you describe water as having a meaning?

Would you think it is insignificant that every time a distant planet is located one of the first things astronomers are interested to know is "Is there WATER there ?" ?

How come they always want to know if there is WATER on that planet ? It is because the presence of water may mean the presence of life.

But you yawn. "Water? Big deal. No meaning to water."

the value of my life will be measured by individuals, the people who knew me or were effected by my existence (which you could argue is everybody).

You cannot possibly live happily with your worldview that no real objective meaning exists. It is impossible for you to be consistent. So you have to speak of the transient and vanishing value of people you effect.

This is a blind leap of faith in order to live sanely. Consistent with your own world view though, it is illusion - the Noble Lie.

their measurements will all be independent of each other and personal to the individual. i of course will also value my life. if there is a god it will not change this one iota. gods opinion or value is no more important than anybody elses. if he decides i should spend eternity with him, well thats the value he has, it doesnt change anybody else.

I think you are an atheist. IF you turn out to be wrong, you HOPE that it will be as if it makes no difference. "It will be no more important than anyone else's valuation."

That's what you hope. If God turns out to exist you can carry over your atheist apathy just like before. You take Pascal's wager that the choice ending up to be wrong will result in no loss. Either way of the wager, there will be no loss.

The flip of the coin, heads or tails - God is / God is not, it will all come out to be just the same.

You hope your apathy will turn out to be more powerful than God's existence.

exactly. you enjoy your christianity, it gives you meaning, a meaning you love. so if it turns out there is no god, it does not diminish your meaning.

Well, having come to the end of one life and seeing that the reality was that God did not exist, I really cannot tell what I would choose if presented another life to follow. The scenario may be too crazy for me to make a realistic statement.

"Surprise, there was no God after all. Now want to play the game again ?"

It is such a wild scenario I shouldn't predict what a choice I would have.
I'll just leave it at this: I do have this one life to live. If I am going to be a human being, I must be Christian. And if I am going to be a Christian I want to be a overcoming one rather than a defeated one.

because as i said at the begining 'meaning' is what ever floats your boat, not truth (i would note that you have also kinda said the opposite to this, that your meaning is based on you knowing it is true).

Yes, I did say that.

The scenario of "Want to launch the boat another time?" is rather too far out to imagine.

We do know that we have one launching of the boat. It would be good to get it floating this one known trip.

Those who went down on the Titanic had no more trips to make.
Those who survived (given another ticket) would hardly count the first experience as a dream or illusion.

Originally posted by sonship

[b]possibly. if i were to imagine the fictional character of the bible was a real person then i would say they were suffering from some sort of personality disorder, probably delusional, possibly a psychopath.

What disorder, what delusional behavior, what psychopathic tendencies were able to cause Jesus to be born in Bethlehem as h ...[text shortened]... ike one whose pre-existence is eternal " disorder cataloged in your psychology texts somewhere ?[/b]

we may have cross wires here. i dont accept that the biblical portrayal of jesus is real. if i at least accept that a man named jesus walked around making the claims that the biblical jesus did. then i would make the psychological claims that i did.

Originally posted by stellspalfie
we may have cross wires here. i dont accept that the biblical portrayal of jesus is real. if i at least accept that a man named jesus walked around making the claims that the biblical jesus did. then i would make the psychological claims that i did.

if i at least accept that a man named jesus walked around making the claims that the biblical jesus did. then i would make the psychological claims that i did.

Do you have any specific claims in mind?

Originally posted by stellspalfie

we may have cross wires here. i dont accept that the biblical portrayal of jesus is real. if i at least accept that a man named jesus walked around making the claims that the biblical jesus did. then i would make the psychological claims that i did.

Whoever made up the character then, we need to see if they came up with any other short stories.

To me any reason you might propose for a motive of concocting a fictional character as Jesus I could show you is illogical.

The fantasy of Galilean fishermen ?
The concoction of a church persecuting rabbi ?
The imaginary figure invented by a tax collector ?

A conglomeration of a group conspiracy to keep religious power structures in place ?

White people's invention to subjugate blacks ?
Blacks' invention to set things straight against whites ?

The invention of the West to be superior over the East?
The invention of the East to rise over the West ?

How about the invention of capitalism to rationalize free interprize and private property ?

How about - "Jesus - the creation of Socialism to equalize wealth distribution" ?

Catholics invented Jesus.
No, Protestants invented Jesus.
No, Universalists invented Jesus.
No, the Jews, the Jews, THEY invented this Jesus character.
No, it was the Gentiles - THEY invented this Jesus character and made up words to put into his mouth.

Any conspiracy you propose to rationalize Jesus as a hoax will eventually end up to be a nonsensical bundle of contradictions.

Originally posted by sonship
Now I would really like to know what difference any kind of life makes if there is no God. I don't know to start a new thread. Maybe, I'll just ask it here.

Now if God does not exist then what difference does it make that anyone lived, anything existed, how we behaved, what we "lived" for ?

Honestly. What difference does it make ?

If you are talking about a hypothetical future time after which all subjective entities have died out, then the obvious answer is that it makes no difference. That's just vacuously and trivially the case, since 'difference' and 'meaning' have inherent subjective dimension: they depend on the existence of minds. So if, by supposition, there are no minds; then it follows immediately that there is no meaning. So, this point you are making is totally trivial. It certainly does not follow from this that our current lives have no meaning, or that it does not matter how we live and treat each other in the here and now. If you are trying to suggest otherwise, then that is just really bad logic on your part.

Originally posted by sonship

[b]we may have cross wires here. i dont accept that the biblical portrayal of jesus is real. if i at least accept that a man named jesus walked around making the claims that the biblical jesus did. then i would make the psychological claims that i did.

Whoever made up the character then, we need to see if they came up with any other ...[text shortened]... rationalize Jesus as a hoax will eventually end up to be a nonsensical bundle of contradictions.[/b]

The burden is not on nonbelievers to disprove the existence of the biblical Jesus, the burden is on believers to prove the existence of the biblical Jesus.

Originally posted by sonship

hard for you. hard for me to think the opposite.

You mean it is hard for you to see plan, purpose, scheme in the function of DNA ? You mean it is hard for you to conceive any wisdom or knowledge behind this splendid accident of pure luck.

I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.
[quote]

yes dna coding has no more meaning ...[text shortened]... survived (given another ticket) would hardly count the first experience as a dream or illusion.

you are guessing too much at what i mean. rather than take my word, as i do with you. you make claims, i dont doubt you mean it, i always question the logic in hope to make you question your decisions. when i make claims, you question my truth, you suggest things i have not written, you attribute claims and emotions i have not made. this makes debating with you painfully slow as i have to clarify the erroneous claims you make on my behalf before i can tackle the subject we are discussing. examples -

You mean it is hard for you to see plan, purpose, no i didnt say that.
behind this splendid accident of pure luck. i didnt claim it was pure luck
Would you think it is insignificant that every time a distant planet is located one of the first things astronomers are interested to know is "Is there [b]WATER there ?" ? [/b] i didnt claim water is not important.
You cannot possibly live happily with your worldview what? no atheists can be happy???????
It is impossible for you to be consistent. illogical claim, with no basis.
This is a blind leap of faith in order to live sanely illogical claim with no basis.
IF you turn out to be wrong, you HOPE that it will be as if it makes no difference. "It will be no more important than anyone else's valuation." totally misunderstanding a simple point.
That's what you hope. If God turns out to exist you can carry over your atheist apathy just like before. wrong. if you took the time read my posts you would know this is not how i feel.
Either way of the wager, there will be no loss. again if you really read what i write you would know this is not what i think.
The flip of the coin, heads or tails - God is / God is not, it will all come out to be just the same. same claim repeated. sorry you are just wrong.
You hope your apathy will turn out to be more powerful than God's existence. seems aggressive and illogical and not consistent with what i post. you are guessing at what i think with out reason to reach these conclusions.