Question For Athiests

Who is talking about “outranking”? I am talking about my observations of people who have lived and died in my care and my respect and acknowledgement of people I otherwise firmly disagree with.

And what do you mean by two hundred years?

I fail to see complacency in what I have said, and I have certainly not been proselytising – I get the feeling that you are talking about someone else. My position is that religion isn’t all bad, once you get down into understand where it is coming from. However, most believers do not – and neither do the non-believers, even if they are sometimes a little better informed. That is why such a lot of garbage is written for and against religion.

Look I know you didn’t mean what I said, I said that, I am just saying how it comes off generally, something you are probably not aware of as always a Christian. Just saying. You may well not be aware of it, but people tend to do that, on one side think they are just saying x, and on the other side think they are saying y, on either side both sides can come off as patronising. Maybe they shouldn’t but this is the problem. You should just accept this that people generally get mildly offended by people who just speak about how wonderful their own perspective is, it’s why this forum called religion exists. It’s why religious stupidity and irrleligious stupidity can if not cause exacerbate wars. It’s just something I noted.

Before you were born, did you find things to be miserable? Unless there is some form of consciousness after death, then being dead can’t be any worse than it is prior to being born. And were you in any kind of misery prior to being born?

SO what you are saying is that death is scary? Death is nothing, then nothing is scary. But is you know that something is scary , nothing cannot be scary, thus death is not scary.

The problem is about dying. Death is easy, you will be in that state till time ends. But you already have 13 billion years of that state, before you were born, So what is your problem?

I live for myself, and those around me. I do not live to please an invisible being, in the faint hope that I wlll be one of the living dead at some point in the future.

It really does not matter what you believe: it will not make it true. Would it not be better to live your life to the full whilst you can, and not as some sort of rehearsal for death?

You are of course entitled to your belife that this is simply a version of Pascal’s wager but you have no evidence.

Many Xians of my acquaintance have expressed it precisely in those terms.
But it’s a bit rich of you to chide me on a lack of evidence! :smiley:
The only “evidence” that you have of Jesus is a book that you largely reject.

Why is it so hard for an atheist to belive that there are different ideas of what it means to be a follower of Christ?

I don’t have any trouble believing that: I know it. You are missing the point, or just not expressing yourself well.
I am suggesting that it is ridiculous for there to be so many shades of belief, on the one hand, and a single redemptive god on the other. You can’t all be right - so I don’t feel obliged to accept any of it - and why should I?
The god you claim encompasses all of Christendom must be a bizarrely capricious being to accept such incompatible diversity and contradiction.
The real question is why do you accept such a laissez-faire, cherry picking attitude to religious belief, and still claim to have it right.

You seem to be defending the fundamentalists more even than they themselves do…

I think not. You are all the same to me.
In other words, you are a fundamentalist, who rejects most of the Bible, whereas they are fundamentalists who mine the Book for inspiration, you just ignore what you don’t like. They are “followers of Christ”, and follow what he is claimed to have said; and You are a “follower” who rejects much of what he said.
Neither of you amount to a viable way to live your life; they for adhering to a dead book, and you for making it up as you go along.

Do you really think that up until the 19th century that everyone held to the literalist belife? I think if you look deeper you will see that the earliest forms of Chrsitianity found most biblical definition metaphorical. As was the tradition in those times. I am confused as to your motivation in leading this conversation down this particular path, have I offended you or criticised your beliefs?
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Response in Blue
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We all believe what feels right to each of us. You decide to judge those around you and attach labels inaccurately and arguing against that is pointless. Obviously it helps you in some way, or at the very least you feel it does.

God bless

R

I have developed my position towards Christianity and Christ through my experience of it – within Christianity and from outside.

For me Christianity has gone through a number of transformations, leading up to the modern complications that have become so disturbing today.

First of all, we have a young man who is immersed in Jewish tradition but also highly influenced by the school of the Cynics, who challenges the religion of the day calling it hypocritical and who shows the crowds a form of faith which is able to be spontaneously compassionate and caring. The duplicity of the Temple leaders lead to his being whisked away as another “terrorist” and crucified.

His followers are concerned that he should be portrayed differently, as the archetype of faith, rather than as a criminal, and after a few generations of spreading his teaching and living in the way the feel he saw fit, various accounts of his life start appearing, which begin idealising and mystifying his presence.

At a later date, the mystification is continued and expanded; so far that he is for many not just metaphorically, but physically “God in disguise”. Many theories of his nature start emerging and each theory is further speculated, so that theology becomes independent of the source and dogmatic.

Various dogmas compete and with the coming to power of Christians, being politically manipulated, Christ becomes more and more like the perfect Emperor and his church like a court of law.

The rest, we all know … or should know.

Therefore, it is quite possible to see Christianity at all of these stages having some valuable message, whereas not ignoring the fact that the idea of a logical continuation is highly unlikely. Especially since in the growth of the West Christianity has been largely influential, it would be difficult to transport moral expression in different terms, and therefore the symbolism of Christianity is widespread – even if the teaching is ignored.

I personally have failed within my lifetime at Christianity, finding it deeply troubling in parts, and highly idealistic, which can also become fanatical. But even idealism, if contradicted by real experience, can be a source of breakdown and depression – something that we are experiencing widespread in Christianity, albeit not admitted by most.

The evangelic syndrome, of seeing devils and angels, is also a result of deep conviction and devotion towards an idealistic religion.

Atheist here.

A. I live for entertainment, pleasure, and sport.

B. I want to believe in the eternal return concept via quantum physics. I have no evidence beyond theoretical explanations for it however.

Of course if I’m incorrect on that where death is indeed the annihilation of consciousness nothing would really matter anyways.

I am comforted by the fact that it will be random, and chances are it will be painless and quick. Another thing that helps with the thought is that you do not know what is going to happen, so embracing the randomness of what could come next, it may not be all too bad. Perhaps even better than what we’re facing right now. What if this is actually death, and death of which we perceive as such is actually life? We don’t know and we cannot know until it happens. It is one of the ultimate experiences, no one can tell you about it, it can only happen.

No point fretting over the inevitable. The next question, since death is inevitable… does this mean that life is inevitable? Were you inevitable? No matter what, were you going to happen?

According to eternal reoccurrence our lives are inevitable as eternal echos of reoccurring and repeating reality.

Death is rarely random, and rarely painless and quick. Your “chances” and probabilities are off, sir.

The way I see it, pain and death are the only thing keeping us from drowning in the monotony that is life. Human minds would not tolerate heaven if it existed. The only reason to create heaven is after upgrading the human mind. People are morons and they want to construct a utopia before they upgrade the human mind. The sheer idiocy is unbelievable.

A lot of the time it is random, because a lot of the time people don’t know when or how they will die. A lot of people die while asleep or from illness/old age. I’d say that’s pretty painless. Even being shot in the head with a bullet is painless. Poison can be painless.

Being shot in the head is not painless. Often people regain motor control. Often it takes 5 minutes to die.

The majority of poisons are anything but painless.

Dying in sleep is quite rare. The human body’s entire construction and purpose is to not die and cling on to life. It inflicts pain on itself for this very purpose.

Just because it takes 5 minutes to die does not mean it is not painless. It isn’t like being tortured or drowning. Burning or being impaled in a car accident and bleeding out. Chances are of taking a gun shot to the head and being conscious are low. Most likely unconscious and bleeding out if not near instantaneously dead.

Dying in sleep really isn’t that rare honestly. A lot of people do. Also the entire purpose of the body is too die… that’s why there is aging and oxidation, that’s why organic living things die rather quickly. Dying would not be inevitable if that were the case, also most of the time medicines, machines and doctors save people from death… so how exactly is the body clinging to life?

The body fights a constant battle against entropy. The pain you feel is a mechanism to seperate itself from entropy. Death and disease is the doorway to entropy for the body. The bodie’s purpose is not to die. Due to natural laws and the environment, the body’s DNA degrades over time. It fights a constant battle against entropy. People do not kill themselves the moment they are born. People fear death. People feel pain when they approach deathly scenarios. These are all mechanisms the body uses to evade death and entropy.

How can you say people feel pain when approaching deathly scenario’s? They’re approached every day, but people still do it… I also don’t see them in pain when doing what they do.

Death is always painful but that pain is felt on two levels, or two times.

First one is physical pain which happens due to the body. This depends how one dies. This may be different in each and every case, both in quantity and quality.

But, there is one more one-time sudden jerk of pain, which happens at the level of consciousness/soul, when it detaches from the body forever. That is intense, like many scorpions have bitten at the same time. That happens in the same way to every one, not only humans but to all organisms, including small insects.

Only such persons, who have been crossed the tenth plane of consciousness during and by meditation, do not feel this pain.

In its true form and purpose, meditation is to know, learn and control dying. Secondly, sleep is also a half death.

With love,
Sanjay

Have you died? How do you know that there is pain? in the same way how do I know there isn’t. We don’t… it’s only through assumption. We can guess if there is or isn’t. if you’re unconscious do you feel pain? it’s usually when you wake up do you feel pain… Why do you think doctors put you under for surgeries, or dentistry. Because you do not feel the pain you would feel if you were awake and aware of it happening.

I don’t find comfort, I don’t need comfort. Life would be uninteresting if it went on forever.

  1. Death is a state of non-existence, in order for me to cope with something I have to exist.
  2. Myself and genetic and memetic extensions of myself - my family and my ideals.

I am not gussing. When i guess, i say it witout any hesitsion that I am guessing.

I have not died but willingly experienced what happens at those moments to some extent, and not only once but not less than many hundreds occasions. And, that pain tend to lessen by every repitition.

Secondly, only a brain can become unconscious but mind/consciousness cannot.

With love,
Sanjay

Sanjay is a god. Do not question Him.