[TeamManager]

1. Thats God standard of LOVE! Yes, you can love someone without loving his actions......God did the same for us -while we were yet sinner and hostile to him.

2. My point was that quite a number of things exist -and we know they exist simply because of their effect. Love, electricity, cold, darkness, faith etc can only be demonstarted by their effect/action.

3. Ati 'no respect for other religions' ..... surely I expected you to have a more tactful way of getting Coach's attention.

4. You misquoted me .......its the 11th line and not the 5th line.

5. I have never had time to trade insults .......



>>Guess you have never experienced love.
>
>Ignoring your sarcasm, I actually have. But my love is real,
>not this crap of "love they neighbor" where "neighbor" means
>every human being who exists. Where "neighbor" includes every
>child molestor, dictator, sociopath, murderer, etc. I love
>those who are in my life, my sisters, parents, nephews,
>neices, cousins, friends, etc. They've earned the love and
>they love me back. I don't spew empty crap like "I love all
>Christians" including that guy in Russia molesting his younger
>sister who I'll never ever meet. That's a load of simplistic
>idealistic garbage which I can't adhere to. So TM, if that
>theory of loving everyone is your definition of love, then I
>have never loved. If loving means caring for those you know
>and who need and deserve your love, then I have experienced
>more love than any man my age should have.
>
>
>
>>Do the following exist?........the mind, love, cold,
>darkness
>>etc
>
>TM, are you an idiot or what? I wrote "faith is basically
>absolute belief without an iota of evidence" and you ask me if
>cold and drakness exist? Cold and darkness aren't things that
>require faith in order to acknowledge them. Even that 2 year
>old kid in Nepal who you've never met but claim to love with
>all your Christian heart can show you what cold and darkness
>are. Come on, throw out a more intelligent argument!
>
>
>>Almost three year faithfully discussing something that does
>>not exist......I give you marks! Very few people have that
>>'faith'
>
>Yet again when all logic fails, you resort to (to use your
>words) throwing stones. TM, attack my logic above, tell me
>what parts of it you don't agree with. We're having an
>intelligent discussion here. We know you have no respect for
>other faiths, as has been proven by your repeated posts here.
>Tell us why!
>
>If up to now you don't understand why non-believers still talk
>about the various gods out there, despite the fact that I have
>explained it ad infinitum, then it's hopeless for you. I've
>remembered the reason why you don't understand - because, to
>quote you, you never read more than the 5th line of anything
>written by someone you don't agree with.
>

[ATLian]

>1. Thats God standard of LOVE! Yes, you can love someone
>without loving his actions......God did the same for us -while
>we were yet sinner and hostile to him.

Well, you aren't god, so it's assinine to claim that you love everyone, even those you don't know. Counting aside the irrational love that bonds, say, a mother to her child, most rational people love other people because of their actions. With that in mind, hebu explain to me how you can love Hitler and Idi Amin while hating their actions.

As for god's standard of love - seeing the way god has killed millions of both INNOCENTS and those who sinned against him, and knowing the way he plans to kill 5 or more billion people on Judgement Day only because they don't believe in him, I think it's a very tough sell trying to convinve any rational being that god loves us all! This is the same god who drowned every innocent kid in Chile, Zanzibar and Mongolia during Noah's flood. The same god who roasted alive every innocent baby in Soddom because some men were screwing each other up the arse. If he couldn't spare those innocent babies, how can you tell a rational being that god loves us all including Pol Pot and Stalin?



>2. My point was that quite a number of things exist -and we
>know they exist simply because of their effect. Love,
>electricity, cold, darkness, faith etc can only be
>demonstarted by their effect/action.

What you don't understand is that all these things are PROVEN! When my lights go on, it's been proven that it's because of the electricity flowing through the wires. That feeling you attribute to god has never been proven, you just assume it's god. Unlike all the things you named above, god has never been proven...



>4. You misquoted me .......its the 11th line and not the 5th
>line.

Well, to be as petty as you, then you lied to us, seeing that I wrote that on the 30th line, meaning you do read past the 11th line.



>5. I have never had time to trade insults .......

TM, not just F-words and curse-words constitute an insult - many here view your thinly-veiled arrogant and condescending statements as insults.



Back to the point of all this - what parts of my logic on why it's hard to respect another religion don't you agree with?

[ATLian]

>ATLian that was a brilliant treatise. Couldn't have said it
>better.

Thank you.



>I'm agnostic

Thierry,

a theist believes there's a supreme being out there. An atheist does not believe there's a supreme being out there. To me that leaves no middle ground, since there are nothing like half-gods for a fence-sitter to believe or not believe in. What do agnostics believe or not believe in? Someone once told me that agnostic is the PC term for atheists who are too scared to declare that they're atheists...



>We were having a family discussion one day and i said that i
>actually DON'T believe that JC is my personal saviour and that
>he's the only way to heaven. I swear by the looks i got you
>would have thought i had done i don't know what.

My folks are born-again to the core. Yaani if I was to ever tell them I'm an atheist they would die. I think my mum would prefer if I told her "I'm a fagget who takes it up the diab nightly" coz then she can pray to god to get me straight, than if I told her that god is a figment of her imagination.

[teejay]

I do agree with you Atlian that we Humans are incapable of expressing love to each and every individual of course given the circumstances under which certain events happen. It is for instance very difficult to love people reminiscent of the ones you denote above. Their actions were a complete opposite of what is expected of humanity. They according to me were sons of Satan himself. They said and acted as Satan himself. While there is a thin line between a person and his actions I back TM by saying it is possible to love a person minus his action, albeit the chances of such love being expressed by we humans is slim, given we humans naturally seek revenge for wrongs committed against us and that is why we will probably never have peace in this world. Look around, there is no love, but acquaintances. Even ATlian’s assertion that he loves those around him is a mere talk. You only love your mother until you discover that She has all that while “Tamed your obedient father through powers of some African chemistry”. Will you still love your wife even when she sleeps around? Yet Christ even in the face of all that Evil had the will and power to love his enemies. You ATlian is in concurrence that only God can do that. Isn’t that Evidence (which you have adduced yourself) enough to tell you that God is real and that he is love. Everywhere weapons are filling the face of this earth all because one man will not forgive another person (forgiveness is an act of love).

ATLian lets take it this way. You have created something. Why? Because you loved the idea of having that creation. You then ensure that this perfect creation has its own freewill and you let (let us say "IT") know your dos and donts and even let IT know the consequences of the two. Would you be blamed if you exercised your just judgement against revolt?

Again I need you to know that for you to understand God you need to be in spiritual touch with HIM. GOD IS A SPIRIT AND MUST ONLY BE APPROACHED SPIRITUALLY. Suffice to say that you in your atheist sphere will never understand HIM UNTIL SUCH A TIME YOU WILL WELCOME HIM IN TO YOUR LIFE. Only then shall thy blindness be taken away from thee, and things hidden from thee shall be conspicuous as the white snow atop Kilimanjaro.

Before you talk about Judgment day do you how long God is been suffering just waiting for deviant souls to renounce their spiritual infidelity and be drawn back unto him. Have you done the mathematics to find out how long it will be before the Judgment and see how merciful God has been to multitudes of rebellious souls. The Scriptures could not have put it more right in regards that period of time that has been given to us to change. That after that judgement none shall argue like you do but all will say in unison “LORD THY JUDGMENT IS JUST.” Meaning those who chose to be God were right and those who chose to disobey were right to declare that God’s reward to eliminate them is just.

God is not the god you want us to believe He is- evil. No ATlian, you and me cannot agree on that. God does not wake up one day and say that he is going to destroy everyone aimlessly. Even you Atlian, must know that you cannot punish your child (if you have any) without adequate reasons to do so. And even when you do punish the child, you do it out of love- the desire to instil discipline and to see your child grow into a responsible person. When your child is growing horns and you fail to file those horns

================================================== ==================
Can we now talk about "Faith & Respect"

[chotadipo]

@Teejay says
>ATLian lets take it this way. You have created something. Why?
>Because you loved the idea of having that creation. You then
>ensure that this perfect creation has its own freewill and you
>let (let us say "IT") know your dos and donts and even let IT
>know the consequences of the two. Would you be blamed if you
>exercised your just judgement against revolt?

The above is exactly what ATlian has been trying to tell you all along. You cannot twist it. How can you give someone free will and then add on top of it dos and donts? Don't you see the contradiction?

On the part you mentioned about having to accept a God to be able to understand him, basically amounts to blind faith. Nothing new there. When ATlian mentions GOD and his attributes, you must take what he says contextually. He uses it for illustrative purposes. In no way does he imply that he accepts this GOD as a living proof.

TM has a arrogance that is easily noticable and borders on being obnoxious. TM needs to understand that arrogance will not in any way redeem him or win him arguments, infact quite the contrary. TM has a heart of contempt which I find uncalled of especially in open forum debates like these.

On the subject at hand on Religion and Respect, I think ATLia in an earlier rebuttal summed it up well. I think you should try to pick out the points he made and offer rebuttals to them

[ATLian]

>Even ATlian’s assertion that he loves those
>around him is a mere talk. You only love your mother until you
>discover that She has all that while “Tamed your obedient
>father through powers of some African chemistry”. Will you
>still love your wife even when she sleeps around?

You got me wrong. I wrote "most rational people love other people because of their actions". So yes, the main reason I love my mother is not simply because she's my mother (that fact alone doesn't necessarily merit being loved), it's because of all she's done for me from the day I was born till today. That's the same reason I love my dad. If I learnt today that he has sexually molested my sisters since they were a few months old, then that love can quickly change. Ditto if I learn that my wife has slept around. These actions they do are what make me love them or not love someone like Idi Amin.

Mere talk is claiming you love EVERYBODY, including the evil, those you've never met, your enemies, etc.



>Yet Christ
>even in the face of all that Evil had the will and power to
>love his enemies. You ATlian is in concurrence that only God
>can do that.

I said that only god can claim to love everyone because only god knows everyone.

Also, I just ignore my enemies and let it be. Christ will slowly roast all his enemies forever in hell after judgement day. Based on that, I think you're better off being my enemy than Christ's enemy, ama?



>Again I need you to know that for you to understand God you
>need to be in spiritual touch with HIM. GOD IS A SPIRIT AND
>MUST ONLY BE APPROACHED SPIRITUALLY.

Wrong! In the Old Testament very many people talked directly to god the same way we talk to each other. Moses even saw god!



>Before you talk about Judgment day do you how long God is been
>suffering just waiting for deviant souls to renounce their
>spiritual infidelity and be drawn back unto him.

I have no idea. But seeing that god existed for quadrillions and gabzillions of years before he made man, and man has been around for only 7,000 years, I'm sure it's not a long wait for god.

Also, since god knew those days that this would happen, why should he be suffering? How can something he knew would happen surprise him?

[ATLian]

>God is not the god you want us to believe He is- evil. No
>ATlian, you and me cannot agree on that.

TeeJay,

using simple logic and common sense, an evil being is one that does the things that are defined by rational men to be evil. Therefore if killing a 2 month child is evil, then anyone who kills a 2 month child will have done an evil thing. If John kills his innocent child, then John is evil. Some people may come and try re-mix the story to make John look good, but ultimately most rational people will agree that John is evil and he did an evil thing - period! I think that premise is simple enough for all of us to agree with.

Now when Amin kills 100,000 innocent Ugandan babiess because their parents disagree with his politics, he is found by Christians to be evil. When god kills 100,000 innocent Ugandan babies during Noah's flood, he is found by Christians to be good. This Christian thingi of giving god a free pass when he commits obvious evil is what totally gets to me. When spades start being described as candy-covered spoons instead of the spades they are I just want to pull out my hair! Why is god allowed to do the most evils things recorded in human history and still get away with being called good?



>God does not wake up
>one day and say that he is going to destroy everyone
>aimlessly.

Correction again - god has destroyed very many people "aimlessly" due to his great fury at other people. Whenever he and his people unleashed genocide, many innocents were aimlessly destroyed.



>Even you Atlian, must know that you cannot punish
>your child (if you have any) without adequate reasons to do
>so. And even when you do punish the child, you do it out of
>love- the desire to instil discipline and to see your child
>grow into a responsible person.

That's true. I punish my child when he/she deserves to be punished, and the punishment will be commensurate to the wrong doing. But if god was the father, he'd do things differently. He'd punish his child's great-great-great-great-great-grand-children for what his child has done. He'd wipe out Atlanta whenever his child spilt milk on the carpet. He'd kill his child for not wiping his shoes as he came into the house. He'd inflict the entire neighborhood with a plague if the child played out in the rain and got a cold. He'd burn his kid in hell forever because the kid did something he didn't like.

In order to win a stupid bet with a child molester, he'd give his child to the child molester and tell the molester to do everything (rape, sodomize, torture, beat, etc) but not to kill the kid. The bet would be that despite doing whatever he does, once the ordeal is over, the child will still refer to god as "dad" and still love him. As sick and twisted and far-fetched as that sounds, that's what he did to Job, ama? He bet Satan that Job would still be loyal to him no matter what Satan does, and he let Satan kill his children, servants, livestock, etc, and give him a horrible disease, etc.

Let's face it, god would be a terrible dad. Look what he did to his only son - he sent him out here to undergo some crazy tormenting torture. He'd have snapped his finger and cured us from sin, but his M.O. normally includes suffering and bloodshed, so he preferred crucifixion. I think god is huko last on my list of "Baby sitters", no way I'd want to leave my nice innocent baby with him...



>Can we now talk about "Faith & Respect"

Sure - respond to what I said above...

[TeamManager]

>Back to the point of all this - what parts of my logic on why
>it's hard to respect another religion don't you agree with?

You dont have to accept or believe ......... for you to give respect.

[thierry]

ATLian...give em hell.

On your question about the definition of Agnostic relative to Atheist...i had to think about that for a while. I guess in many ways i still am a little uncomfortable with the idea of NO supreme being/energy/collective human force...etc . It's difficult to explain really..it's just one of those things. I was raised catholic and maybe it's because of the years and years of conditioning and being told all these things that it still feels a little blasphemous or something to question them.There is still that fear that you are having the 'wrong' thoughts. But it is that fear that is evidence to me that i should in fact keep asking myself these questions and if i get hit by lightning then oh well... It is because of that latent fear of i guess 'angering' God by questioning his existance that i prefer to call myself agnostic rather than atheistic. I don't agree that Agnostic people are having it both ways,though it certainly feels that way and maybe some are....all i know is that i'm not walking around hoping that god, or jesus is looking down saying...hmmm that's one of the GOOD ones...he's just Agnostic...not like those DAMNED Atheists ...i'll spare him!....

At this time my feet are kind of in both places and sometimes i wonder if i'm being morally relativist .....if i am then so be it.This is where i am right now. The last thing i want to do is put pressure on myself to 'take a stand' just to seem more credible or forthright or something...esp on matters as personal as spirituality. That's why i always say that i'm still figuring it out.

Most Atheists to me, seem to have already concluded that there is no God or Supreme being, usually in very absolute terms. I'm happy that that's where they are but i'm not ready to do that yet.

Agnostic/Atheist....those are just lables anyway...it just happens that Agnostic is the one i'm more comfortable with.

Otherwise keep up the good work...i can see you're stumping most of these people and they can't quite come up with responses that hold up to reason.

[satjas]

>You dont have to accept or believe ......... for you to give
>respect.

bro TM, the fall from a high pedestle can be rather shocking and hurting.....not all people who say things on mashada actually live their lives that way. I certainly hope you practice what you spew forth.

-the paradigm shifter......God's dead friend......someone suggested that i was dead.


The soul is that which beholds beauty even when the mind denies it.