The Truth (As I see it)

Gros: Do you have a seven-year plan that you'll instate as soon as you are in said super-heroic state, with the intention to screw us over at the thre-and-a-half-year mark?

 

Yeah baby, I'd like to lay my mast flat to YOUR deck.

 

All I can remember was it was big, hard and full of seamen.

 

There is no temptation except that is common to man. I was tempted with the same temptation that made Obama realize he could win the presidency. I just didn't act on it. All your dreams mean is that the Anti-Christ is alive. I give the world 50 years before the great woes mentioned in Revelation. Give or take a decade.

Repent, Get water baptized and you're done. (Acts 2:38; John chapter 3) The rest is an endurance test. (Mark 13:13)

Here's a story that expresses a Christian belief that is in tune with your words: There once was a man who carried two buckets of water from his well back to his house everyday. One bucket was a perfect bucket carrying all water that was put into it. The second bucket wasn't and spilled water out of its many holes so that when the master arrived home there was little water left for the master to use. One day, the imperfect bucket cried out to the master, "Why or why can't I be a perfect bucket like my brother? Everyday, I fail to hold all the water that you give me, my lord. ... I am a miserable excuse for a bucket. Why don't you fix me or replace me?" Then the master told the bucket to look upon the trail from the well to the house and asked the bucket to tell him what he sees. So the bucket looks and tells his master that along one side of the trail are flowers and the other side, grass. "The flowers," the master says, "are on the side of the trail over which I carry you. Everyday, when I get my water, you leak your water upon the ground where they grow supplying them with the water they need. Thereby you supply me with beauty that your brother does not. This is why I don't fix or replace you." (Paraphrased)

I am not Perfect, but my Master is. For He knows how to use my imperfections whereas I do not. Which brings me to my counter-points:
1) The Christian gospel is about forgiveness and not appeasement. Jesus died because only death would appease God's sense of justice, and with Jesus' death, appeasement is no longer necessary.
2) How can you know what you are capable of unless you attempt the impossible? If the bucket in the story gave up at the beginning instead of trying to carry the water as long as possible, the water would never get past the well and flowers would go unwatered.
3) Perfection, as most understand it, is to be without flaws. Defining perfection to include flaws will only confuse others or have them ridicule your logic. But you are right; it is a good thing to accept my limitations. But how is one to know them without failing?

When Thomas Edison created the light bulb, he did not view what others called "failures" as failures. Instead, he viewed them as successes in the quest to learn what did & did not work. My search for perfection is a search for truth and enlightenment and each failing is nothing more than a teaching moment. Why should I give up when I still have so much more to learn?

I have a circle? Didn't you read my sig? I know so much that by revealing people's ignorance [1], I offend them. Most of the time I rarely even notice that I am going to be giving offense until after the fact. (If I already done so, my apologies.) Pride is the vice of the knowledgable of which I am one.

My point with the post about "beneath perfection" was that I was not offended. Part of my problem with giving offense is that I receive none (or little). Therefore, I fail to notice much of the offense I give (or that I might give). I suppose if I was a bucket, I would be that bucket that fertilizes the flowers instead of watering them.

I believe that your opinion matter. Doesn't mean that I will agree with that opinion, but it does matter. Even if it serves no other purpose than to test the strength of my beliefs. As mine may test the strength of yours.


Note [1] Did you know that American politics are driven by ignorance? What liberals do not know are know to most conservatives and what conservatives do not know are know to most liberals? And the leaders of both groups refuse to educate their followers in order to be able to control them better? The 20% of Americans that are politically independent are probably either those that have listened to both sides or to neither. And if revealing people's ignorance offends them, the only way to unite the American people is offend the lot of them and then let someone else lead them. (?)

 

Edison didn't create the light bulb. He merely took credit for its creation because he improved upon the original design.

 

Read it?

Well he sound's fun.

Well you've called us ignorant, so that was kinda rude

And I would throw your holy (pun so intended) ass out.

 

Religion has done nothing possible that other human inventions couldn't have done. It is, on the other hand, the strongest motivational force for segregation and conflict ever created. It is ridiculous to believe in campfire stories from 2000 years ago, and even more ridiculous to use bullshit circular logic to protect the fact that religion doesn't make sense in modern society. The church has had to go back on very many "facts" since we started to seriously research our surroundings. How long will god be able to hide in the shadow before the obvious truth, that there is no god, emerges? Not long, methinks. Maybe that's the harmageddon you're prophecising.

You are of course entitled to believe in whatever you want, but please, spare us the biblical nonsense.

 

I changed my mind about Xyle: I thought he was being ironically pseudo-philosophical; but it turns out that he's just a bit of a fool.

 

Indeed Humphrey Davy, an Englishmen did, and that question was a tie breaker in trivia once. I was the king for a day.

 

I feel I should add my two cents... perfection as a theological concept in the East includes all the flaws that Western theology would call imperfections. It's all God's plan, it's all God Himself. It's all perfect, it's just that immature, selfish, childish and ignorant mortals label it "flawed" because they don't like it.

By the way, Eastern philosophy has always acknowledged that the self-proclaimed know-it-all is always the most ignorant, and humility is the virtue most beloved by God... good luck with that, Xyle.

 

I used to be an agnostic. Then I met a Literal 7-Day Creationist. Now I'm an atheist.

True story.

 

I fucking laughed my ass off at this: brilliant!

 

I like my creationists how I like my John Henry Eden.

Me: "Your beliefs = circular logic."
Them: "INITIATE SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE"

 

I did. I even read the Read-or-Die rules than told me how much of an ass everybody on this forum is. Why should I take offense to everybody being ass, when I am full of shit myself?

When my body stood in His divine presence, it quaked with fear. Only with my spirit that was born independent of my body, was I able to respond with anything fear. Such is the nature of God's holiness. And such is the reason that you must be born again (John 3) in order to enter into God's presence which is heaven. What a pastor preaches is a pale shadow of reality.

No, calling you "stupid" is rude. Everyone is ignorant. Or did you learn Everything from how to be a doctor to lawyering to engineering and everything in between? Ignorance is a state of being that everyone resides in. Ignoracne is merely not knowing.

Which indicates your imperfection. But the shear fact that you took my words to another as words to you already did that.


I am me. And I believe what I believe. Why should not I speak my mind? Is this not a community that prides itself on speaking its mind regardless of how offensive the language is? Is that not the reason you swear and disregard the emotions of those to whom you speak? All I require that the reader think. I honestly don't expect anyone to Change.

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Ever try to define a thing using only a dictionary? A tree is woody and wood comes from trees... It is also imploys circular logic.

Experience is the only thing that breaks circular logic and how, pray tell, do you expect anyone to experience an event that is done and over with? So, of course they imploy circular logic. But then does evolution. It is how all knowledge is taught.

Book learning will only take one so far. Actual experience is necessary. However, do you realize how much experience it would take to properly understand creation or evolution? Decades, at the very least.

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Indeed, I know my ignorance is greater than my knowledge of it. I wrote my sig after reading the reading Rules thread, because it is one area in which I am most likely to behave as an ass.

 

No.

EVIDENCE is the thing that breaks circular logic, and that's how all worthwhile knowledge is achieved. Evolution is believed because of the painstaking collection and analysis of evidence by millions of people worldwide. Creationism is believed by ignoring the evidence for evolution, and retreating to philosophical arguments.

"There are more things found by science, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Shakespeare.

 

Example?

 

An example is that on the "Answers In Genesis" site, the authors write this about the framework of their belief:

"Creationists base all of their research and conclusions upon the biblical record. "

In other words, they've already decided on the answers before they begin. Any evidence presented to them is slotted into their pre-existing framework of What They Say Happened. This is the complete opposite of the approach of scientists, where the evidence determines the conclusions that they can come to.

 

And that's philosophy, is it?

 

I don't know, but it's certainly ignoring or wilfully misinterpreting the evidence for evolution.