Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
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) needs prove now... I can't believe in something that isn't there Furls, I'm sorry, I just can't.
You too Furls, you too.Furls Fire wrote:okay Darth
God bless you
Depends on the thing in question. Fairy's are much the same situation, and I'll bet some DO believe in them, just as some believe in angels. But dragons are "supposed" to be in certain places at certain times, and are always apparent to our senses. If you say a dragon lives in a certain cave near a volcano, and you go there and it's not there, no sign of it, doesn't return no matter how long you wait, I'll join you in the belief that there is no such dragon.Darth Revan wrote:I think it is. Otherwise, I could believe they're such things as dragons... or fairy's. They have about as much prove in their existence than God does.
I didn't want to say anything.Furls Fire wrote:Faith is illogical? Then I must be one of the most illogical people in this world.
(And if I thought you would take that joke seriously for one instant, I wouldn't have made it.) My position, as I've told you in chat, is that, even if you're completely wrong, there's no reason to think you're crazy or illogical or anything. Whether there is any God or not, it is obvious that different people have different psychological needs and desires. We each view life through the lens of our own psyche, and see our own Pattern (heh 
). Even Christians do this when compared to each other, as can be seen when comparing the Baptists dancing and singing their joy to God, the monk in silent meditation, and yourself.Of course it does.Furls Fire wrote:And Fist, maybe "choose" was the wrong word. It's hard for me sometimes to understand what it's like for people who do not feel what I do in my heart. Since I was literally born with the Lord in it. I wasn't "taught" to believe in God. It's just always been there, if that makes sense. It probably doesn't.
I'd be surprised if you were capable of speaking in the way you feel is wrong. As I told Durris recently after reading an article she wrote, you speak your heart, and people either listen or not. Speaking your heart is the best anyone can do, and nobody's heart is more beautiful than yours. You keep doing what you're doing, which is only telling us of your joy.Furls Fire wrote:This is why I usually avoid these discussions...Because belief or nonbelief or "I just don't know" is sooooooooooooooooo personal and private. I feel it's wrong of me to try and sway people to my way of believing. Faith can't be taught, or drummed in. You either have it, or you don't. But, for those who are seeking it, the only place to find it, is in the inner soul.
Amen!Furls Fire wrote:we hardly hear about the man who carries another on his back to the hospital. Or the woman who gives her savings to the homeless shelter she volunteers at. Or the child who goes to the nursing home to visit a lonely old man whose family has abandoned him and calls him "grandpa" just to see him smile... These are the people God sends. These are the ones who are the beauty of the world Darth.
Seems to me, you are not as "unbelieving" as you claim. Time for you to just sink down inside your soul, grab hold of that dorment faith, and just let it rise. Make that proverbial leap...if it's there, it won't let you fall.btw Furls... there is a small part of me that wants to have that faith... or even has is.... but it's in the manority I'm afraid.
hmm... there is disbelief and belief there... But I don't believe at all in this alrighty and righteous God... rather... I believe there is something higher out there... But I don't believe in any pure being.Furls Fire wrote:Thank you Eric. Hugglesssssssssssssssss
Darth, you said this...
Seems to me, you are not as "unbelieving" as you claim. Time for you to just sink down inside your soul, grab hold of that dorment faith, and just let it rise. Make that proverbial leap...if it's there, it won't let you fall.btw Furls... there is a small part of me that wants to have that faith... or even has is.... but it's in the manority I'm afraid.
Go read Stephen...he'll help you find it inside yourself
If there actually is a God, and God does hold this opinion of you, than you're better off without God. As are we all. Just my opinion, and I know others disagree. But if this is God's way, I don't care what they or God think. If God isn't about unconditional love, then I don't want any part of it.variol son wrote:This is only made harder by the fact that, according to the huge majority of the world's religions and spiritual beliefs, I am an anomoly. An abomination. God apparently thinks I am wrong and sick and evil.
As for your search, you, of course, know at least one person here who here can help you. But even without her, you're doing fine."Madame, the divine force which you believe in and the one in which I believe are obviously two different beings. If in a sincere quest for understanding and knowledge I have erred, I am deeply sorry, and await a sign from the Almighty that will teach me the error of my ways. I simply believe in the virtues of sincere intellectual curiosity. An eagerness to use the mind and feelings that God himself gave me to inquire into mysteries rather than merely accept the explanation othat other men have passed down through the years. If for this I will be cast into fires everlasting, then God is indeed the malign thug of which Mark Twain wrote, and his hell could certainly be no more insufferable than his heaven."
As far as you mind outliving your brain; that's kind of missing the point don't you think? Can't you even say "soul"?
Are we reading the same Bible? The term soul is essentially correct, but only AFTER the rapture, before that even Jesus stated that we have 'spirits' (from the greek 'nephesh') THAT CAN DIE.It is a shape of our uniqueness which we will continue on with because we were created to be immortal, to live in heaven.
Then why doesn't he show himself. As he does so often in the bible.Dragonlily wrote:Love is what ties us all together. That's pretty important, because God is not a separate and discrete being, God is everything, all of us.
Variol Son wrote:Now that I am no longer a church-goer, I have found that not only do I need to re-discover myself, but I need to find out who God really is as well. This is only made harder by the fact that, according to the huge majority of the world's religions and spiritual beliefs, I am an anomoly. An abomination. God apparently thinks I am wrong and sick and evil.
I’ve posted parts of this at various times and places, but now it’s all grouped into one post that tells a lot of what I think.), or whatever. All I know is that we need to try to make peace with what’s inside us.In the introduction to his translation of the Upanishads, Eknath Easwaran says:Matthew wrote:What I am committed to is taking the Bible seriously. Not as a basic text on physical science, biology or even history, but as the faithful attempt by many authors to tell the story of God's relationship to people. It tells me a great deal about who God is, and in the process I learn about who I am as well.
The combination of our overall cultures, our individual upbringings, and whatever part of our personalities that are determined by our brains’ hardwiring, make every single one of us unique. Even identical twins who are raised in the same home have differences. Is it remotely possible that we would all have the same idea of what God is? No. We approach the question in different ways, and we arrive at different answers. So, to take examples that I used a couple posts back, which is best: the Baptist who dances and loudly sings praises to God; the monk meditating in silence; or Furls Fire? Of course, the answer is none is best. They all practice their faith in the way best suited to who they are. And so we expect the differences from one religion to another, and even the differences within any religion. The different books of the Bible, and the different Upanishads, were written by people who began from different places. Physically and psychologically. The person who thought that something like Hell actually exists was making an honest and serious attempt to understand his place in life, and God. He may have found great beauty and wisdom, and it would be unfortunate, as well as arrogant, for me to miss those things just because I personally find the concept of Hell to be so ludicrous that it’s not even worth seriously considering.Eknath Easwaran wrote:The Upanishads are not systematic philosophy; they are more like ecstatic slide shows of mystical experience - vivid, disjointed, stamped with the power of direct personal encounter with the divine. If they seem to embrace contradictions, that is because they do not try to smooth over the seams of these experiences. They simply set down what the rishis saw, viewing the ultimate reality from different levels of spiritual awareness, like snapshots of the same object from different angles: now seeing God as utterly transcendent, for example, now seeing God as immanent as well. These differences are not important, and the Upanishads agree on their central ideas: ...
This is a conversation between a mother and son. I've removed a couple sentences and several individual words to avoid spoilers, and because some of it didn't have anything to do with this topic. I love this conversation. It reflects some of my values, and puts God in what I think is a very good light.Jon Paul Kendall Remillard had philosophical difficulties with the concept of Christmas. That the scraggly little evergreen tree his mother was trimming was a midwinter hope symbol was easy enough to understand from the explanations and mental images Teresa offered. But the notion of God creating a body for himself to wear – and even Creation itself – bothered Jack.
“It seems a very strange and unnecessary thing for God to do. To become human so that we’d love him rather than fear him. If he’s truly a Supreme Being then it follows that he has no need of any other entity to ensure his own happiness. Especially entities that are so imperfect by their very nature that they will inevitably befoul an otherwise orderly creation. I can understand God creating the physical universe for fun. But why create other minds when you know they’re going to mess things up?”
“I believe famous human thinkers have debated those point. I seem to remember that the theologians of early times were quite positive that God had no absolute need to create other thinking persons,” Teresa said. “This is perfectly ridiculous, of course, since the theologians were willing to concede that he had done it and must have had a good reason. Now, unless we’re ready to admit that a Supreme Being can be capricious or wishy-washy, it follows that he needed to do it. He did need us.”
“But what prompted God’s need of us?”
“Love,” said Teresa.
“That’s irrational.”
“Exactly. I don’t believe anyone has ever reasoned out a satisfactory answer to God’s need of us. Those religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition rarely hit upon the notion of a loving God at all. As for natural philosophy, loving-kindness would not be an attribute that one would logically deduce that a Big-Bang-Creator-God would have.”
“Hardly.”
“But love is the only motive that seems to make any sense. Without it, you have the Creator-God as a game player trying to assuage his cosmic boredom, caring about us only as game pieces. That is to say, not caring very much! Now, if God wanted us to know that he created us out of love, he’d have to tell us, since we couldn’t figure it out for ourselves. He’d have to get directly involved with us, rather than let us tick along obliviously the way the evolving non-sapient universe does.”
“I suppose so…”
“There are any number of ways he might have done this. But put yourself in God’s position and try to decide the most elegant way to get involved with your thinking creatures. The way that is at once most difficult and unlikely but has the potentiality to succeed in the most magnificent manner imaginable.”
“Not the easiest way?”
“Hevens, no! What would be the satisfaction in that? I can sing ‘Happy Birthday to You,’ but I get more satisfaction doing the mad scene from Lucia, even if it tires me out terribly.”
“I understand.”
“God’s most elegant way of involving himself with us would have to be a scandal to the stodgy-minded and a delight to minds that have a sense of humor and of adventure. As his mind does.”
“God can laugh?”
“Of course, dear, and feel sorrowful, too. A Supreme Being without those attributes wouldn’t be supreme. Grim and joyless people try to pretend otherwise, but their arguments are unpersuasive.”
“Explain to me how God became directly involved with us.”
“It has happened differently on different worlds in the Galaxy. On ours, I believe that the primary involvement happened through the Jewish people and the Christians. It’s a long story, and you’ll really have to read it in the Bible. That book is a fascinating account of human moral evolution, with historical and deeply mythic truth all mingled in a wonderful mishmash. It’s a literary treasure as well as the word of God, and some parts of it are profound, and some are fascinating and some are poetic, and some are even a bore, and parts of Saint Paul make me want to scream. I’m sorry that I haven’t read the whole thing myself. Different religions interpret the Bible in different ways, but we Catholics believe that when the mentalities of one single key tribe of extremely intelligent people were finally mature enough to grasp the concept of a loving God, God simply spoke to them.” She laughed. “Well – perhaps not simply.”
“And the tribe accepted his messages and passed them on?”
“Some members did. Others kept slipping and sliding back into primitive notions of angry gods that constantly needed to be appeased with blood sacrifices and other rubbish. God had to keep coaxing them and smacking them down the way a loving mother has to do when her children are naughty, and – well, you must read the Bible and discuss it with people who know more about it than I do. Your Mama is a very poorly educated person, especially in religious studies. I’m probably explaining this all wrong.”
“Is love the motivation for all creation, then?”
“I imagine so. Mental lattices within our normal Reality can’t exist without the other five kinds, and vice versa. If God wanted to make minds to love, he had to make the whole cosmos. And it is quite lovely, most of it.”
“But to create for the love of it seems so odd!”
“Of course it does. It really makes no sense – in a rational view of the universe. And yet every artist knows the truth of it. And every healthy adult human knows that people who are in love want the whole world to be as happy as they are. If you are God, loving yourself or even being Love in some mysterious fashion, and there aren’t any other minds to share happiness with – then you make some.”
“So one may conclude that God does need us?”
“Most of our coreligionists today believe it’s true.”
“And the problem of the created minds being imperfect? And sometimes evil?”
“I think that has something to do with advanced chaos theory, which I’ve never been able to make head or tail of. You must ask your big brother Marc to explain it. There’s also some principle to the effect that it is much more glorious to make something wonderful out of imperfect parts. The very imperfection of the individual elements – even when there’s actual evil involved, as there often is in human affairs – challenges God to greater creative heights.”
“What a strange idea.”
“There’s an old proverb that says: ‘God writes straight with crooked lines.’ Human history is just full of crooks and twists and twines. One would think anarchy or barbarism or the lowest common denominator would have triumphed ages ago. But is hasn’t. All the messes and atrocities and disasters have somehow been woven into a construct that looks better and better every year – at the same time that some things look even worse! The world is a wonderland compared to the world that existed only forty years or so in the past. That’s because most people have easier lives in the Galactic Milieu than they did before the Great Intervention. But even so, there are still persons who are discontented or who are villains, and situations that are evil or tragic. Nevertheless we children of God continue to evolve and improve on every level, almost in spite of ourselves. That also has something to do with nonlinearity and chaos. And God’s love, too.”
heh Well, I've put a lot of thought into these matters over the last few decades.Furls Fire wrote:You know, my friend, for someone who says he doesn't believe in God, you sure understand more about said belief than alot of those who profess too.
And knowing what that means to you, I truly thank you.Furls Fire wrote:And whether you believe or not, I'm still going to say this...
God Bless You, Eric.