When I was a Catholic one of things that always confused me was how much we worship God. Like there's some sort of mindset that you absolutely must worship him and if you don't, you'll be punished. And I just feel this is at odds with how God is portrayed as a benevolent figure. If he loves everyone why should he care if they worship him or not. Narcissists usually aren't very nice. So how do you explain this?
DominicCobb said:
When I was a Catholic one of things that always confused me was how much we worship God. Like there's some sort of mindset that you absolutely must worship him and if you don't, you'll be punished. And I just feel this is at odds with how God is portrayed as a benevolent figure. If he loves everyone why should he care if they worship him or not. Narcissists usually aren't very nice. So how do you explain this?
Protestant here, but the idea is that it's the best thing to do. Like a lightbulb illuminated or an engine turning, it's what you're intended to do.
Now, what qualifies as worship maybe a broader category than you imagine, I dunno.
DominicCobb said:
When I was a Catholic one of things that always confused me was how much we worship God. Like there's some sort of mindset that you absolutely must worship him and if you don't, you'll be punished. And I just feel this is at odds with how God is portrayed as a benevolent figure. If he loves everyone why should he care if they worship him or not. Narcissists usually aren't very nice. So how do you explain this?
I would have to look that up...I know there's an explanation, but I can't think of it off the top of my head. Timdiggerm's answer is part of it though.
RicOlie_2 said:
DominicCobb said:
When I was a Catholic one of things that always confused me was how much we worship God. Like there's some sort of mindset that you absolutely must worship him and if you don't, you'll be punished. And I just feel this is at odds with how God is portrayed as a benevolent figure. If he loves everyone why should he care if they worship him or not. Narcissists usually aren't very nice. So how do you explain this?
I would have to look that up...I know there's an explanation, but I can't think of it off the top of my head. Timdiggerm's answer is part of it though.
If God were infinite love, would anything cause Him to reject a soul into an eternity of suffering?
Alternately, if God were a fact, should anything stop one from worshipping Him fully? For what might be more important than the worship of a being of infinite might?
I was once…but now I’m not… Further: zyzzogeton
“It wasn’t the flood that destroyed the pantry…”
Do you consider that God might love every person equally?
I was once…but now I’m not… Further: zyzzogeton
“It wasn’t the flood that destroyed the pantry…”
Warbler said:
Bingowings said:
The position of most Abrahamic religions is that sex is for one thing and one thing only and that is to create children. Theologically it has it's basis in the Mesopotamian myth of the Garden of Eden. Adam and his third wife Eve steals the power of reproduction from God after listening to a talking peni...snake.
Eve was his third wife??? never heard that before. Just who were his first and second wives?
His first wife was Lilith, banished from Eden for not submitting to her husband's demand to be on top during sex, her children were ripped apart by angels. His second wife was destroyed without even gaining a name because Adam was freaked out by seeing her built from scratch in front of him.
God learned from this experience and put Adam to sleep while making Eve from his rib.
God sounds like a lovely bloke
Warbler said:
Bingowings said:
If you set a different course you aren't in sin by default. You have to be a Roman Catholic to commit a Roman Catholic sin (however the church assumes all people to be subject to their God).
that all depends on whether or not the Catholic God is in fact God.
If you are a Roman Catholic and don't stay on course to being a good Catholic you are committing a sin.
However the Catholics think you are in sin from the moment a sperm enters the egg because of Eve and Adam scrumping for magic pomegranates.
If you are a member of the CofS you don't have to worry about Original Sin and breaking Catholic variations of the Christian tradition.
Being a member of the Society of Friends you don't have to worry much at all.
Being a Buddhist it's all in your mind, including your mind.
I posted this question in the atheist thread also, If God created us perfect and loves us all and has a paradise awaiting for us, why bother sending us to earth where we could be tainted by sin, why not create us and then be with Him?
J
FauxRic said : I am saying they are both abnormal types of sexuality, however one is far worse than the other, and they are different types of abnormalities.
What you are saying is anything that isn't a normal is wrong and some abnormalities are just more wrong. Ergo my Godwin warning.
Homosexuality is my normal sexuality and almost everyone else I know isn't remotely interested in it because it's so day to day and commonplace the only perception of wrongness comes from people such as yourself and your clerics.
FauxRic said :That is an opinion. The problem I see with personal belief as opposed to religion is that at least their is general consensus within a religion, but if everyone decides for themselves, who's to say that Johny can't live by the rule "survival of the fittest" and eliminate members of society he deems useless while Bob thinks there is nothing wrong with running around in the nude because that's how he was born? And why should dog being god in reverse give me pause for thought? That makes no sense.
Well of course it's an opinion. I thought about the subject, after reading around and through it and considering experience I formed a personal view of it. I didn't read an old book, watch a conjuring trick every Sunday and listen to what an old guy in a dress told me to think. You do realise Darwinian Evolution isn't a political movement and it doesn't work like that? 'Survival of the fittest" isn't a commandment it's an observation that in a certain environment organisms that have favourably adapted to it tend to pass on their genetic material more than those who don't. The massacre of all those Gnostics really did work you guys didn't it.
FauxRic said You have some good points there, but of course, being religious, I don't think those are the only reasons. I think that if there is a reason other than "God said so" or "its in the Bible", etc. then that sexual act is more wrong than it would be if it was only stated in the Bible or by the Church.
The Bible says selling your children and raping people if God tells you to is not just okay but a requirement. You have to obey God even when what he is telling you goes against the disgust response and the law. It's a nebulous, sometimes fun,collection of contradicting stories about a group of bronze age desert people. Some of which comes from older oral traditions which have nothing to do with those people. Expecting it to make practical sense in the modern context is bizarre.
FauxRic said :Again, that is assuming that God doesn't exist and I don't think he can be conclusively proven to be real or unreal, unless through a supernatural experience. Even then it is only proven to that person and not everyone, so believe what you will, but hopefully you (and I think you do) realize that their isn't enough evidence against God that you can come in with your "superior intellect" and disprove him conclusively.
No it doesn't.
Even if your model of God is 100% correct the book that conclusion is based on is written by bronze age people channeling their personal revelation about what he is telling them. It was then amended and edited and translated multiple times. It requires faith that those authors were telling the truth, that they were not insane, that their text hasn't been altered so much over time that no longer has the same meaning to derive that supposed truth from that data (even if it's true).
I don't need to make a leap of faith to see that consenting adults rubbing their genitals for pleasure in private is nothing at all like raping a child.
FauxRic says : I was not comparing stealing cars to homosexuality, but rather making a point that it is possible, as Warbler mentioned, to love the sinner and not the sin. I was defending the fact that it is possible for Catholics to not hate homosexuals, but love them, and accept only their homosexual acts as wrong....
....Again, that is an opinion. I do not condemn you for opinions of yours I find very offensive, so please don't condemn me for my beliefs even if they seem outrageous.
I do not lump all sex acts I believe wrong into one. There are varying degrees of seriousness between them, and child rape is not the same thing as homosexuality or sex outside of marriage, as the latter two are much less serious (serious nonetheless in my opinion, but much less serious just as stealing a car is serious but is still far less worse than murder).
Again yes it is. It's a discussion board not a lab. You are doing it again. You are using the examples first of child rape and then car theft (you have later added murder in the name of Darwin and streaking to the mix) to equate with the wrongness you perceive in consenting adults rubbing their genitals in private for pleasure and then denying it. Really think about what you are typing, is this really the message you are trying send the readers of this thread? A person wishes to buy a car doesn't necessarily buy a car. A car owner is known by ownership of cars alone. So by saying you don't dislike the homosexual but don't like the homosexual acts that define them as homosexual is a logical paradox. If they didn't do those acts they wouldn't be homosexual. What you are saying is you don't want them to be homosexual, further you want them to conform to your standards and be Catholics and anything else is wrong.
Faux Ric said :The members of the Catholic Church are not perfect, and Church leaders (Popes, Bishops, et al.) have made mistakes--serious mistakes--in the past and present. That shouldn't be enough to discredit our religion though if that is what you believe.
I posted that in response to you saying the Church isn't a den of thieves.
Crime is a major part of what they do. It is my OPINION it is the major impulse behind the whole organisation and has been since medieval times. It has inspired and produced astonishing cultural artifacts. So did the British Empire but I'm glad it's not around much anymore.
Faux Ric said : It also isn't sustainable for older generations to have greater populations than younger generations (unless you kill off all the old people which is an acceptable solution for some people, but I would beg to differ).
Old people die eventually without any assistance, the planet doesn't get noticeably bigger though does it...? but every sperm is sacred.
Bingowings said:
Warbler said:
Bingowings said:
The position of most Abrahamic religions is that sex is for one thing and one thing only and that is to create children. Theologically it has it's basis in the Mesopotamian myth of the Garden of Eden. Adam and his third wife Eve steals the power of reproduction from God after listening to a talking peni...snake.
Eve was his third wife??? never heard that before. Just who were his first and second wives?
His first wife was Lilith, banished from Eden for not submitting to her husband's demand to be on top during sex, her children were ripped apart by angels. His second wife was destroyed without even gaining a name because Adam was freaked out by seeing her built from scratch in front of him.
God learned from this experience and put Adam to sleep while making Eve from his rib.
Bingowings, you love to play the devil's advocate. As I'm sure you well know, Lilith was not biblical, but part of Jewish folklore and not a universally accepted idea. The story with the third wife idea comes from a pseudeprigriphial book and has even less acceptance. Of course, since you don't even believe in the Bible, it's all just mythology of varied acceptance to you, but to most believers in the Bible, he had only one.
darth_ender said:
Bingowings said:
Warbler said:
Bingowings said:
The position of most Abrahamic religions is that sex is for one thing and one thing only and that is to create children. Theologically it has it's basis in the Mesopotamian myth of the Garden of Eden. Adam and his third wife Eve steals the power of reproduction from God after listening to a talking peni...snake.
Eve was his third wife??? never heard that before. Just who were his first and second wives?
His first wife was Lilith, banished from Eden for not submitting to her husband's demand to be on top during sex, her children were ripped apart by angels. His second wife was destroyed without even gaining a name because Adam was freaked out by seeing her built from scratch in front of him.
God learned from this experience and put Adam to sleep while making Eve from his rib.
Bingowings, you love to play the devil's advocate. As I'm sure you well know, Lilith was not biblical, but part of Jewish folklore and not a universally accepted idea. The story with the third wife idea comes from a pseudeprigriphial book and has even less acceptance. Of course, since you don't even believe in the Bible, it's all just mythology of varied acceptance to you, but to most believers in the Bible, he had only one.
Who was made both with and separate from Adam?
Honestly anyone who literally believes the Eden story deserves all the money the tooth fairy can provide (I'll even donate a set of my old dentures free of charge).
Stop accusing me of playing Devil's advocaat. The Devil isn't in the Bible either.
You people just make this stuff up on the fly (over thousands of years) don't you?
Yes, I know the Bible says that God created mankind twice. I know that Bible scholars attribute Genesis 1 to the Elohistic author, and 2 through whatever to the Jehovistic author (or perhaps I have it reversed), and thus the story is inconsistent. I also understand that perhaps the story might not be literal. I'm just saying that Warbler is not obliged to take those other tales as of equal weight to his belief in the biblical creation story.
darth_ender said:
Yes, I know the Bible says that God created mankind twice. I know that Bible scholars attribute Genesis 1 to the Elohistic author, and 2 through whatever to the Jehovistic author (or perhaps I have it reversed), and thus the story is inconsistent. I also understand that perhaps the story might not be literal. I'm just saying that Warbler is not obliged to take those other tales as of equal weight to his belief in the biblical creation story.
Warb isn't obliged to do anything beyond what he wishes, If Warb wishes no harm no harm will come from it.
RicOlie_2 said:
The chances of sentient life existing elsewhere in the universe are pretty low. Even the universe has limits.
http://voices.yahoo.com/what-chances-intelligent-life-elsewhere-2295217.html
If the universe has limits the only ones we know about are the ones we can detect (the visible universe is almost certainly not all of it and it's accelerating away from us).
Organic material is everywhere. It coats comets, it's found inside meteors, it drifts between Galaxies in clouds bigger than our solar system it can be made very easily on any world where the conditions are right ("Billions and Billions" so sayeth the St Sagan).
Life elsewhere is almost a certainty.
The Church you belong to entertains this high probability.
Add deep time and the scale of the universe the chances of sentient life existing only on Earth are so low as to be barely worth considering. Though the chances of it existing on Earth are pretty low when I'm not here.
The word from Geneva is that distances between planets with advanced civilisations (digital watches etc) are so vaste that meeting them would be unlikely.
Bingowings said:
Stop accusing me of playing Devil's advocaat.
Then stop playing devils advocate.
Warbler said:
Bingowings said:
Stop accusing me of playing Devil's advocaat.
Then stop playing devils advocate.
Stop assuming I do :-D
Ill stop assuming it when you stop playing it.
The picture didn't make it clear?
Warbler said:
Ill stop assuming it when you stop playing it.
Bingowings said:
Stop accusing me of playing Devil's advocaat. The Devil isn't in the Bible either.
I thought this was kind of a weird statement.
It's in those Bibles written after the Devil was made up because that's how they were translated.
Originally you have a talking snake, the Angel Satan, The Beast, The Tempter, The Great Dragon, The Abomination, The False Prophet etc but they weren't the same personage and they didn't look like this :
This is one of the reasons I can't get along very well with Bingo. Not only do we see things very differently but instead of having reasonable debate he has to play devils advocate and post stupid things like the photo above and and nonsense like "The Devil isn't in the Bible either" and lots of other points nonsense that simply can't be understood by most people.
Warbler said:
This is one of the reasons I can't get along very well with Bingo. Not only do we see things very differently but instead of having reasonable debate he has to play devils advocate and post stupid things like the photo above and and nonsense like "The Devil isn't in the Bible either" and lots of other points nonsense that simply can't be understood by most people.
BUT the Devil isn't in the Bible.
Even the word is cultural vandalism. It was the Gnostic word for the Biblical God of Eden.
He is illustrated looking like Pan and using Poseidon's trident.
It's Medieval Catholicism defaming it's old Gods by retconning all these other characters into one villain which suspiciously looks like other people's Gods.
And saying I'm "just playing Devil's advocate" all the time is just another way of saying my opinion doesn't count because you say so.
It's the debating equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Naaa naaa naaa naaa I CAN"T HEAR YOU naaa naaa naaa naaa".
I could say "you are blinded by tradition", "painfully provincial" or "ridiculously literally minded" or accuse you of something totally unfounded like being a closeted homosexual.
That would unfair right?
You don't have to agree with me but just shrugging off what I'm saying because you can't be bothered to study the origins of your own religion is rather rude.
Bingowings said:
Warbler said:
Bingowings said:
The position of most Abrahamic religions is that sex is for one thing and one thing only and that is to create children. Theologically it has it's basis in the Mesopotamian myth of the Garden of Eden. Adam and his third wife Eve steals the power of reproduction from God after listening to a talking peni...snake.
Eve was his third wife??? never heard that before. Just who were his first and second wives?
His first wife was Lilith, banished from Eden for not submitting to her husband's demand to be on top during sex, her children were ripped apart by angels. His second wife was destroyed without even gaining a name because Adam was freaked out by seeing her built from scratch in front of him.
God learned from this experience and put Adam to sleep while making Eve from his rib.
Where's this from, may I ask? It certainly isn't Biblical, but I have heard of Lilith before (not what happened to her or why, though).