Since I don't believe in any God, nothing short of this god coming down from on high or whatever and standing in front of me and saying "Here I am." And even then I probably wouldn't worship him.
Evidence that would make you worship
- Thread starter Zacharine
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At the risk of oh shit I'm going to piss off moderators- Christianity was a cult among the Jews. They thought so, hard. They thought so-so hard that they crucified the leader of the cult. Who's to say Jesus meant for all of this to follow him, the christians have stolen pretty much all of their holidays from pagan ones. Did you know that Easter was named after our god Ostara? It means rebirth, her familiars are floppy eared bunny rabbits and she is symbolized by the cycle of the egg. Ever wonder why easter has anything to do with bunnies and eggs? Yeah. Now you do. How can you believe any of what they preach if even a single part of it is proven to be plagiarized? How can you believe that only a part of it is plagiarized and not the rest?Island said:
For me God himself would have to come down and personally prove his existence, and even then I'd be a skeptic at best
Well, death is a separation, so it has a different meaning to God than it does to us, since he doesn't ever die in our sense of the word. To us, death means we lose someone or something, but since our souls are immortal, it just means they move on to the metaphysical realm of heaven and hell. To God, eternal life means being in heaven with him for all eternity, and not separated from him in hell.Island said:
For the sake of argument? How silly. The majority of people are merely biological computers.Jedoro said:
When i saw the salvation army, i never assumed that there could be a god, i saw it for what it was, a bunch of idiots with no self-esteem. Incapable of independant thought, thus turning themselves into the guidelines of that book. Same for the mormons and the witnesses. Your idea that these things should inspire curiosity is completely baseless. I never said you had to go to walmart to get one. This is another baseless assumption. Infact this is just circular reasoning. "He said there are bibles in wal-mart, so he must think that walmart is the only place to get a bible!"
Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not organically part of us, while self-esteem is derived from the potentialities and achievements of self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body or possessions. There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is sensitive and uncompromising. The less promise and potentiality in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection. It is true, however, that when pride releases energies and serves as a spur to achievement, it can lead to a reconciliation with the self and the attainment of genuine self-esteem.Secretiveness can be a source of pride. It is a paradox that secretiveness plays the same role as boasting - both are engaged in the creation of a disguise. Boasting tries to create an imaginary self, while secretiveness gives us the exhilarating feeling of being princes disguised in meekness. Of the two, secretiveness is the more difficult and effective. For the self-observant, boasting breeds self-contempt. Yet, it is as Spinoza said: "Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and they can moderate their desires more than their words." Humility, however, is not verbal renunciation of pride but the substitution of pride for self-awareness and objectivity. Forced humility is false pride.
A fateful process is set in motion when the individual is released "to the freedom of his own impotence" and left to justify his existence by his own efforts. The individual on his own, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. This autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding ground of frustration and the seed of the convulsion that shakes our world to its foundations.The autonomous individual is stable only so long as he is possessed of self-esteem. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task which taxes all of the individual's power and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride, the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.
So, we acquire a sense of worth either by realizing our talents, or by keeping busy or by identifying ourselves with something apart from us -- be it a cause, a leader, a group, possessions or whatnot. The path of self-realization is the most difficult. It is taken only when other avenues to a sense of worth are more or less blocked. Men of talent have to be encouraged and loaded to engage in creative work. Their groans and laments echo through the ages.Action is a high road to self-confidence and esteem. Where it is open, all energies flow toward it. It comes readily to most people and its rewards are tangible. The cultivation of the spirit is elusive and difficult and the tendency toward it is rarely spontaneous, whereas, the opportunities for action are many. Your cult is nothing more than a large group of people being actively consumed by their pride.
Worshipping yourself is absolutely impossible unless you believe that you are seperated into two different entities. Worshipping yourself is an oxymoron. So is worshipping science, science isnt a person. It's quite obvious that you dont understand fucking english.Island said:
Gratuitous amounts of awesome.Jedoro said:
I don't really celebrate the Christian holidays, i.e. saying Easter is the exact day Jesus came back to life, or saying "Happy Birthday, J-Man!" on Christmas, you know?Mjolnir07 said:
I was raised in a Baptist church, but I don't really feel like I belong to the denomination anymore. I'm just... Christian.
The difference is shame. Shame is a system of control; while I understand that many people are born into this and know no different, it is possible and even plausible to recognize when you are being shamed. "The meek shall inherit the Earth." Well that's fantastic, considering they were the bi-products of the strong and proud who made it inheritable. "Believe in me and have everlasting life." So if I can't find it in me to believe in you, even though I try, I deserve it less than those who are stupid enough not to naturally doubt the inane? Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. "why?" "because it has been commanded so." How about thou shalt not because you have an integrity and a fucking conscience that tells you it's wrong to shall. How about the reason you are a good person isn't because you fear fire and brimstone or embarrassing yourself in front of a mighty deity, but because to be a bad person would mean shaming yourself, would mean disgracing your personal honor.
I don't steal because I am not a person who steals, the reason I do not steal is certainly not because someone else told me I will suffer consequences for doing so, or because I'm afraid I won't be rewarded after I die if I do.
I don't steal because I am not a person who steals, the reason I do not steal is certainly not because someone else told me I will suffer consequences for doing so, or because I'm afraid I won't be rewarded after I die if I do.
Doesn't make sense? Just lashing out? Bullshit. You're ignoring the main fucking point of the post. All judeo christian groups are fucking cults. Christianity stole everything from other belief systems to make theirs more comfortable to outsiders. Even the idea that theres an energy or as they say "Gods presence" in everything is taken from the bhuddist/hindu/taoist groups. Christianity is no different from scientology, it was just an attempt to make money. The only difference is that christians are concerned with some damn see-through george fucking lucas in the sky and scientologists are concerned with their Xenu.Island said:
Additionally, I assure that I personally am on no bandwagon. I can see where it might be popular to go against common or inherited belief. But I was never raised a Christian, so your blanket statement that to not believe in Christianity is a bandwagon is plainly false, if there is such a bandwagon I would have no reason to jump onto it because I was already traveling in a band convertible in the same direction on the same band-road from birth. I as well ensure that I have an argument to match each of yours, and that none of mine will ever be narrowed to "You'd understand if you only have faith" or "if you'd just believe in what you don't believe in, then you'd believe in it."Island said:
Of course I was being silly, hence the repetition of it being for the sake of argument.ZSF said:
And I never said you said that someone had to go to Wal-Mart for a Bible. Where did that come from? I think you should argue based on what I say, not what you think I mean.
The core of pride is actually self-importance, self-respect, self-esteem. I trust Dictionary.com more than I trust your definition. One can be, and usually is, proud of their own achievements, so it's not all about self-rejection. Pride has nothing to do with humility, either, and that is the one that the Bible promotes: humility, because we don't earn salvation, it is granted to us as a gift because we merely BELIEVE. Pride is gained from actions.
If you want a cult that is Christian and prideful, go knock on some Catholics' doors. They're the ones who believe you have to work for it, and it's something you actually earn. Protestants know we don't earn this, so we don't (or at least shouldn't, regrettably) act like we did.
And you speak of great artists as if none of them were Christian. You think atheists and non-Christians built all those lovely cathedrals and sculpted those beautiful statues that are in them?
In the end I'm willing to accept that I'm completely batshit insane and that my gods neither exist nor have ever talked to me. In the end I'm willing to accept that after this it's lights out, no light no dark no oblivion just lack of being. I personally feel that monotheistic religions are a fabrication of comfort, and that to need that degree of comfort is invalid, counter productive and even harmful to progress in this present life.
Why would an all powerful diety give a flying monkey shit about what we do or don't do? See, this is why all these friggin' religions make no sense to me. Only religion I give the okay to is Buddism.