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Found Anything Yet, RJ...Shoo?

LilburnDeac said:
Are you calling your own response nonsensical?

Actually, I think you are making a valid point but it is lost in the midst of the poor spelling and missing words.
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I think he was calling my response nonsensical.
 
I wonder how many of the Christians on this board would react if someone holding, or aspiring to, higher office said they were consulting with Allah to find the answers to difficult problems. I don't think all of them would be uncomfortable with it, but I suspect many of them would be.
 
Wrangor said:
ONW continues to miss the point. She isn't saying that God is going to write the answer on the ground in a giant lightning strike. She is asking for guidance. As someone who has prayed that same prayer sometimes that guidance comes from an advisor, sometimes from someone you least expect, sometimes it comes from a door closing that you would like to walk through. The point isn't that God is going to write the answer on your fogged mirror. The point is that you are recognizing that there is a being that is wiser than you, that sees the entire quilt while you just stare at a mess of threads.

This doesn't mean that you cease to use your mental faculties, your education, your advisors, your confidants when making a decision. What this means is that you recognize first and foremost that God Almighty does exist, and that He is in control, not you. For anyone who doesn't believe in God this is a pretty awful statement, but our country clearly allows for freedom of religion, so to condemn someone exercising that freedom of religion while doing his/her job is shallow and shortsighted.

The opposite (and equally ludicrous) to your point of view is that a Christian society would REQUIRE you, as an atheist, to pray to God before every decision. If you didn't then you weren't fit for office. The idea of prohibiting someone from praying who truly believes in an Almighty God is the equivalent of choking someone who believes he needs to breath. There isn't any room inbetween. If there is a God, then it is suicide not to have an open line of communication with that God (which is clearly what the Bible is proposing).

ONW - you continue to ignore the fact that you are over simplifying the process of prayer. You have this idea that if someone prays for guidance they automatically lose all other mental faculties. The Bible never demands that...in fact it is quite the opposite.
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Well put +2. Just caught up on this thread and I am not sure where the use of prayer became mutually exclusive from everything else in providing a solution to a particular issue (e.g., budget). That said, unfortunately, I think with Palin, it wouldn't surprise me if she used the ostrich approach a few times in governing AK.
 
Liquid Karma said:
I wonder how many of the Christians on this board would react if someone holding, or aspiring to, higher office said they were consulting with Allah to find the answers to difficult problems. I don't think all of them would be uncomfortable with it, but I suspect many of them would be.
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I would be completely fine with it. Personally I would have to weigh the fact that I don't believe that Allah exists with their other competencies if I had to decide to vote for them, but if they were competent and prayed to Allah I would have not problem with it. In the same way I believe with all my heart that the God of the Bible exists. But I don't hold someone who is an atheist as completely inadequate because they don't believe in the one thing that is more true than any other reality we think we know about. People are complex. Hindu's can be great politicians, businessmen, labor, lawyers, etc.... the lack of seeking the true God doesn't automatically mean you are completely incompetent. There are cases when the pursuit of a particular ideal DOES render you completely incompetent, but if one is truly pursuing the God of the Bible, that will never be the case. Emphasis on the previous sentence is on "Pursuing the God of the Bible"... often people do terrible things in the name of God, that has nothing to do with the God of the Bible.

Last point....not believing in God is a leap of faith in its own right. There are so many steps of faith that come alongside NOT believing in a greater being, that it is ridiculous to try and eliminate faith from public service. Everyone has faith in something....just because your faith doesn't line up with my faith doesn't innately make either of us incompetent to serve.
 
Wrangor said:
I would be completely fine with it. Personally I would have to weigh the fact that I don't believe that Allah exists with their other competencies if I had to decide to vote for them, but if they were competent and prayed to Allah I would have not problem with it. In the same way I believe with all my heart that the God of the Bible exists. But I don't hold someone who is an atheist as completely inadequate because they don't believe in the one thing that is more true than any other reality we think we know about. People are complex. Hindu's can be great politicians, businessmen, labor, lawyers, etc.... the lack of seeking the true God doesn't automatically mean you are completely incompetent. There are cases when the pursuit of a particular ideal DOES render you completely incompetent, but if one is truly pursuing the God of the Bible, that will never be the case. Emphasis on the previous sentence is on "Pursuing the God of the Bible"... often people do terrible things in the name of God, that has nothing to do with the God of the Bible.

Last point....not believing in God is a leap of faith in its own right. There are so many steps of faith that come alongside NOT believing in a greater being, that it is ridiculous to try and eliminate faith from public service. Everyone has faith in something....just because your faith doesn't line up with my faith doesn't innately make either of us incompetent to serve.
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Perhaps you were asleep in your Religion 101 class when they discussed the fact that the God of Islam, Allah, is also the God of Abraham, and thus the God of the Bible.
 
I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that not believing in something that is not provable, constitutes a "leap of faith."
 
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DinDC said:
Perhaps you were asleep in your Religion 101 class when they discussed the fact that the God of Islam, Allah, is also the God of Abraham, and thus the God of the Bible.
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And Mormon's are simply a different denomination of Christianity...I got it. :tard:
 
Liquid Karma said:
I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that non believing in something that is not provable, constitutes a "leap of faith."
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How did life first begin? Your answer to that question is your first leap of faith, because there is absolutely no way to even minutely prove your answer. If you use the scientific method you are still basing 99% of your response on hypothesis, and if you are basing your idea of our existence on the scientific method then you are taking a leap of faith that the scientific method is the proper way to analyze eternity.

The vastness and complexity of our universe demands faith in something. You may have faith in your own intellectual capabilities above all else, but to me that is just as big a leap of faith as believing in a God that had a plan and created this vastness.
 
Wrangor, you're almost right....you are simply a radical Jew. You believe in a Jew and his father who is also a Jew.

If you believe in Buddha, you're a Buddhist.

If you believe in Confucius, you are a Confuscian.

Thus if you beleive in a Jew, you are a Jew. :)
 
Wrangor said:
And Mormon's are simply a different denomination of Christianity...I got it. :tard:
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Jews and Arabs both acknowledge that they worship the same god but just call him different names. Apparently, by your comment above, you think that Jews and Christians worship different "Gods". If that's what you really believe, please explain that Jesus, the Son of God thing to me. Or do you think that Jesus wasn't born a Jew, contrary to what the Bible says?
 
Wrangor, you are stupid beyond belief. Palin may be smarter than you.
 
Religion 101 for DinDC:

Christian: Jesus is God Incarnate, fully God, fully man
Jew: Jesus was not God at all, simply man
Muslim: Jesus is a prophet (again, not God, simply man)

Therefore right there you have a huge difference between the three religions on the nature of God. There is an irreconcilable difference between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Judaism claims that God is One, therefore the mere idea of a Triune God (in which Jesus is 1 part of the Godhead) is impossible. In addition, Muslims believe that the Q'uran (spelling mistake I am sure) is the Word of God, and not the Bible. Therefore while they might call their Gods the same, there is a HUGE difference in these two books.

Christianity culminates in the birth, life, death, and ressurection of Jesus Christ, son of God. Any failure to recognize that is a failure to be cohesive with the God of Christianity. I am not sure why this is that difficult to understand. Just because someone says they believe in the same God you do, doesn't mean they actually do. If you believe that Jesus was a giant hamburger in the sky, that doesn't doesn't make you a Christian. It makes you a guy who believes that Jesus was a giant hamburger in the sky.
 
RJKarl said:
Wrangor, you're almost right....you are simply a radical Jew. You believe in a Jew and his father who is also a Jew.

If you believe in Buddha, you're a Buddhist.

If you believe in Confucius, you are a Confuscian.

Thus if you beleive in a Jew, you are a Jew. :)
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By this definition I am clearly a Jew :) Unfortunately DC is serious in his posts.
 
Wrangor said:
How did life first begin? Your answer to that question is your first leap of faith, because there is absolutely no way to even minutely prove your answer. If you use the scientific method you are still basing 99% of your response on hypothesis, and if you are basing your idea of our existence on the scientific method then you are taking a leap of faith that the scientific method is the proper way to analyze eternity.

The vastness and complexity of our universe demands faith in something. You may have faith in your own intellectual capabilities above all else, but to me that is just as big a leap of faith as believing in a God that had a plan and created this vastness.
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This is about the 40,000th time this has been discussed on these boards, so I won't spend too much time writing my response (though I did have a long one typed out that I since deleted).

Basically, I see this argument as both semantically and logically flawed. I take Jacques Derrida's stance that I "rightly pass for an atheist." I don't take a negativist view of atheism on the "there is not" or "non-existant" side of God. More fundamentally, I don't think there's a leap of faith in "believing" in atheism. More, I "experience" atheism where I can suspend my belief in God until there is evidence revealed.
 
Wrangor said:
How did life first begin? Your answer to that question is your first leap of faith, because there is absolutely no way to even minutely prove your answer. If you use the scientific method you are still basing 99% of your response on hypothesis, and if you are basing your idea of our existence on the scientific method then you are taking a leap of faith that the scientific method is the proper way to analyze eternity.

The vastness and complexity of our universe demands faith in something. You may have faith in your own intellectual capabilities above all else, but to me that is just as big a leap of faith as believing in a God that had a plan and created this vastness.
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First leap of faith, huh? I'd say we have a pretty damn good idea of how life began. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

What faith does the vastness and complexity of the universe demand? Please explain what you are trying to say here, and for christsakes, give some examples.
 
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