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Have you ever heard of Creflo Dollar? He's this reverend for some really big predominately black church in Atlanta, GA that some how equates believing in God will bring you loads of money. I read an article in the New Yorker about how people are flocking to his church in droves to get rich! I think it's the perfect example for "Christians" belief that if you believe you will be rich.
My mom got two checks in the mail from her mortgage company totalling almost 6k. She equates the good fortune with her church attendance and participation rather that her mortgage company over charging her and giving her her money back.
posted by
Shavonne
on December 23, 2004 at 12:07 PM
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Ody
I am a student of life and the universe. I am not a student of your fictional character called God. I have studied the Bible and I find it to be a very poor source of life lessons. it is clearly out dated and no more than a collection of fiction.
You are the kind of student who looks at the course book and only the course book, unless the teacher has something to add. I on the' other hand go out and learn outside of the classroom and am more than willing to come back to class and point out the areas in which the teacher is wrong or the information being taught is outdated. A truly good teacher would encourage my kind of learning and be more than willing to accept it when I find new knowledge that prove his teachings to be flawed. Your God seems to be a very poor teacher, since he seems to be very much against learning outside the classroom.
I believe we are student our whole lives, for there is always more to learn. But a student is far different from a pet. I am very much puzzled as to how you can connect the two ideas.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 20, 2004 at 7:36 PM
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Kooka, my friend.....
You have to crawl before you can walk. What you are saying is the same as saying you find it demeaning to be a student. You have to be a student before you can be a teacher. The cool thing about God’s classroom is that it’s interactive. You are in an interactive cage that is also your classroom. Call yourself a student instead of a pet, if you like, but it’s all the same difference. Just stop being the restless student sitting at the back of the room who keeps distracting everyone from the lesson. Move up on the front row with me. We can be pals and I’ll let you copy off my paper (the teacher doesn’t mind) LOL.
posted by
telemachus
on December 20, 2004 at 6:07 PM
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Ody
It scares me that there are those like you who embrace this idea of being God's pet. To me that shows a very weak mind. If one wishes to be nothing more than a pet then what does that say about how one feels about one's self? I guess I just have too much self worth to believe in such an insulting idea. I know I am better than that and I know that I have true free will and am truly my own person. If you wish to live with the idea that everything you do you do for the enjoyment of God and that somehow gives your life a sense of meaning, then go ahead. It is shows a great lack of self worth to me. I need nothing else to make me feel as though my life has meaning.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 20, 2004 at 4:50 PM
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Kooka
The best way to put it is in the exact words that you yourself employed in our past conversations: it boils down to whether or not you want to be God's pet. There's only one way out of the cage, and it's not by doing battle with forces that are more powerful than you. LOL
posted by
telemachus
on December 20, 2004 at 10:04 AM
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westwend
interesting comments - I think it is much easier for me to accept alternative explanations for God than it is to deal with total denial - total denial seems to be the very least support stance, to me!
posted by
telemachus
on December 20, 2004 at 10:01 AM
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KID I SAID YOUR COMMENT WAS BEAUTIFUL
do I have to say it again?
I really liked it and was fantastically moved by it.
It is a great statement of what you believe.
It was beautiful, son.
posted by
Xeno-x
on December 20, 2004 at 8:58 AM
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beautiful, kooka
posted by
Xeno-x
on December 19, 2004 at 11:59 AM
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Ody
You just will not listen to me will you?
There was no event that made me become an atheist. I had no 'run-in' with religion. At one point it just made sense to me that the stories of the Bible were fiction. I never turned away from God becuase I never really had any belief in God. As a child the more I went to chruch the more I saw the flaws in their ideas. I was not aware I did not believe in God until my friend was born again and started to try to get me to believe and that is when I saw that I was an athiest.
We can never agree on an idea for a possible God. You wish for God to be all-powerful, all-knowing, with no begining and no end and be the embodyment of what you consider 'good'. I can not accept any such impossible being as anything more than fiction. What we have come to call God, if such a thing really is there, is nothing more than a function of the universe. It is not all-powerful, not even close. It is not all-knowing, once more not even close. It has a begining and will have an end if it has not ended already. And it is perfectly nuetral, as are all things created by nature in the universe.
The God my father is claiming that I am closer to is for me not the God you seem to wish to follow. I believe he is trying to say I am closer to the ideals of the Biblical God and what one should be trying to acheive in life. It matters not the path you take, but the outcome of the journey when dealing with life. If you live a good life and do all you can to make the universe a better palce, then you have done your duty to the universe. For some it takes a belief in God to do that, while in others in take just the realization of how the universe works.
I can promise you I am very far from accepting your idea of God. Such a God can not be and goes against all logic and reason in the universe. I shall even write a post that talks about such, yet again.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 18, 2004 at 4:17 PM
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actually ody
it could be the halloween party we had at church
when i was a monster and he was
superman i think
he rushed toward me
and i sidestepped
and he ran right into the table
had to get about a dozen stitches in his head.
that'll burn you out on church sometimes i guess.
but seriously though
he's not entrenched so much as he has done what you and i have done
which is reject the common Christian notion of god.
he's doing all right as far as I am concerned.
he thinks
and that is important.
there are varying individual notions of the universe and god, obviously.
they range from absolutely no god at all to a totally supreme being that rules everything the way he wants to rule it to thousands of gods that constantly war against each other.
you have your definition, i have mine
and kooka has his.
he has expressed this a few times here -- i guess to be plain maybe he should express it again -- but that's up to him -- he's a big boy.
we each see what we see.
i don't see pride in where he is -- simply he is where he is.
i understand the southern baptist paradigm some -- i was saved in a baptist church (Calvary -- maybe not southern baptist) I had divinity students from the Bible Baptist College in Springfield MO approach me, asking if I had been saved. I have family in Southern Missouri, which is about as Southern Baptist as you can get.
I can see that you aren't Southern Baptist.
But you still try to convince Kooka from a point of you knowing that god exists instead of "does god exist?".
I don't try to convince him.
He thinks for himself.
He works things out pretty well, I think.
I come from an exploring background -- came to my perception of god (which changes constantly) and religion and scripture by stages of personal discovery. You can see it most clearly in GOD AS THE UNIVERSE AS AN ORGANISM.
Actually, the best definition of god comes from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which is similar to many such.
which is
that "in which we live and move and have our being".
what can be more accurate?
It can be defined so differently by every individual
and each individual worships that god.
period.
posted by
Xeno-x
on December 17, 2004 at 12:32 PM
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Westwend, my friend,
Hmmm, perhaps you are on to something here? Certainly Kooka approaches God at times, perhaps unknowingly, even in the face of his constant denials, which likely stem from some past adverse experience he has obviously had with organized religion and that is very unfortunate. And you are certainly correct that many Christians lose site of the real God by replacing God with fictional imaginings. The difficult thing that I contend with in conversing with Kooka is getting him to try to see beyond the paradigm that turned him away from God, be it Christianity, over zealous fundamentalism, or whatever it was. Once he does this, I think his perception of God will be enhanced. I can tell this from reading Kooka because of his constant references to “the God of the Bible” or “the Christian God” and similar statements. I almost think that Kooka and I could arrive at a mutually acceptable definition of God, if it were not for the staunch atheistic trench that Kooka has dug for himself and the pride issue associated with stepping out of that trench. And, as for your statement that you don’t think I can express myself outside of my own perceptions, you should be aware that my paradigm is that of the Southern Baptist and certainly, as you know from reading INSIGHT, that is not the theme of my expressions. As for convincing others, that is an interesting question. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anyone on the blogit ever fully convinced of anything. I think, instead, that we all take a little bit here and there and employ it as we like in an ever-changing environment, that we call culture.
posted by
telemachus
on December 17, 2004 at 9:09 AM
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actually Kooka is
closer to God than a lot of Christians are
many times pepole that are too religious replace family and friends with god -- and then we come to the matter that they have lost sight of the real god, replacing it with a false god of their own imaginations.
i see something blocking Christians'vision - -where they can't express themselves outside of their own perceptions -- and their perceptions don't convince those outside of their own perceptions.
Odysseus -- you are quite guilty of this in your arguments.
posted by
Xeno-x
on December 16, 2004 at 8:47 AM
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Very Interesting
I agree with Jackie that our passions are a catalyst leading us to greater introspection, but not, of themselves, the end result of spiritual maturity. And also with roofpig that nihilism is the subject of much of this discussion, which was certainly not intended as solely directed to the atheist. But, are the parallels not there all the same? Consider these comments from Kooka’s response.
“so it matters little how it all ends” –Kooka_lives
“every thing is doomed” –Kooka_lives
“I have replaced God with family and friends” –Kooka_lives
Also, BTW, Kooka, thanks for the in depth response. I find your answers very interesting. And, you might die of old age waiting for me to be good first; it’s a perpetual struggle for me. LOL
posted by
telemachus
on December 16, 2004 at 6:38 AM
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It seems that Ody was thinking more of nihilism than atheism at points within that post.
posted by
roofpig
on December 16, 2004 at 5:32 AM
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jackie
Thank You
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 15, 2004 at 8:26 PM
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i dont know which was longer
this epic post or westwends epic poem. You guys are great writers. This was my favorite part of your post : No. Since writing is my passion and is what I truly wish to do with my life, I use my writing to seek those answers. Most who are passionate about such things, mostly in the arts, uses that passion and drive to figure things out and asks those questions through their art and passion. The passion is the means to the achieving those answers, not a distraction.
Well said.
posted by
calmcantey75
on December 15, 2004 at 7:54 PM
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