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Kooka
Well maybe this post will explain my position better concerning these things. –The Messiah & Son of God
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 4:51 PM
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Ody
Also, it is not that I do not want to believe in God, but that I just can not believe. I can not even pretend to believe, because I have to be true to myself. That really is the bottom line that you need to understand.
I swear we have danced this dance before and you still refused to listen to me then. I can no more believe in God that you can just stop believing in God. it is really that simple.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 4:48 PM
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Ody
No, an open admission does not mean you are not trying to trick me. Magicians openly sit there are tell people that are going to be tricked. You are very much using trickery though words and I am not falling for it. Your slight of hand is not working on me.
I do not agree with you because you have it wrong and are missing the big picture. You drive to push me and trick me into agreeing with you however is all about ego and a desire to prove you are right. it all the more helps to show me that you are wrong and that nothing would be served by agreeing with you, because then your ego would swell and really get annoying.
I have never and will never deny " truth, love, peace, and compassion." However they are not Godly at all. In fact I have yet to see a good example of a god form any mythology, including Christianity that is a good embodiment of those values.
"Believe what your heart and conscience tell you to believe irrespective of what is happening to you externally."
I do and my heart makes it very clear that what you are doing and what you believe in is wrong for me. You ideas are clearly misguided and studying history we see they do not work.
"Be free to choose to believe in whatever you want."
I do, but you keep telling me I shouldn't because those beliefs do not agree with yours.
And once more you are pushing for some kind of pointless agreement. Why is that so important for you? Why do you have to get my to agree with you on anything? Are you that unable to respect me and show the slightest bit of acceptance that we do not share the same views? Is you integrity really so weak that you can only feel better about your beliefs if you can just get me to agree to one thing so you can start pushing other ideas on me?
Out of integrity and simple common sense I am not going to agree with you just to agree. It is meaningless since you have no respect for me and refuse to accept me for who I am.
I will not feed your ego or help you build your pedestal.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 4:42 PM
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Kooka - Well yes and my open admission should be evidence enough
that I’m not trying to trick you. Besides, how can you be tricked into believing something you don’t want to believe?
It troubles me that you would choose to say you don’t believe in something just because you worry that I might be manipulating you. Please, listen to me carefully, I want you only to believe what truly stirs your heart and conscience. It would do me no justice or benefit to simply catch you in a flurry of words. I’m not trying to embarrass you or anything like that. I’m only trying to get you to see that the first step in believing is to BELIEVE in SOMETHING. Anything?
Can we even agree that we’re here blogging? You won’t agree to anything! How can you deny truth, love, peace, and compassion over paranoia that someone may say such characteristics are Godly? Believe what your heart and conscience tell you to believe irrespective of what is happening to you externally. Don’t let the symbol of atheism skew your beliefs. Be free to choose to believe in whatever you want.
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 3:54 PM
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Ody
When you make that claim time and time again, you show you are either lying or really clueless.
You have openly admitted that the main purpose of trying to get my to agree with you on the most basic level was so that you can then show me how what I am really agreeing to it your own personal concept of God. Do you deny now that such was your goal? You have made it clear that you took the concepts you claim are part of the truth and made them so broad that no one can help but agree with them. Then you admitted that such was just the first step in showing them that the only way to believe in such things is through God. Do you deny this as well?
It is an ego thing for you, nothing more. Kind of like when someone mumbles 'idiotsayswhat' and then points and laughs at the person who says 'what'. Same level of maturity really.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 3:40 PM
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hahahahaha...
posted by
Ariala
on December 8, 2005 at 3:27 PM
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Kooka
BOO!
THE MESSIAH IS GONNA GET YOU! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 3:21 PM
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Trick you? Ha, ha, ha,
ha, ha…..stop it….ha, ha, hee. How in God’s name am I going to trick you into believing in God? You’ve got to stop saying that! And what are you talking about me being the messiah? Kooka, are you dropping acid out there tonight? Good God!
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 3:15 PM
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Ody
The main lie that is happening here is you are lying to yourself if you really believe you are not trying to trick me. This is a game you are playing and right now you are just upset that I have seen though it and it won't work on me. You keep lying to yourself and that allows for you to lie to everyone else without seeing the lies for what they are. I am sure all those who have started wars over religious concepts thought as you do and defended their actions they way you have.
You still are trying to use guilt and trickery on me. Just look at what you keep saying. I am not falling for it.
You have a lot of growing up to do both mentally and spiritually form what I can see. You have trapped yourself in such a narrow view of the reality. You have prelabeled it all, btu since you have this messiah complex going on you are unable to see the wrong you are doing. After all in your mind it is all justified because you see yourself as a messiah.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 3:04 PM
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Kooka – No element of anything that I’ve said to you is a lie.
I have not endeavored to trick you in anyway. All I have done is share with you a very simple belief system that is capable of working in this world.
I did not say that I would use your agreement to push God upon you; I said that I would try to use your agreement as a starting point to perhaps build further agreement upon. I cannot force you into believing anything. True belief comes only from within. All I can do is try to tell you some things as I see them.
The truth I have presented to you has no prejudice or prelabel. It is only what wells forth naturally from within. I believe that your affliction over traditional, organized religion has brought you to the place where you fear any type of spiritual interface.
Now, goodbye, I would like to go in peace.
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 1:52 PM
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Ody
But that was not name calling. You were lying after all. Even if you believed it because you were lying to yourself about your own actions, you still lied.
It is not paranoia. I do not see things that are not there. You have even admitted it yourself that you would use any mention of agreement I made with you as a way to try and push that I believe in your idea of God on me. I am sorry I refuse to fall for your tricks.
I get great respect in life and always have. It is just those few such as yourself who do not understand just what respect really is who are unable to give it and truly do not deserve it back. I earn respect from all of those who know me because I am a moral and good person who shows nothing but integrity in all that I do, spreading those ideas to others through my actions. And I have yet to need to force someone to agree with me in order to gain that respect.
You are not seeking truth at all. The truth you claim to be seeking is a set of prejudged, prelabeled ideas that have no flexibility and will never be allowed to grow and expand as needed in order to gain true understanding and the ability to grasp the truth.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 1:37 PM
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You called me a liar, which is the biggest insult
you could ever say to someone who worships the truth. Your paranoia that someone is trying to trick you into believing in God is one of the things that keeps you from seeing the light. No one is trying to trick you. Respect is not something that is just handed to you; it is something that you earn, by exhibiting integrity and the values that I have been discussing with you. Until you learn to display these values, you will always be wondering why you don’t get more respect. Now, I would like to terminate our discussions and bid you goodbye. Please, let us part on an amicable note.
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 1:25 PM
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Ody
I've called you names? What names?
As I said, the disagreements came because you tried to force agreement on me through simple tricks and guilt. If you would have shown respect and understood what I was trying to say and stopped with your obsession, then there would have been no disagreement.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 12:28 PM
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Kooka
I admit that I do want you to see my point of view. I don’t know what more respect you could ask for amidst the barrage of names you have called me. I cannot accept disagreement at every turn. I think it’s now time to say goodbye.
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 12:07 PM
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Ody
You are trying to use trickery and guilt as ways to get your way. Stop lying about this. Three is no way at all you can be that naive about what you are doing. Unless this messiah complex of yours is really cloudy your mind so much that you have no clue at all as to what it is you say and do.
If you could learn to show RESPECT and ACCEPTANCE, then we could move on. Your pointless desire to prove yourself right and to force agreement would solve nothing. History has already proven that your wy is the wrong way and DOE SNOT work. Go and study history outside of the church and Biblical teachings and you might learn this.
Also, you just admitted that your true goal was to slowly try to push your beliefs on me and basically try to convince me that I believe as you do. So until you are able to open your mind and broaden your understanding of things and see the big picture, you are just showing yourself to be a fool and you go around in circles.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 10:06 AM
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Kooka - You are correct that I would probably try to broaden things
the moment you embrace some aspect of goodness, but I could not do so without your agreement. An edifice of mutually defined truth can be constructed between us only by mutual agreement regarding its components. I want us to agree so that our discussion and work here has the ability to progress.
No, I cannot accept others beliefs personally, but I have told you I agree different paths exist.
Unless we have some sort of common ground, I don’t think our conversations would continue. We obviously both have an interest in analytical theology or we would not devote such time to this discourse. But I think we’re reaching a barrier that you’re erecting because you think I’m somehow trying to trick you and it seems, if we cannot even agree that warmth is desirable in the midst of the cold, that we have nowhere else to go from here.
posted by
telemachus
on December 8, 2005 at 9:16 AM
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Ody
Stop trying to hard to force agreement and just accept the differences. That part is real easy, btu you refuse to do it. If you can not accept the differences, then you have already failed and proven yourself to be only after getting people to admit you are right.
I can not believe you are this clueless, but you really are painting yourself to appear so.
The moment I agree that yes I embrace goodness you will go and try to broaden that and say then why can't you just embrace my view of God, which is a very old trick of Christians since the birth of their faith it would seem. You will of course lie in response to this and claim that such is not your goal, but even you can not be naive enough to believe such is not you ultimate goal. I keep trying to explain I will not play this game with you. You waste your time in trying to force an agreement until you have proven to me that you are truly accepting of other's beliefs, which you have not and most likely never will.
I see the big picture and I am well aware you are not working towards the right way to do this. The first step needs to be acceptance, not forced agreement. You need to accept and show respect and not worry if you have common ground or not. History has already shown us that common ground solves nothing and only really cause more fighting, since after all some of the greatest enemies in history have been groups that are very similar and share much common ground, but have one or two little differences that have caused them to go to war.
Can me both just admit that your way of thinking is out dated and will only cause more problems? After all that is a simple truth that has been proven if one studies history. So if you can admit you are wrong and your way of thinking is wrong and my simple truth here is right and that I am right and that my views and ideas of the world are right, then maybe we can start getting along and working towards something better.
I hope you realize that was me being sarcastic. After all I may have an ego, but it is not so powerful that for me to keep on beating a dead horse when I can clearly see that I am getting no where, or just because I need some one to tell me I am right to feel justified in my views. No, once I clearly see the horse is dead, I know enough to move on. I am not petty enough that I need everyone to tell me they agree with me and that I am right. You might wish to stop beating your dead horse. It is getting old and you are looking very much the fool for doing.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 8, 2005 at 7:46 AM
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Kooka – Granted different amounts of heat are needed
for different situations, just as different amounts of love or compassion may need exhibiting in different situations. The point here is the basic concept, not the measure of it delivered in any particular situation.
My focus has become more narrow in a clear attempt to find some form of agreement with you. I’m seeking some foundational stone upon which we can perhaps build further agreement. That can only happen if you start trying to find ways to agree with me in the same manner that I’m seeking for ways to agree with you.
The decision of whether to embrace good or evil is, as you say, a very simple one; and it is a decision that we must all eventually come to. It is not about me being correct or you being incorrect or anything like that. Instead, it is about finding mutual direction. Can we both, at this very simple level, agree to embrace goodness? If not, our definition of goodness is not yet simple enough. Let us reduce to it that level of simplicity at which we find agreement. In this way, we become grounded and can start to mutually identify those good things to which we can mutually agree and hence construct an edifice worthy of our mutual focus.
Can we do this together? If not, why not?
posted by
telemachus
on December 7, 2005 at 11:25 PM
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Ody
So you are telling me that you know that we will get equally cold? Different people can handle different levels of discomfort. Some people get colder easier than others. This is fact. I need look no farther than my wife, who often claims to be freezing when I am comfortable and I often claim to be hot when she is comfortable. There is a good chance that if tow people were stranded together one would feel fine and comfortable during the night, while the other was freezing and needed a fire to keep warm. Neither of them is wrong and it is a case of finding what you.
For some it will be fire for others a good blanket will be enough and still others will have no need for anything outside of themselves to keep them warm.
Once more read over what you have said. You are trying to make sure no one can disagree with you. Your ideas get more and more vague in order to insure that it gets harder to show why you are wrong. I can not help but wonder just how narrower your focus can get. What you are now claiming is so simple it is meaningless. It is like trying to claim you can solve the problem of the universe be agree about the usage of a single word. People can agree that we need the words in order to communicate ideas, yet we each end up finding different ways to use those words and express ourselves. The words themselves are meaningless and make no difference because it is not the words which make a difference, but the usage of them and power given to them. All you keep doing is trying to prove we need words, and are so determined you have all the answers that you are not looking at the big picture and seeing that we need to accept the many usage of the words.
You mostly are just concerned with getting people to agree that you are correct. Well, we can all be correct at such a simple level without even trying. That level solves nothing and answers no questions at all. You are not caring about the big picture of actually forming any kind of unity. You very clearly are just trying to prove that your are right. I've seen it before and it just does not work.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 7, 2005 at 8:39 AM
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Kooka - Did you say if we were lost in the wilderness
we would need “different levels of needed warmth”? Now, if anybody is trying to be disagreeable it has to be you with that statement. Warmth is warmth. Similarly, there are different ways to build shelter, but shelter is shelter. The same applies to nourishment.
I concede that different paths may be taken, but assert strongly to you that the basic, primal needs are consistent between us. This is true in our modern environment with compassion, love, peace, truth, and the like. Certainly, there are different ways of demonstrating love and compassion, but the CONCEPT of love and compassion, as we discern it, is singular enough to exist as a goal for us, just as warmth, nourishment, and shelter would be goals for us in a survival situation.
Agreeing on this general issue is paramount, because, as you can see, it establishes, at the very basic level, a choice for goodness or not. It establishes whether one is willing to commit themselves to goodness. It is a choice that many ignore, but which all enlightened individuals must make.
You allegory about the making of fire is a very good one. That is what happens among the religions of the world. They all understand that it is fire they desire, or the manifestations of the good concepts like compassion, love, peace, etc. But, as you say, they conflict with one another by erecting conflicting doctrines, or ways of trying to proliferate the concepts. A great religious awakening will occur when the religious people of the world come to understand that the good concepts are all that they need. The erection of elaborate doctrine, ritual, and mumbo jumbo is essentially man-made idolatry that fogs a clearer perception of the concepts for persons such as yourself.
posted by
telemachus
on December 6, 2005 at 11:30 PM
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Ody
Maybe I should try ot explain it to you this way.
We are trapped in the blizzard on some mountain. I go and try to start up a fire. You see what I am doing and decided you dislike how I am going about it. It really looks like I am about to get the fire going, you step in and tell me to stop doing it my way because I am not doing it right. I explain that I was about to get a fire started, then you tell me I was not because I wasn't doing it your way. In your mind I could not have been starting a fire because I was not doing it your way. You would not give me a chance to prove you wrong because you already know I was worn and you were right, without needing proof. Of course at such a point you have no proof that your way is better or works at all. And you way to start a fire might not work for me for some reason, I might lack the physical ability for some reason. But you refuse to accept that and will not allow me to try and start up a fire the way that I feel is right for me. For you it is no longer important that we start up a fire, just that we do it the way you claim is the only right way to do it. So by you lack of acceptance of other possibilities, you are actually cause us to not progress as fast as we would if you accepted that my way of starting a fire is the right way for me and that it will work as well as your way if you give it a chance.
So what is more important, the fire itself or the way one goes about getting ti started? Now take your answer and apply it to the general idea of religious beliefs and try to open your mind to acceptance.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 6, 2005 at 8:25 PM
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Ody
Look at what you are trying to do in that comment. Seriously take a look at it. You are trying to say that you are right and that people should not disagree with you. You do not care about anything more than being right and getting people to admit you are right. Trust me, this post was very accurate as to how you show yourself to be here on Blogit.
If we were trapped in the wilderness we would still each have different personal needs in order to survive the best for ourselves. Different levels of needed warmth and so on. We could each go our own way and survive with out really doing what the other one was doing. There are many ways to find food, build shelters and create fire. Depending on each of our own level or endurance and such, that would make huge difference as to how well we did and what our needs really were. If it were warm and plenty of edible vegetation in one path, then that path a person might not need to create fire or build a shelter or kill an animal. While at the same time the other person might be caught in bad weather with only animals for food and so his needs would be completely different, but in the end if they both achieve the same goal it does not at all mater the path.
Just agreeing on such general issues is not the key to anything and proves nothing at all. it has to go beyond that to acceptance of the idea of individual paths and tolerance for other beliefs, including groups like the Church of Satan. But you are so determined that you have to be right above all others, that you refuse to accept that truth.
posted by
kooka_lives
on December 6, 2005 at 8:11 PM
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If this is really what you truly think,
then I really have not communicated my beliefs to you very well, because this does not describe me at all. Let me try another tact. Let’s suppose that somehow you and I become stranded in the wilderness. We are lost, cold, hungry, and very weak. Suppose a winter storm is blowing in and our lives are at risk. Suddenly, only a few things will become worthy of our immediate attention. Finding our way, staying warm, finding food and conserving our energy. We would be very foolish to concentrate on anything else. We would not disagree that seeking these things are BASIC TRUTHS in our present existence for which we should strive. Our thought processes would be keeping these things in their forefront. Which way to go next, how to find food, building shelter, etc.
Now, my point is, at some basic level in our current existence today, similar BASIC TRUTHS exist for us. We would agree most of the time about the circumstance in which killing would be justified, we would agree that most of the time it would be better not to lie, we can agree that protecting our family and seeing after our children is desirable. If we honestly tried, you know there is much to which we could agree. Hence, at the most primal and basic level, there are always visible truths. These visible truths are compassion, love, peace, serenity, honesty, integrity, and similar such values that are widely recognized as admirable. These truths constitute what is worthwhile of our prime focus in life because these truths are what is BEST for us and GOOD for us and what promotes a healthy vitality in our existence.
Because these values are so important for us, they deserve our adoration, devotion, respect, and admiration. They are worthy of our primary focus and of promoting in ourselves and others. Because the values are common among men, when they are pursued, they define a common spirit among men that engenders goodness in the world. This spirit is what I want you to see.
posted by
telemachus
on December 6, 2005 at 7:38 PM
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