Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A though on the religious threads

Was simply looking for truth, honesty, 'REAL' and proof, Sir, but realizing i had never learned to yield [kneel/beg/worship] i let it go, dont want to be a fake/hypocrite in anything i do, the fighting/hypocrisy here amongst "the believers" didn't help the possible explorative journey either, it's all good though i'll just continue to live to be a good husband, neighbor, son and friend, full well remembering the road to hell is paved with good intentions, we shall see someday.

I've tried to raise that point here several times in the past.
"It's your choice" is a phrase that many are fond of using when confronting those who don't believe the way they do. Its an obviously false statement, and easily provable to be so, but it gets brought out time and again anyway.

XXClaro, exactly, and to further muddy the waters, if all this goodness, grace, shed blood, forgiven sins, the book of life, mansions with streets of gold are all joyful and easily available with nothing more than confessing with one's tongue, then why the F all the infighting, bickering, outright hatred etc, etc? it's rabid crazy stuff man.

Because humans are involved. Humans will screw up a one car funeral.

So 'man' can/has ruined houses of God because of greed, the flesh, other perversions, and turned many away who were searching for the light...........

Got it, Thanks JG.

Wild, ain't it!

Yessir, the reasons i'll just let it go and run as is my Friend, all good.

Thought real hard about a man bending his knees, kneeling, crying, begging with face in hands and claiming to surrender it all to worship something:

How does one [a man] get there?
That cant be real or sincere!
Our [men] dna, genetic binaries say, no weakness, no begging, no damn crying, no surrendering!

maybe i'm just retarded.

I just try my best to be a decent person and let it ride there.

Amen!

And so it is written Sir, here as well.

I understand where you’re coming from, the best I can. And I can’t blame you for feeling as you do about it.I think JGR addressed that about as good as it can be said...Clearly, yes. But thankfully, following Jesus doesn’t mean following His followers. I do think that following Jesus...’not’ His followers, but Him...has as much or more to do with this life as it does the next. I do like some of what these type threads have to offer. I actually learn from them; and not only from some other believers, but from some others period...such as yourself, for example. Seeing things from another’s perspective...believer or not...I’ve found to sometimes be pretty educational and eye-opening. More so than I thought I would. There are some smart guys here, and some insightful guys.

And that may very well be true. As I recall, Sam Harris touches on this when he discusses the complexities of "free will", and how brain scans neuroscientist can observe the brain making decision before the brain contemplates the input. I'm not sure I accept all those claims, but it's an interesting field of study with many implications.

Yep, that'll leave me in the live and let live trying to be a good man camp with 'Ol Raeford, much less complicated, and no judging if certain topics are never discussed with others in person.

Good to see you drop by.





Do those at the residence know that you are one of the devil's minions (undoing some of the devil's work)?

The brain is the decision maker. Information is acquired and processed before decision making and conscious thought, a delay of milliseconds between input and conscious response.

The truth is that the human mind seeks answers...and sometimes fills gaps with imaginative stories when there are no answers.

The truth is, we don't have the answers on how the universe came about, or if it, it may be cyclic or whatever. We don't know, we are in the dark.

Our big list of gods are our attempts at explaining the inexplicable. They all differ enough to be incompatible, Zeus is not Yahweh in disguise, the Rainbow Serpent is not Allah....

Religious claims of supernatural acts
are about as valid as Big Foot claims.

Scholars deem the accounts of Cortés's
soldiers in Mexico written some 40 yrs
after the fact as not reliable and subsequent
embellished alterations of the same even
less reliable .. nor do they deem the letters
of Cortés himself as an impartial source
concerning events of the time..nor can one
trust the gospels for much the same reasons.
..but the world has never been short of
impressionable gullible types.

Not sure what others think, and I certainly don't understand it all myself, but their may be some merit in Julian Jaynes idea around breakdown of the bicameral mind - where we developed introspective consciousness by a better (?) connection of the function of our brain halves. Before this happened one half of the mind delivered information to the other half that made it appear as coming from another source (ie divine?). Churches and temples with idols and images were used to initiate or enhance the divine sensation.

The breakdown of separation, or connection, was made through the pressure of increasing civilisation group sizes and the complexities of interactions, as is a learned change rather than anything physical - having language also helped pave the way. At this time there was also a perceived abandonment by the gods when the divine went away.

Schizophrenia occurs when these 2 minds separate and maybe somewhat of a legacy from our earlier development.

Ok, I’ll bite.....

Why is it not a “choice” to ponder and pursue God...... or not?

Why is it not a choice to reject God.... or in context with this thread, to reject Jesus?