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Arshad Peeroo wrote:
You are trying to hide the golden fruits of the Islamic
Golden Age!
Shame on you! |
What fruits are these how did mankind benefit from them and in what
way was Islam rather than the free exchange of knowledge responsible for them?
Being the dominant religion in a culture which coincidentally is open-minded
towards science does not make Islam responsible for any scientific breakthroughs
any more than the weather or the diet of the people in question was responsible.
Did Islam itself actually make any contribution? I suggest all the advances,
which have been over-hyped by guilty westerners, were actually caused by the
free exchange of information helped by a common language (Arabic) and an open-minded
attitude to knowledge which is not a characteristic of Islam itself. Islam
can be open-minded or closed-minded, peaceful or offensively pugnacious and
genocidal. Muslims can build libraries or they can dynamite religious statues
and deny the facts revealed by scientific research. Any Muslim golden age happened
at least as much despite Islam rather than because of it.
The golden age, if it ever really existed, ended a long time ago. Islam hasn't
been where it's at scientifically for more than five centuries. No religion
helps science, the best a religion can ever do is not get in the way too much
and provide a common language to communicate with across a wider area than
the normal remit of kings and emperors. Now the world has English, the scientific
method and the modern university system Islam has absolutely nothing to offer
the future of mankind except despair and needless conflict.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org
Martin
I could not find when I googled your site the following.
First, I don't share your belief system, but with that said
As we pass the anniversary what are your opinions on the Virginia
Tech
murders or other murders on the college/high school scene? I mean,
does it
really matter in Darwin's system of Survival of the fittest?
It would seem to me if things really do not matter here and each man's
opinion is right to himself, and we really only end up in the box at
the end
of the day, is there any reason for outrage at countries who take life
for
whatever reason?
It seems to me that it wouldn't matter would it? If the drunk driver
is
exercising his right to drink and drive and crosses the center line & takes
the lives of your wife and children, it would seem to me nothing more
than
bad luck and in the end you're not to judge his opinions about
drinking/driving because you're not any different than he? Right?
Is this what is meant by survival of the fittest?
And if in the end we just all end up in a box in the ground, why don't
more
folks who espouse this philosophy get on the media after reports of
this
stuff and let people know it really doesn't matter their loved one
is dead
because it was bound to happen anyways, whether by angry student, careless
drinker, someone wanting sex & then taking a life or old age. What
difference does it make right?
Sincerely
Mike |
Survival of the fittest is the way things are, not how I want them
to be. I have no more reason to excuse and justify the survival of the fittest
than I or you need to excuse and justify the properties of chlorine gas, the
erosive powers of the sea or the current weather. I exist because of the survival
of the fittest but my existence also required the End Permian extinction crisis,
the End Cretaceous extinction crisis, the Norman Conquest, the Black Death,
the industrial revolution and two world wars. I don't have to think that such
upheavals are A Good Thing simply because such upheavals were necessary for
me to exist. I have no doubt that if any of those events had not taken place
I would not be alive*. I certainly don't have to want more such upheavals in
the future.
Believing that evolution has happened does not require anybody to believe
that evolution is A Good Thing or something to be encouraged. A lot of atheists
get this wrong too, partly because they are not as smart as they would like
to think they are and partly because of Christian disinformation. I do not
see evolution as something to be encouraged, promoted or gloried in. Evolution
is simply a fact. There is no automatic ought from this is. Personally I would
be quite happy if evolution stopped dead right now. I do not regard myself
as having any duty to evolution or the future or to my genes. I will not just
step aside and let a new species take over my world. I do not think I owe my
genes any favours. My interests are not their interests. I am a person, a sentient
being not a collection of genes. I didn't free myself from the grip of myths
and gods to tie myself up up in the imaginary bounds of cunning dumb chemicals.
No matter how much you, me or anybody else would like to wish meaning into
life there is no meaning. Life is what you make of it. You don't have to make
your life meaningful in a way somebody else has chosen for you, whether that
person is your father, your tribal elder or your god. If that doesn't seem
satisfying to you the universe doesn't give a flying fuck, the universe does
not exist to satisfy you. No, not even if you really believe with every fibre
of your being that it does make sense and the universe was made specifically
to test your soul for suitability to spend time with the creator. Personal
beliefs do not change reality, either for you or for anybody else. All observation
positions offer views which are equally valid but there is only one truth and
belief does not change reality. Reality is not relative, it is invariant.
I can make a moral judgement between different actions. Drunk driving is wrong
because it puts other people under significant risk. I would prefer to live
in a world in which nobody drove drunk rather than one in which everybody did,
even if that means I can't do it. It's an easy concept to grasp. I would prefer
a world of nobody stealing, nobody lying and nobody killing without a very
good reason. It is unreasonable to make myself an exception, it is unreasonable
for anybody to be an exception. Universal rules work, they don't need an absolute
law giver. Ways of getting along evolve easily between people who have had
experience of getting on with other people, the more experience you have (the
more civilized you are) the easier it is to develop better ways of getting
along without seriously inconveniencing others. My own guiding principle, when
I have the time to apply it, is utilitarianism: the greatest good to the greatest
number, a principle which has no need to assume or deny any gods in order to
work.
Whether we could ever have got where we are now without religion matters not
one jot, we are here, we are experienced at civilization and politics and law
and morals and ethics. Whether religion was a vital piece of scaffolding or
a parasitic entity entwining itself around the law and morality the way right
wing arseholes entwine themselves around national symbols does not matter.
Religion is not now needed to give us any insights into the behaviours we should
be encouraging or denigrating. We can function in a world of laws and universal
rights very easily without any recourse to beliefs in superstition, magic or
gods. In fact belief in magic gets in the way and causes division and dissent
where none need be.
The desire to prove that atheists cannot be moral is obscene. Do you really
want atheists to be immoral? Would that make you happy? You are doing your
children a grave disservice by teaching them that the only reason anybody is
ever good is because they believe in a magic man up in the sky who will beat
the shit out of them when they get out of school if they don't behave. What
happens to children given that message? They believe it! They think it makes
sense. Of course they only believe part of it, not the stuff about the magic
man in the sky, just the bit about not believing in that magic making them
free from any moral law and therefore expected to be bad. You are setting up
your children to be object lessons of how not to behave. The choice is made
stark: believe in the sky pixie or go away from our nice town, dress in black,
take any drugs you want, listen to loud "Satanic" music, drink blood
and sacrifice virgins to the god false Darwin and go to hell. When they decide
they don't believe in hell or God and you think that alone makes them evil
what possible reason have they got to refrain from acting the way you have
been begging them to act? Well, none that you have given them. Most atheists
don't go crazy. Only a tiny handful do things which are seriously bad. Atheists
are over represented among Nobel Prize winners, professors, MENSA members and
billionaires but under-represented in prisons.
If you teach morality within a framework of myth and bullshit you are doing
horrendous damage to the future of our species. There are sound reasons to
be moral which do not rely on the spy camera in the sky and making people believe
celestial justice for their own good (and to keep the buggers in line). Being
moral makes you feel better about yourself, it gives you a reasonable and justified
pride in your own self. Being good feels good. Being good is a reward in itself.
It is not necessary for anybody to posit the existence of a god to be able
to define good behaviour and to give good reasons to avoid bad behaviour. Modern
laws are not based on the Ten Commandments they are based on secular values
which are far more widely agreed on than any religious dogma. Murder, theft
and perjury are crimes in all jurisdictions I am aware of and yet bad mouthing
your mother, adultery, speaking the name of a god and seething a kid in its
mother's milk and wanting a television as big as your neighbour has got are
not against the law even in Alabama.
My beliefs in regard to the Virginia Tech shooting? Simple: killing people
is wrong. For killing people ever to be right requires extraordinary circumstances
which cannot ever exist only in the mind of the killer. Anybody who kills or
tries to kill somebody for a reason which only makes sense inside their own
head should be locked away to protect the public, and if that is not possible
then lethal force can be used to stop them. That goes for Virginia Tech and
for Old Father Abraham as well. People should be granted the (convenient fiction
of) the right to life. We have a duty to ensure that people don't go around
killing other people because we appreciate the benefits of living in a community
in which murder is rare. Even in big cities in ugly states like Texas people
are significantly safer than the vast majority of our species have ever been
and we stand a much lower chance of being murdered by a member of own own species
than our nearest relatives the (other) chimpanzees do. Civilization makes people
safer, not religion, and in civilization religion, superstition and the belief
in the soul as a defenceless hostage held by the gods to keep people fearful
and toeing the line is expendable.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
* If the second world war didn't happen my parents might still have married
but I have to consider the strong probability that their lives would have been
sufficiently different for them not to have given just that sperm and that
egg the chance to get together in 1962. They might have had a different child
instead of me a few months earlier or later. By the same reasoning the first
world war would inevitably have spread enough ripples through time by 1934
to prevent the conception of my parents even if it didn't stop both sets of
grandparents meeting up and marrying. Nothing that did happen was caused to
happen by the future. The future does not suck. Stercus accidit.
Erica wrote:
Uhm, since when is it manly to let a color rule your life?
Seriously. If a guy is too worried about seeming pussy-whipped or gay
if he walks a dog with a pink leash, he is obviously being controlled
by a color and the way his culture sees the color. Fearing a color is
really pathetic.
Way to be a REAL homosexual. |
Erica is usually a woman's name in my country. What does a woman know
about how to be a man? Your tone comes across as patronizing to me as George
W Bush telling a poor black woman what it means to be poor, black or female.
You haven't a clue. Where are your scars?
Women have it easy because they have choices. There are many ways you can
be a person and female, you really have to go a hell of a long way to go too
far and even too far is recoverable. Being masculine in comparison is a tightrope,
the slightest slip and you are punished. If you have a name which is sexually
ambiguous it can be fun if you're a girl but it is a living hell for a boy.
By all means call your daughter Sam or Jo or Robin, it won't cause them any
trouble but if you call your son Jocelyn or Evelyn he won't thank you for it.
Or Marion (we called the
dog Duke) or Shirley.
To a girl the term boyish can often be a form of compliment, to a boy any
suggestion of being girlish in any way is an incitement to fight.
Men don't have the same choices as women. A woman can shave her head, or have
a tight cropped haircut and wear clothes deliberately tailored to fit a body
of the opposite sex and still be seen as sexy. If a man, or worse, a boy, has
long hair there is the constant danger of being taken for a girl, which is
an excruciatingly awful thing to happen to a teenager. Shudder. Fortunately
now I am too tall to face this problem very often and it would challenge the
world's greatest make-up artists to make my face look more female than male.
I could now wear long hair, a pony-tail, beads, even a kaftan without the risk
of being taken for a woman. But I'd need to be divorced or widowed first, and
I'd probably grow a beard, just to be sure.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
First not as a christian but as a Catholic I wonder do you think it is
ok to mutilate a poor young girls body in some islamic rite , someones
right? Is it your peoples right to cut and destroy a girls body that
was designed by God and by God alone? Do you think youcan justify what
these muslim dogs do to these poor girls as holy and the works of this
purely unholy muslim demon muhomad as good do you really think this is
what our good and mercifull God wanted. If you think this is right and
holy than you and your silly little sect and youre silly little muslim
ideas will only bring you to an unholy end and the only victins are the
poor girls and women you destroy not you because you are not victims
but willing butchers who will and deserve to burn! May you learn your
sin while suffer you nasty dogs! |
Are you suffering under the delusion that I am Catholic or in
favour of genital mutilation of any form? Why? I haven't exactly been reticent
about declaring my beliefs.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
Jane De Vries wrote:
Knowing that narcissist's are never effected by constructive criticism,
I thought I'd say it anyway. You are an extremely insecure person, normal
men are not rude, but kind. I feel sorry for you, always trying to prove
yourself. I'd ask you to rewrite Lee Strobel's book in your concise way,
but it would probably be so full of you, it would be a complete bore.
Anyway, the Holy Spirit convicts men of their sins, opening their eyes
to salvation, not you. But you probably think you're God, probably not,
you are God, right? Your black & white picture looks full of evil
and poison, YUK!!!!! |
Your comprehension of the Bible is probably as poor as your comprehension
of my words.
I am not Kush K. I have not written that article and to get my email address
you will have had to ignore my statement at the bottom of this page
"Note to Christians: The above review was written By Kush K. He read
the book. I have no intention of debating this book or reading it so stop sending
me emails about it. OK?"
and then gone to this page which contains the
lines
" Check carefully who wrote what you are responding to. The author's
name should be clearly displayed at the top of the page. Only if no author
is specified can you conclude that I (Martin Willett) wrote it. There is a
visual clue that works across the whole site, only my words appear as black
on white, other writers' words appear in different colour combinations."
which links to this page which contains this
"Lee Strobel
I have never read anything the bloke wrote, and I have no intention of starting
now.
I didn't write that review. I have no intention of reading the book because
I read the review.
Subject closed.
Can I be any clearer?"
and then you will have seen a reminder to go back and check again before you
send anything. But you didn't. Is that because you just know what's right without
ever having to check or read or think about anything?
In what way would you consider your actions to be Christian? They are typical
of dozens of Christians before you who have done exactly the same: blindly
hit out making spurious assertions and personal attacks and showing no evidence
at all of understanding context, authorship or motivation, often combined with
stinging personal attacks based upon appearance (and possibly also race). Congratulations,
you do your mythical founder high praise by your actions.
--
Martin Willett
author of most of the other 699 pages at
http://mwillett.org/
You're still full of yourself. I bet you love to hear yourself talk.
See how blind you are to comments regardless. A big steel plate is wrapped
around your head and has effected your brain. Your picture is evil and
dark. That's OK too, because you are powerless to stand against Almighty
God, who has already done away with your schemes. Live life to the fullest
now, because unless Jesus rules in your heart, you have no future, except
on this repulsive earth. You have your reward's here. Narrow minded to
say the least. You probably hate women, and love yourself, justifiable. |
If you find this Earth repulsive kindly fuck off and leave it to those
of us who are not expecting anything else. If you believe suicide is a
sin please volunteer for the riskiest think you can think of, how about
a nude protest march on Mecca to tell them where they're going wrong?
Preach the gospel there. Witness! Get yourself "martyred" as quickly
as
possible, please. It's what the apostles would have done.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
Why am I not surprised by your generous poison coming out of whatever.
I actually feel sorry for you. Someone with your capacities puts a dark
reflection in this world. Anyway, stick to your own kind, I'm sure you're
a survivor. |
Anne Gedert wrote:
Good evening.
Just a quick hypothetical question.
Let’s pretend just for a moment…. that upon your death
you actually got to stand in front of
God and you found God to be very favorable (to your liking), would
you want to be with God?
Because you had found him to be favorable and likeable, would he be
anything like you?
Just curious. |
That would depend enormously on what kind of an existence I had and what kind
of only-god-called-God I was dealing with. I suppose I would judge him on my
morals and see if he measures up. Judging him on the basis of what I can remember
of the Bible wouldn't be very sensible, that character clearly illustrates
the pitfalls of multiple authorship over a fiction franchise that has been
prolonged way beyond the original concept. I would be looking for a better
historian.
If heaven contained me and I got the option to choose to hang out with God
it would be an extremely strange form of afterlife. Wouldn't he be rather busy
with all his billions of believers and devotees fawning over him and scientists
interrogating him? It would probably be completely ghastly hanging out with
the kind of people or souls who would want to be hanging out with God. Can
you imagine both the quantity of hangers-on and the dreadful company they would
be? I have always found fans, groupies and sycophants to be extremely tedious
company, but religiously inclined sycophants would surely be in a league of
their own. If it was a full bodily resurrection the place would be knee-deep
in vomit. Just imagine tens of thousands of ignorant octogenarian priests and
nuns fawning over him and cashing in on a the supposed rewards of a lifetime
of rough woollen underwear, self-flagellation, leper-kissing and cold showers.
Come to think about it heaven seems like the last place I'd want to spend eternity,
not because of God, but because of his friends.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
You sound like a man who is incapable of conceptualizing a life that
is not viewed from a human perspective.
The way you describe a spiritual life sounds a lot like going to a shopping
mall (people acting like people).
Have you ever considered the possibility that a spiritual life would
be different than life on earth?
And that the limitations and hang-ups of humanity might not exist there. |
I don't believe in spirits. At all. I think the whole idea is fictional and
a total waste of everybody's time.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
I bet your wife has a secret longing/sorrow that you'll never really
understand (that is if she's still following Jesus as you had written
On your web-site). I'm sure she really loves you and would want to see
you
be with you, too, in heaven. You probably think her sorrow and longing
is
foolish. If she's been able to "detach" from your atheism,
I wonder how she
did it?
What do you gain personally, by atheism evangelism?
What's in it for you? In a sense, isn't atheism just another
"religion" trying to get converts?
I would like to know more about the 12-year old you
(the father of the man).
Did the 12-year old really dictate the thoughts of the grown up you?
Does the 12-year old, who didn't hear from God when he called out,
miss the part about "faith" ?
From what I understand of 12 year olds, they're children and they
Don't think like adults. Most people grow out of that and are able to
Conceptualize things that are deeper than the eye can see.
Mathematicians, explorers in science and physics and microbiology
Would have never discovered the depth of their sciences
Without being able to imagine what cannot be seen. They just knew
It was there (the "secrets" in their science that was to be
discovered).
They had "faith" that something existed and from that point
they
Just needed to prove it. Is it "proof" that you seek ?
Then just look at a simple blade of grass and the amazing miracle
Of it's existence. Stand back from that and try to tell yourself
That that happened by "accident".
Here's what we learned in grade school:
Everything is comprised of matter.
Before the "bang" there was "matter".
But out of the nothingness, how did the initial "matter" get
there?
No one can explain it.
Who can account for the Matter.
Nothingness---> Matter--->bang ---> universe
Faith in "God" is a choice, not of ignorance, but of observation.
He exists, and all creation has his signature on it.
To the opened-minded thinker, it's just simply obvious.
Any educated scientist will test his hypothesis before he
Draws his conclusion.
The 12-year old you did not get a response from God, or
So you recollect. Has the adult man you called
Out recently? Are you relying on the data collection of a
12-year old? Give it another try.
Call out to God again and see if he reveals himself to you.
If you say that you won't, than you really haven't
Scientifically come to your conclusion that God does not exist.
You may choose not to call out to God because of the
Danger that YOU MAY HEAR FROM HIM...then what?
But you may say, if God exists, then I don't have to call out
To him, he should call out to me. So tell God that, get honest.
You're proud and you do have a god in your life and it's you.
You serve you, and you worship you and your ideas.
We all have a god we serve.
Take away the Church, take away the bible, take away traditions,
And religiosity. Take away everyone else's ideas and conclusion about
"God". Humble yourself for a minute and call out to him.
That's the only scientific approach you can take.
I'm not telling you all of this for arguments sake.
I'm telling you this for a couple of reasons.
If you invite God into your life, nothing will change and EVERYTHING
will
change. You don't understand, only because you don't have God
Living inside of you. God living inside of me is REAL.
I believe in a world that cannot be seen with my physical eyes.
It can only be seen with the eyes of my heart.
Isn't that curious to you?
A baby thinks the finest thing in the world is "milk", little
Do they know the taste of fruit, vegetables, SUGAR, etc.
Atheists have not tasted, that's all.
TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD IS GOOD. |
I have never said that my wife was ever "following Jesus".
You obviously don't know very much about the Church of England. People in the
Church of England don't follow Jesus, they just know where lives and think he's a good chap.
In our entire 19 and a half year history as a couple every single utterance
she has made of a religious character would not comprise more than five minutes
of speaking, including wedding and Christening vows. That puts her above average
for the C of E.
I think you have a difficulty grasping a rather basic fact. I have never in
my entire life imagined that I am a soul or a spirit. I have always understood
that I am the activity in my brain. I don't live in a body, I don't have a
body, I am a body. You may think that nobody could believe that but personal
incredulity is a very weak argument against anything. I find the I-am-my-brain
theory explains everything very neatly:
1] It explains why I have no memories of anything that happened before my
birth and it explains why my earliest memories are rich in sensual information
but poor in words and understanding.
2] It explains why Alzheimer's patients (like my father's second wife) seem
to go away. The soul never complains that its brain doesn't work any longer.
When the brain doesn't work any longer the person has gone, changed, never
to be recovered.
3] It explains why people change when bits of their brain are damaged or removed
in accidents or surgery.
4] It explains why drink, drugs, tiredness, hormones and senility affect the
entire person. A tired brain makes a tired person, a drugged brain changes
the person. The soul theory suggests this should not happen, it suggests the
soul is unaffected by the material world because it is separate from it. Experience
of anaesthetic, dreams, drink and drugs suggest otherwise.
I don't believe in the soul theory. I don't believe that spirituality or spirit
actually means anything at all. It's all self-delusion.
Atheism is my hobby. Don't expect a better explanation for why I do it than
you would get from somebody who collects beer mats or watches a particular
film an excessive number of times. It gives me something to do, it's something
I'm good at, when it comes to not believing in gods I'm world class. For more
than twenty years being an atheist was just the answer to the question of what
I believe. I didn't do anything about it. Even now my atheism is confined totally
to the internet. I have spent the last four months working with a Catholic
and he doesn't know I am an atheist. I haven't joined any organizations which
ask for subscriptions. I haven't been to any meetings except to meet up with
some of the people who hang out on my forum. I don't harangue people in real
life, I actually avoid discussing religion more than most people do. My atheist
activity is 99% online.
The 12 year old me did not dictate my views. Where did you drag that from?
You're not the first Christian to make that charge. Why do you think that it
makes any sense at all? I constantly examine my views and change them in the
light of new information. Of course that doesn't mean I'm changing from one
extreme to another several times each month but I wouldn't have any problems
with doing that if the evidence I was aware of suggested I should do so. How
old were you when you were first told about Jesus?
If any gods want to converse with me they should know where I live. I am not
going to "invite them in" because that simply means willing myself
into a state of suggestibility and self-hypnosis. Do you invite foreign gods
into your head? Sorry, into your heart. I can't get my head around this Christian
alternative anatomy. I have asked many different gods to reveal themselves
to me or to smite me. The result is exactly the same in all cases, the gods
display their indifference/mercy/aloofness/non-existence by doing nothing at
all. The same goes for the one true god as for the one false god, the wrong
people's one true god and the dead people's many obviously dodgy gods. Odin,
Thor, Baal, Jesus, Satan, Allah, Thoth, Yahweh or Kaali, they all do nothing
at all.
Evolution is not an accident. I'm sick of that absurd charge. Go and read
some books on evolution written by somebody who believes it.
It is much harder to account for the existence of a wise and powerful god
with human characteristics and motivations than it is to account for the generation
of time, space and matter. How can wisdom exist without experience? How can
a will form before there is time, matter, energy or space? Anything powerful
enough to design and create the universe must be significantly more complex
than the singularity that the Big Bang came from. If that's not stretching
credulity enough your god has to have human properties (which of course have
evolved, but he didn't evolve) with a thing for Jews which nobody can properly
explain.
People invented gods. Gods have changed over the years as people have become
more sophisticated. The god of Genesis didn't have a heaven to share with dead
people, walked about in the Garden, could wander off and not see things happening
and punished disobedient animals by pulling their legs off. Later men decide
that it wasn't a snake at all, it was a quasi-god who was bad. People then
imagine God in their own image: he's a Super-Jew to slay the Philistines and
their heathen iron age technology, he's a Southern Gentleman who approves of
slavery and keeping women pure, he's a cool hippie who actually meant that
stuff in the Sermon on the Mount but like literally - wow! Or he's an American
patriot who hates immigrants and faggots and thinks poverty is a curse he can
lay on the heathen and he detests both abortion and welfare mothers.
Hasn't it ever struck you as strange that people believe in a god who hates
exactly the same bunch of people as they hate and for exactly the same reasons?
Even when those people and reasons are totally different but the god answers
to the same name.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
Thanks for writing me back.
And I’m very glad to hear from you.
To answer your question, I think your web-site biography mentions that
at 12, you felt that God was not real and you were just kind of
going thru the motions at church to appease your mother. (that’s
where I got it from).
I just gathered that your atheistic convictions started when you were
a child.
Anyways, there is a huge difference between Christian “religiosity” and
a person who actually follows Jesus.
My mistake is that I made an assumption that your wife was following
Jesus.
So, in essence, your wife is a religious person. That explains a lot.
Your marriage then would not have endured the hardship of being “unevenly
yoked” (a union of a believer and non-believer).
Your marriage is an atheist and a religious person, so essentially your
marriage would not really have endured
The specifics that married believers and non-believers go through.
Most of the new testament is written for believers.
It was written to encourage believers.
Since you are not a believer, you can’t get out of the bible what
believers get out of it.
It’s because you view the bible as “literature” and
only see it with un-spiritual eyes.
There are lots of college classes that teach the bible from a literal
standpoint, but it really never edifies anyone.
Approaching the bible without spiritual eyes, is like trying “eat” by
looking at the pictures in a cookbook, it never satisfies.
I never call myself a Christian or a “religious” person.
I distinguish myself by calling myself a “follower of Jesus” or “a
Believer”.
The word Christian is so misleading and watered-down.
Churches are filled with “Christians”. However, most churches
are not overflowing with “followers of Jesus”.
Anybody can call themselves a Christian, and Christian can mean one
thing to one person, and something else to another.
A lot of people who sign church membership cards call themselves “Christians”.
People who “like” Jesus might consider themselves to be
Christian, too.
A lot of Christians believe in Jesus, but they may only believe in the
historical Jesus.
Or they may “believe” he really was a man that talked.
Some may even believe he was a good guy.
The clear distinction is what people BELIEVE ABOUT Jesus.
I believe Jesus did something great. I believe that Jesus conquered
DEATH.
A lot of Christians might not even believe that.
If Jesus didn’t conquer death, I would not follow Him. It would
be a waste of my time.
So have you ever had any diaglog with a follower of Jesus?
It might look different than dialog with a “Christian”.
I don’t go to “church”.
I go to a bible study at my friends house on Thursdays, where I meet
with other followers of Jesus.
Following Jesus in my life is like this.
I admit that by my personal nature, I’m nothing like Jesus at
all.
I think He’s the epitomy of goodness and loving kindness.
If I want to be like him, I call out to him (that’s called prayer)
and
Ask Him to help me to be like him. On my own, I can try to “fake
it”, but it doesn’t usually work out.
I screw up all the time, but despite that, He continues to love me.
At the end of my life, when I die, I have the hope that Jesus will transform
me into a very loving person forever.
And Heaven will be filled with people who have also been transformed.
The transformation begins when we start following him in this earthly
life, but the completion of the transformation happens at our death
When we meet Him face to face.
.
It’s funny that you can’t imagine a loving God, but you
imagined a heaven filled with
“ignorant octogenarian priests and nuns”.
I was in diaglog with a Muslim woman who was depending on her “goodness” to
gain heaven.
She was appalled at the idea that heaven could be shared with forgiven
murderers, adulterers, etc.
So her view of heaven is that she is so good that she deserves heaven,
and the rest of us don’t.
I think most established churches have done a lot of damage.
A lot of religious people are not really spokespersons for God.
Actually no one is a spokesperson for God, except God.
I think Jesus can pull up a chair and sit down with a person right in
their own head of they have Alzheimers.
I hope I don’t get Alzheimers, but who knows, maybe I will.
Maybe you will, no guarantees.
Anyways, I believe there’s something going on INSIDE their head
that no one from the outside can observe.
I think Alzheimers folks get an opportunity to meet with God in a special
way.
I think there is no danger in having HOPE.
Have a good evening !
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I am not interested in you, your ideas, your opinions, your saviour
or your posturing to be worthier than the next religious idiot. You are not
a nice person, I would not wish to spend ten minutes with you let alone an
eternity. You make me feel sorry for God.
If that is what religious belief does for and to people I am very happy to
be thoroughly immune.
--
Martin Willett
 More! Mixed Nuts 08
Part Two, The Revenge
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