Thinking about going back to church

[willametteriveroutlaw]

Its been a long strange trip these last few years and I am finally feeling like returning to church. As a little background my dad is a pastor and I was raised in a very strict christian church and was left feeling resentment towards all organized religion by the time I was 18 and quit. I haven't set foot in a chruch more than once or twice in the last 5 or 6 years (besides weddings) Reflecting on my recent life I have realized that if i had adhered to many of the morals and lessons that I learned in my younger years a little more, that my life would have been much easier and more fufilling. I going to spend the next few sundays visiting a few churches in the Corvallis and salem area. I am looking for a biblically based, not to pushy (I am still a little stand offish) church in the area.
Basically I am looking for some guidance on how to accept God back into my life and church back into my life.

[ 02-25-2004, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: willametteriveroutlaw ]

[Grantspastor]

WRO...check your e-mail

[SafetyChain]

WRO, you have mail

[chinookin]

The first step is always the hardest. I am having the same problems on my own level. Good luck and god bless.
Remember wherever two or more are gathered "in His name" you are in church. I too have a hard time with "organized religion". As the last three churches I have attended have all had the controversies that have turned alot of people away from church, affairs, questionable ethics outside of church, ect...
When I take my son fishing, I make sure that God is with us, and that my son knows he is with us. While out in nature I FEEL closer to God then in church. I too need to make the desicion to get back to church as I am the husband of a wonderful and beautiful wife, and an awesome son, that has more empathy towards people then I do......That is awesome that we have instilled that in him when he was young, but now am being convicted that it isn't enough lately, as I found the bible on his nightstand and didn't even know he had been reading it. graemlins/applause.gif But it makes me feel like I haven't been there near enough :depressed: and I know he would like to go, but won't say anything to even possible hurt my wife or my feelings. All found out in the last 3 days. :blush: was I so caught up in work and myself I haven't seen this for who knows how long. to add a little more insight, I am his step father, raised him since he was 2yrs old. But this last year has been awfully hard on our whole family. At Christmas is grandmother fell and shattered her hip. The day my wife got home from caring for her we were all looking forward to a late Christmas. As it turns out when we got home we found out his bio father had inoperable brain tumors (4). They gave him 6 months, he lasted 5, but the last one we felt we shouldn't bring him to see him. it wasn't pretty, and tore my wife and I up. Then it was my God son and his mother. Very bad domestic situation and we wouldn't let his mom take him home. Another situation that wsa very stressful ass we were threatened with kidnapping, but our convictions would not let him go back to the situation. Then gallbladder infection with my wife(new job so no insurance) Through prayer and her pain and suffering we were able to make it until we got the insurance and the day we were elegible, she had surgery to remove it. I am going to sit him down this evening for a little chat and ask what I can do to help him. He is going to be 15 in 3 weeks adn just hope I haven't screwed up. God bless you and good luck with your quest. I have prayed for you to be convicted, and have strength to overcome past experiences and get back to what is important. OUr Savior. God bless Mike.
PS, I prayed the same for me. graemlins/applause.gif

[DAB]

WRO
1 John 1:9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
NIV


DAB

[Chukrchaser]

WRO,

As to accepting God back into your life -- your already on the right track. Recognizing that we are "less" with out Him, you are feeling the work of the Holy Spirit to convict you once again. As a Pastor's son you have heard the drill -- it hasn't changed -- know in your heart, confess with your mouth -- live accordingly. Sounds easy? Hardly! but it can be done and the feeling of release and joy are worth it.

I work every other weekend -- but will be off 3/8 -- would be privledged to meet you and attend our church in Salem -- Salem Evangelical - it is a scripturally sound, praying church. More on that if your interested.

Services are at 9:30 or 11 -- we usually go to the 9:30 but either one is fine.

Probably should have put this in a PM.

Call or e-mail

Chuck
dunn71@msn.com
503-856-9207

[CATCH AND EAT]

WRO good for you. As a PK myself I can understand many of the feelings you have had. Went through the same thing a few years back, made a church change and recommitted myself to Christ. No even remotely claiming to be a perfect Christian or even a perfect Christian example but Christ is certainly becoming more and more the center of my life.

Its okay to be gunshy but understand that there are folks out there that love ya or will love you and welcome you back into the fellowship of Christ. Don't be afraid to seek some support from members in the congregation you eventually choose to help you with your walk with Christ. It truly helps and is important.

Many folks on this board can give you scriptures that offer hope and strength, they can encourage you and I think you will find that many are very learned concerning the scriptures. And I think you will find that many of us are darn good at supporting you in prayer as I am sure many are already praying for you at this very moment after reading your post.

I'll be praying for you bro that God will strengthen your commitment and change your heart. God Bless Ya WRO.

Bernie

[letsfish]

WRO,
What a grat time in your life, like a new chapter perhaps! Might want to ask sparkleboy, and others for m the Corvallis area what church they reccommend if you are shopping around. I will pray for you.
chinookin,
I am praying for you too,sounds like a great kid! Let us know of your success finding a new church.
I think feeling closer to God in the outdoors is kinda natural- He created it.Can you imagine David out on some sheep covered knoll coming up with Psalm 19 after being overcome with the milkyWay and His heavenly handiwork?
May God guide you both WRO and chinookin!
Jim

[willametteriveroutlaw]

Thank you guys for the emails and words of support. I will try to respond to them all.
Thanks Again
Ryan

[jokester]

WRO,

Back in January, I recommitted my life to Christ! Like you, I was raised in a christian home, and grew up in church all my life up until I was 18. Then, when I moved off to college, I started getting off the beaten path so to speak. This past January, while at my parent's house, I too realized the difference in where I was and where I needed to be! It's too bad that it had to take me almost 6 years to realize this, but like Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it!" That has always stuck with me!! Just remember...we've all been through it and we're all here for ya! I'll be praying for you! :smile:

-jokester

[Mikeymoto]

WRO its a good decision that your making. I was there not too long ago myself. Although I didn't have a pastor for a father we were brought up in a strict church. I am now in my 40's and believe that most everyone will return to their roots at some point in their life.
Between Corvallis and Salem areas there is a good mix of places to worship and learn. The thought of returning was kinda scary as I didn't feel that a ultra strict church was gonna fit the bill. So with some searching I found a few good matches that I would be comfortable in that taught the core belief's that I hold true. You can do the same if you choose to.
Mike

[Salmon Stryker]

Can I still call you "Outlaw" on ifish? :grin:
Seriously, that is good news Ryan. You are welcome to come to church with me if you want to sometime. E-mail me.

[MrsSled19]

Our family will pray graemlins/hearton.gif that you find your way back to the Lord and allow him back into your heart. Happy hunting when you get to the right church you will know. graemlins/hearton.gif

[CATCH AND EAT]

WRO still continuing in prayer for you. :smile:

[feisty's wife]

WRO...you do not need to be in Church to be in contact with God, since He is everywhere, all around you, I am afraid that you are going to be very disapointed yet again, for the most part, Church is a game, if you do not play by ther rules, you are not wanted, nor are you welcome. I know, I tried it for awhile again, my wife and I. My wife was in it all her life, now she is just TIRED of the hypocrisy, mostly, if you cannot give money on a regular basis, you find yourself eased out...that has been our experiance...have fun.

[Salmon Stryker]

Fiesty that is not cool. :hoboy: Just because you've had a bad experience doesn't mean that everyone will. If someone has been distant from church and from God and wants to get back on track I can think of no better place to go than church. Sure there are some hypocrits (sp) and posers at every church but there are also a lot of great people, godly people that are there to help others a long the way. I'm sorry that your church didn't work out for you but to come on this board and tell others that church is a game and that they are setting themselves up for dissapointment if they go is very poor form.

I might also add that if and when you decide to go back to church you will probably find what you are looking for....try looking for the positive stuff instead of the negative stuff.

[ 03-03-2004, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: Salmon Stryker ]

[feisty's wife]

Salmon Stryker, hi, nice to "meet" you. My thought was that the man was asking for honest input, that is what I gave him. No flame was intended, just some honesty...I have noticed before rhat many times, if those of the Christian persuasion do not get the answer they want, they get upset over the answer. I am not saying this is the case, I just think that a person gets more out of being in His creation than they do in mans creation. I guess I am more Buhdist now than anything, though why we need labels, when we are all an expression of God, is beyond me. Have a nice day

[SharkbaitHoHaHa]

In the Bible God tells us to have Fellowship with other believers. He wants us to do this because if we do not we can fall away. God is the one who told the apostles to bring up Church's so that we learn, fellowship, be baptized in front of witnesses, serve in his church. It is great to be out in his creation and say to him what all he created is good and Thank him for it but when you start looking at and God's creation and not focusing on him then you fall away.
We are not upset that we did not get the answer we were looking for because we were not looking for an answer. Jesus is the answer we only look to him.

[CATCH AND EAT]

Feisty :hoboy: I see you are at it again here on the Anglers chapel. :depressed: What gives? :shrug:

[feisty's wife]

Hi, Catch and Eat, merely expressing an opinion, from someone who was a practising Christian for years and years...got tired of the PC stuff, we have all been thru it...I beleive some of the Bible is correct, probably, but I feel for anyone who buys all of it. Look, folks, I am not a nut, I am a very nice guy, just a person who has been burned more times than I want to count, tired of it all. I beleive in re-incarnation, karma...the onward progression thru many lifetimes, thousands and thousands of them, astral projection, past life regression, and no, the ole devil does not have me fooled. I fish in a 14ft Western, with an Ifish sticker on it, and I am a fishing fool...hope I see some of you on the river sometime, though I doubt if the Christians would want to speak with me.

[happybrew]

Fiesty, I'm sure we'd all love to fish with you.... until you start criticizing our religion. Would YOU enjoy fishing with someone who slammed your beliefs? I'm not going to criticize yours. I would expect the same courtesy. In defense of Christianity, though, the Bible warns us that there will be hypocrites. We can expect it. They are, however, not living their religion. Why would it be valid to criticize a religion because of those who are not following it? It would be like saying stop signs suck because some people run them. According to Jesus, the weeds are allowed to grow up with the wheat, but they will be separated at the harvest. Harvest time hasn't come yet for us, so be patient. I'm sorry you and your wife have been scandalized. I've met others who have been similarly scandalized, however they chose to retain their Christianity and find a congregation that better suited their needs.

happybrew

[willametteriveroutlaw]

I went to a bible study last week and it was nice, for the first time in a long while I actually paid attention and felt like learning and fellowshiping, not feeling too cool to be there as in years past. Then on a fluke I watched a sermon on tv about comprimise (for me watching religious programming on TV is rare). It kind of helped bring the last few years into perspective and gave me an idea the kind of church that I am looking for. I know its not much, but its a start. Thank you guys for all of the kind emails and kind words.
As for you Feisty, Wrong Place, Wrong Time. :rolleyes:

[John Lawrence]

Feisty, look at your first post, a ton of false information.

"you do not need to be in Church to be in contact with God, since He is everywhere, all around you, I am afraid that you are going to be very disapointed yet again"

Yes he is everywhere, his love is so deep you cannot go under it, his love is so wide you cannot go around it and same with trying to go over it, you just can't get by gods love. He has done so much for us it's unbelivable, I'm sorry you have bad experences with churches in the past, but it was one church, maybe a few others, but not all are bad, you just find one that fits your wants and needs if it means that much for you. Just think he created you so why not love him and honor him in return? To honor him and you need to show him that you care, and the best way I think is to try and grow in him. To grow you need to go to church and build fellowship, friendship, and eventualy kinship with a few people. You cannot tell me that your a christian and not go to church, it's just not possible, god wants us to be connected through church. From what it sounds like, you just gave up, if you put an effort into it then you will make connections and build friendships, then in return, have people there for you to encourage and help through tuff times. It's like friendships, your not going to get any if you just stand there and wait for them, you need to be agressive and go after them....

" Church is a game, if you do not play by ther rules, you are not wanted, nor are you welcome."
"if you cannot give money on a regular basis, you find yourself eased out..."

Like I said above....You need to try and connect, then you will be welcome, noone knows if you give and offering or not, it's dollar bills and it shouldn't be about if you give or not, and from what it sounds like, when and if you did, it was fully to get something out of it. Offering is just to help the church stay alive and open.
Thoes are just your experences with a church, many people have them, I've had them and I'm only 16, your going to have them, some churches loose focus on what it's about and get dissconnected, but not all churches are like that, please keep your comments that are thrashing the religion that alot of us follow. Yet again, I'm sorry that in your past you had bad experences, I hope and pray that you will find it in you to find a church you will like and enjoy and maybe rejoin and rededicate your life to him, and furthur become a brother of mine in christ.
He loves you and so do I, if you want to talk my e-mail is JohnJohn51688@hotmail.com

WRO, I'm glad that your looking fruthur into finding a church. It sounds like your looking for something laid back and comfortable, right? Well I'll talk to some people and try and refer a good church to you, around the Salem area, I go to Dayspring, it's laid back and fun, our worship teams a band and not a choir, and they're fun... So if you wanna check that out feel free. Then Salem Evangelical in Salem I hear is really good, but not sure how they are, laidback wise....good luck dude.......God loves you, and were all here for you if you have any questions.....John

[feisty's wife]

Hi, John Lawrence, it must be nice to be so young, and to have ALL the answers, I was the same way one time. You know, a great man one time said"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance"...that man was A. Einstein...have you, or anyone else in this forum, ever investigated any of the things I talk about? I think not, probably just shout"Its the Devil", when you might hear something which might be contrary to your particular paradigm. Walk a few more miles before you begin to "rebuke" someone with Biblical beleifs that are not even yours, but have been spoonfed to you for the vast sum of 16yrs. Have a nice day. :rolleyes:

[CATCH AND EAT]

Best thing to do is ignore a person such as feisty. :hoboy: :nerd:

[DAB]

WR outlaw
:yay: :wave: :dance: :bearhug:
DAB

[Troutnut]

I would urge you not to.

You can be a good, moral person without buying into religion. There's a sense of fairness in everyone that tells us what's right and what's wrong, and it's got nothing to do with a tablet of intimidating commandments thrown out of the sky a couple thousand years ago.

Faith is by definition maintaining that something is more likely to be true than the available evidence suggests. In other words, it's a lie about the odds. If you have faith that there's definitely a God when as best you can tell the evidence points to there only maybe or probably being a God, then you're lying to yourself about the odds, and I think that's wrong.

The fact is that the Universe came into being via assorted natural physical processes, which are getting closer and closer to being understood thanks to the work of geniuses whose intelligence neither you nor I can even begin to comprehend. You have to start out looking at the world without a bias toward any given answer, and look cautiously at the evidence, always keeping in mind how much you do or do not know, and how confidently you do or do not know it. No such objective examination of the evidence could possibly lead anyone to the conclusion that the world came into being in some fairytale Adam & Eve 7 days yadda yadda yadda. That's just so unbelievably far from reality that if it hadn't been an acceptable thing to believe for so long, it'd get somebody thrown in an insane asylum today.

It's time for society as a whole--not just scientists--to mature and move beyond the myths of the last several thousand years. Physics has finally given us the capacity to seek real answers to profound questions, answers that are good because they're likely to actually be true, not because they're pleasant to believe. Not all the answers are known yet, and that's okay--it's more satisfying to understand one small fraction of the truth than to have complete knowledge of every detail of some wild delusion.

Society will only be really advanced when faith has been phased out as a way of finding answers, and when people do the right thing because they've thought about it and understood why it's right, not because they've been threatened with fiery torture if they misbehave. Faith is, in fact, the greatest danger facing society, because when people have faith they're under the control of the people who dictate that faith to them.

Very luckily in the United States today faith is generally used to encourage people to be good, but that hasn't always been the case here (as when it's used by radicals like Falwell or the KKK to encourage racism and bigotry) and it isn't the case elsewhere in the world. 9-11 happened because people had faith in what Islamic radicals told them, because those radicals had faith in what they'd been told, all the way up to some nutjob who decided everyone but them needed to die. They weren't necessarily born bad people, but their willingness to accept what they were told on faith alone allowed them to be shaped into delusional tools of destruction. Any faith, whether in something good or bad, takes away part of your independence and makes you to some extent a tool of the people dictating your faith to you, and that's very dangerous.

We need to really discourage religion in all forms, and encourage morality and ethics independent of faith. The first step is to understand that it's okay to say, "I don't know," about big questions--to be honest with yourself about what you do and don't know. Be smart enough to be a good person without the threat of a fictional hell hanging over your head or being bribed with a fictional heaven. Belief in those silly things is the easy way out. Don't stoop to that--keep your standards of evidence high and stay honest about what you do and don't know, and you'll end up more fulfilled in the end.

[Chromaflage]

Troutnut, I find that your outlook on religion and faith quite disturbing. Especially when "morality" is based on religious tenets, and is in no way anthropegenic.


You can be a good, moral person without buying into religion.

True, but what does that get you? What defines good and moral? If it's base on societal acceptance, would murder be considered moral if the majority of society condones it?


There's a sense of fairness in everyone that tells us what's right and what's wrong, and it's got nothing to do with a tablet of intimidating commandments thrown out of the sky a couple thousand years ago.

Then where does this "sense" of morality come from. is it something physiological, physical, tangeable that we can identify? Why are humans the only creatures with this "sense" ? Ancient scriptures tell us that God, yes God, will write His law on man's heart. So the fact that you recognize that we do have "sense" about this, indicates that it is from God and is even for those who refuse to acknoledge His existence. Without this "sense" the human race would not have lasted as long as it has.


Faith is by definition maintaining that something is more likely to be true than the available evidence suggests.

And that's why they call it "faith." However, there is more evidence that God does exist than what would support the contrary.


In other words, it's a lie about the odds. If you have faith that there's definitely a God when as best you can tell the evidence points to there only maybe or probably being a God, then you're lying to yourself about the odds, and I think that's wrong.

Ok, then, considering the universe in its entirety, what are the odds that the earth and its inhabitants were formed by accident? Former Atheist and Physicist Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D., and author of "The Creator and The Cosmos" examines this in detail and concludes that there is a much greater greater probably of there being a god than the probability of the earth and human race existing without one.


No such objective examination of the evidence could possibly lead anyone to the conclusion that the world came into being in some fairytale Adam & Eve 7 days yadda yadda yadda.

So what's the alternative theory here? By "objective" do you mean without considering religion or faith? If so, it isn't truly objective. Objective examination would include ALL possibilities, including those founded in religion and faith.


It's time for society as a whole--not just scientists--to mature and move beyond the myths of the last several thousand years.

Again, how are you defining "mature." Some say that "mature" might mean taking into account supernatural factors that we may never comprehend. It is also presumptiuous to assume that all "scientists" discount religious or supernaturals factors when examining our world. Actually, there are likely more scientists who acknowledge the existstence of God that do not.


Physics has finally given us the capacity to seek real answers to profound questions, answers that are good because they're likely to actually be true, not because they're pleasant to believe.

So, what can physics do for us beyond death? Are we any closer to knowing the answer to this today than we were 10,000 years ago? Has science been able to determine what happens to us and our consiousness after our bodies cease to function? Nope!


Not all the answers are known yet, and that's okay--it's more satisfying to understand one small fraction of the truth than to have complete knowledge of every detail of some wild delusion.

While this may be true, of what use is it? All the answers will never be known. With all the medical research, scientific studies and technology available to date, we still do not know why one hear cell can beat on its own without electrical stimulation from our nervous system.


Faith is, in fact, the greatest danger facing society, because when people have faith they're under the control of the people who dictate that faith to them.

Actually, faith is the reason society exists today. Without it, there would be no sense of right and wrong and anarchy would have destroyed the human race long ago. "Dictate faith" - that's an interesting term. As you earlier defined faith, it has nothing to do with a forced or coereced response. One religion may demand that someone behave in a certain way, but no one can be force to have faith in something. That's by choice and choice alone.


Any faith, whether in something good or bad, takes away part of your independence and makes you to some extent a tool of the people dictating your faith to you, and that's very dangerous.

Actually, faith gives people hope. People exercise independence by having faith. Faith becomes part of one's character and is a good thing for society.



The first step is to understand that it's okay to say, "I don't know," about big questions--to be honest with yourself about what you do and don't know.

So, why can't the same be said about God and faith? So, what you're saying is that you would rather have everyone have FAITH in science - even in those things that are not known and understood. Isn't this a contradiction?



Be smart enough to be a good person without the threat of a fictional hell hanging over your head or being bribed with a fictional heaven. Belief in those silly things is the easy way out. Don't stoop to that--keep your standards of evidence high and stay honest about what you do and don't know, and you'll end up more fulfilled in the end.

Earthly fulfillment? Again, what does this gain anyone after death? So what do you suppose happens to us after death? Are we just gone, never to exist again in any manner of concsiousness? If that's the case, the only thing that matters is self fulfillment. Get all you can for yourself. Make yourself as happy as you can while you're alive. Oh, but only within the confines of morality and goodness - which we have a "sense" for, which comes from......????

I'll pray for you, Troutnut. God loves even those who do not believe in Him and he wishes for all to spend eternity with Him - believe it or not...

Happy Easter.

ORS

[Troutnut]

True, but what does that get you? What defines good and moral?



Morality apart from religion is based on one common sense principle: Try to be fair and nice when you can--don't harm others unless you have to. Every positive teaching of any religion can be simplified to that one common sense concept.


If it's base on societal acceptance, would murder be considered moral if the majority of society condones it?



Considered by whom?

Independent-thinking people with a sense of fairness, of niceness, would not condone murder even if they were the only person in their society to feel that way. Within certain societies--say, Al Qaeda, murder is considered moral because of misplaced faith. That's why faith is so dangerous. People abandon simple human conscience about right and wrong in favor of a code of right and wrong they've been instructed to obey--and because of faith they follow that code, whether good or evil. In their case, it's evil. In most cases in the United States, people hold faith in good things, but it's still dangerous that they believe those good things because they have faith that they're right, rather than because they understand why they're right--why they logically follow from the principle that it's good to be fair and nice.


Why are humans the only creatures with this "sense" ? Ancient scriptures tell us that God, yes God, will write His law on man's heart. So the fact that you recognize that we do have "sense" about this, indicates that it is from God and is even for those who refuse to acknoledge His existence.



We're not. The "sense" we're talking about is compassion, and it's clearly observed to a lesser extent in many other advanced mammals--chimps, gorillas, dolphins, etc. Many of them are, in fact, less warlike and murderous than humans. And keep in mind that much of that human murdering has been carried out in the name of faith in God.

And recognition that compassion exists does not somehow logically lead to the conclusion that it comes from God just because ancient scriptures it does. It's very viable to suggest that advanced social creatures such as humans evolved a sense that it's good to be nice and get along with one another as a mechanism to promote close-knit societies that work well together--they'd have an evolutionary advantage over societies with a lot of infighting and no instinctual fairness or niceness.


And that's why they call it "faith." However, there is more evidence that God does exist than what would support the contrary.



There's no evidence that any sort of supernatural being exists outside writings in 2,000 year old books! Be realistic, look at it objectively--don't look at it from the standpoint of trying to confirm what you've believed all your life, but from the standpoint of somebody looking anew at the Universe, cautiously, with high standards of evidence, and trying to figure out the most likely way that it all came about.


Former Atheist and Physicist Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D., and author of "The Creator and The Cosmos" examines this in detail and concludes that there is a much greater greater probably of there being a god than the probability of the earth and human race existing without one.



You can find a single PhD to back up almost any goofy idea. Look at the thoughts of the top physicists, or the majority of good physicists--they're overwhelmingly atheists, and they're also good, moral people. You cling to the assertions of that one credentialed expert and totally ignore the near-consensus among even better-credentialed experts. I know something about this, too--I've studied astrophysics/cosmology for 3 years at Cornell University, under some of the smartest people in the world.


So what's the alternative theory here? By "objective" do you mean without considering religion or faith? If so, it isn't truly objective. Objective examination would include ALL possibilities, including those founded in religion and faith.



No. Objective means that you ignore faith in your investigation; if your eventual conclusion happens to coincide with the one others arrived at by faith, then so be it, but it's flawed to use faith as a method to get to your conclusion. If a detective or a judge were looking objectively at a court case, would you want them to look at faith for the answer, or would you rather they go with forensics? If you get sick and the doctor's telling you what medicine to take to feel better, what would you suggest they use to make that choice--faith, or biochemistry? When people are investigating how the universe came into being, what's the most likely way to get the correct answer--faith, or physics?

If you've got to take a leap of faith to further your argument, that means you don't know. It's better to acknowledge that you don't know than to continue with absolute confidence in a wild guess because of faith. It's okay to say "I don't know." It's wrong to say "I do know," when you really don't. That's what faith is.


Some say that "mature" might mean taking into account supernatural factors that we may never comprehend.



If you can't comprehend them, how in the heck can you take them into account? If the existence of a thing can't be confirmed independetly, can't be in any way measured, can't stand up to any sort of investigation--how can you claim to know anything about it? If something can be known, comprehended, understood, then a cautious, scientific approach is the way to do it.

If something can't be known, comprehended, or understood--then you can't presume to know it! But that's exactly what faith is--claiming to know the unknowable!!!


So, what can physics do for us beyond death? Are we any closer to knowing the answer to this today than we were 10,000 years ago? Has science been able to determine what happens to us and our consiousness after our bodies cease to function? Nope!



The fact that you don't like the answer doesn't mean it isn't there. We know that thoughts are electrical signals bouncing around in our neurons, and that personalities can be fundamentally altered by physical changes to brain matter. Thoughts can be affected by electrical stimuli at various contact points on the brain. Put two and two together here--when the electrical signals stop, the thoughts stop. Sorry, bud, but as much as we'd like to believe otherwise, it's clear there's no mechanism for an afterlife.

People with faith like to contend that it must be true because you can't technically completely disprove it. But it's a fundamentally disprovable idea. It's been all but fundamentally disproven, and fundamentally disproving it isn't even theoretically possible.

I propose to you a notion equally impossible to disprove: there is a fire-breathing dragon standing on your head. Sure, you don't see him. Of course not, silly--he's invisible. Weightless, too. And he breathes a special sort of fire the same temperature as the air so it doesn't glow. And on and on and on with the qualifications--you can come up with any goofy idea that's impossible to disprove. That doesn't mean it's a valid description of reality. The afterlife, I'm afraid, is one such idea.


While this may be true, of what use is it? All the answers will never be known.



It's of vital use--it's the fundamental guiding principle you've got to follow to be likely to come to some answers that are actually true. You seem to define "useful" as providing confidence in answers to things that aren't actually known. That's not right! If you don't know something, you don't know it, end of story, don't just give up because it's hard and claim to know it without actually figuring out why your notion's correct. Faith is presuming to know that which you don't.


Actually, faith is the reason society exists today. Without it, there would be no sense of right and wrong and anarchy would have destroyed the human race long ago.



As I described above, people feel compassion whether they've got faith or not--it's a trait of the way we think, evolved because social animals that treat each other well and stick up for each other have a better chance of survival. Faith has actually been used to strip people of that compassion as often as it's been used to reinforce it--just look at the Crusades, Al Qaeda, and thousands of other incedents throughout history.


As you earlier defined faith, it has nothing to do with a forced or coereced response. One religion may demand that someone behave in a certain way, but no one can be force to have faith in something. That's by choice and choice alone.



Force, no. Coerce, yes. Most people are coerced into accepting whatever faith prevails in their region. Otherwise, you'd see the same ratio of Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Buddhists/Jews/Atheists/everything else in every corner of the world. But you don't see that. You see people raised to believe whatever faith prevails in their area from a very young age. The ideas of religion like Santa Claus are planted in their heads while they're still far too young to think for themselves, and by the time they're old enough to think for themselves, the ideas are so much a part of them that many can't comprehend that the truth could be anything else. People in opposite corners of the world feel sure, based on faith, that they've got it exactly right--they can't all be right, but they've all got the same level of delusional absolute confidence.


Actually, faith gives people hope. People exercise independence by having faith. Faith becomes part of one's character and is a good thing for society.



I've got hope. I don't have faith. Thus, it's possible to have hope without faith. Faith may make it easier to have hope, but that only means it's a shortcut, an easy way around thinking for yourself, to get to the desired end result without doing the mental work you really need to get there.


So, why can't the same be said about God and faith? So, what you're saying is that you would rather have everyone have FAITH in science - even in those things that are not known and understood. Isn't this a contradiction?



No. Science asks no faith of anyone. It asks that people start out acknowledging that they don't know, and lays out a way of exploring the world with repeatable, confirmable experiments and observations, asking people to always challenge the validity of the methods and conclusions, always prove for ways to come up with something more likely to be correct. In science, you can't just declare that you know--you have to explain why and show your evidence. People accept ideas only to the degree that the evidence merits, and beyond that they admit that they don't know, and try to work to figure it out.

Nobody asks you to take the Big Bang on faith. You can buy any number of advanced physics textbooks, read any number of advanced physics papers, and see the case for it, the evidence, every shred of every detail of it, laid out clearly, and it's all been scrutinized by a thousand different geniuses for any flaw in the logic. People don't just toss arbitrary conjecture around, they come up with ideas and test and test and test. The only reason that most people can't do this is that they're too lazy to do the work and not smart enough to understand the math (I've done a lot of it--it's ******* crazy math).


Earthly fulfillment? Again, what does this gain anyone after death? So what do you suppose happens to us after death? Are we just gone, never to exist again in any manner of concsiousness? If that's the case, the only thing that matters is self fulfillment. Get all you can for yourself. Make yourself as happy as you can while you're alive.



Earthly fulfillment is not all about ice cream and smooching. Or even fishing. Well, maybe fishing. But not the other stuff. We've evolved to feel good about helping other people. Helping fulfill others has evolved as one aspect of self fulfillment for most people. Living for earthly fulfillment of that sort--the kind you get in part by helping others--isn't all that bad, now is it?


I'll pray for you, Troutnut.



Mention steelhead for me, would you? Tell God to make the steelhead bite!

[Chromaflage]

Morality apart from religion is based on one common sense principle: Try to be fair and nice when you can--don't harm others unless you have to. Every positive teaching of any religion can be simplified to that one common sense concept.

So, what makes something common sense? Who deterines which senses are common? This is a circular argument - which came first, common sense or religious teaching?


Considered by whom?

Society. Is then, the only reason to behave morally avoidance of punishment? Or conscience? Or both? If conscience, how do we know what is the appropriate or "right" way to feel?


Independent-thinking people with a sense of fairness, of niceness, would not condone murder even if they were the only person in their society to feel that way.

Why not? And who decides who those people are? Who defines fairness and goodness?



Within certain societies--say, Al Qaeda, murder is considered moral because of misplaced faith. That's why faith is so dangerous.

Al Qaeda is not a religion - it is a group of violent extrimists who hate the western way of life. They do, however, take literally the Quran that indicates that the only way they can assure their place with Allah is to saccrifice themselves FOR Allah by killing Jews and Christians. Allah not being the same god as the Judeau-Christian God. No where in the Bible does it instruct Christians to kill or harm others. In fact, quite the opposite. Christ taught to love your neighbors as you love yourself; treat people the way you want to be treated; honor your family; love other people including your enemies....you know, real dangerous stuff :wink:



We're not. The "sense" we're talking about is compassion, and it's clearly observed to a lesser extent in many other advanced mammals--chimps, gorillas, dolphins, etc.

Using your methodology, show me scientific proof that compassion is what is being observed. How would you measure and test compassion in animals? Who's to say that what we perceive as compassion is only instinctive reaction to their environment or circumstance? As humans, we tend to humanize animals and expect them to respond as we do, esecially when the observer finds the animal's appearance is appealing.


It's very viable to suggest that advanced social creatures such as humans evolved a sense that it's good to be nice and get along with one another as a mechanism to promote close-knit societies that work well together--they'd have an evolutionary advantage over societies with a lot of infighting and no instinctual fairness or niceness.

Again, you're asserting your faith in a theory, not even based on any scientific evidence. This is another theory you propose which can not be tested, thus it is faith.


There's no evidence that any sort of supernatural being exists outside writings in 2,000 year old books!

Dude! Take a look around you! Do you really think that this planet occurred by accident? You really do not think that a deisgner had no part in the earth's existence?



You can find a single PhD to back up almost any goofy idea. Look at the thoughts of the top physicists, or the majority of good physicists--they're overwhelmingly atheists, and they're also good, moral people.

you apparently are not familiar with Dr. Ross. But, yes I agree, you can find single Ph.D. to support goofey ideas. I'll have you know that there are many Ph.D.s in many fields who believe in the existence of God. So, are the "top" physicists, then, those who ascribe only to those positions you find favorable? I'd sure like to see some stats on the number of "top" good, moral physicists who are atheists. This goes back to your coercion argument - if opinions of those who authored your favorite text books and your Cornell college professors have provided you with the basis of your world view, couldn't it be concluded that you have been coerced to view the world the same way as they do?


When people are investigating how the universe came into being, what's the most likely way to get the correct answer--faith, or physics?

Well, physics can certainly contribute to our understnading of the functioning of the universe. But why is it so outlandish to presume that those principles that we have discovered, and thos that have not yet been discovere, were designed? If we have people here on this earth that are smart enough to discover these principles, wouldn't it be reasonble to think that somewhere in the universe, there is someone even smarter, who actually created these principles?


If you've got to take a leap of faith to further your argument, that means you don't know. It's better to acknowledge that you don't know than to continue with absolute confidence in a wild guess because of faith. It's okay to say "I don't know." It's wrong to say "I do know," when you really don't. That's what faith is.

So, if I say that "I know" that there is a God, I'm lying to you? Even though I can't hold him in my hand and say "see, here he is," doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Can you pinpoint in space and time the position of an electron about the nucleus of an atom? No, it is scientifically impossible - we can only attempt to predict. Therefore, there is an element of faith, as we "know" it's there somewhere, but we just can't show exactly.


If you can't comprehend them, how in the heck can you take them into account? If the existence of a thing can't be confirmed independetly, can't be in any way measured, can't stand up to any sort of investigation--how can you claim to know anything about it?

this kind of arrogantly assumes that we have the capability of scientifically confirming the existence of all things, which we do not.


The fact that you don't like the answer doesn't mean it isn't there.

I could say the same thing about God. Just because you don't like the idea of His existence, it doesn't mean he doesn't exist.


Sorry, bud, but as much as we'd like to believe otherwise, it's clear there's no mechanism for an afterlife.

Again, just because we do not have a scentific basis to test this or just because you don't like the idea, iit doesn't mean it doesn't exist.


People with faith like to contend that it must be true because you can't technically completely disprove it. But it's a fundamentally disprovable idea. It's been all but fundamentally disproven, and fundamentally disproving it isn't even theoretically possible.

I'd ask how? By what methods have the existence of God been fundamentally disproven?


I propose to you a notion equally impossible to disprove: there is a fire-breathing dragon standing on your head. Sure, you don't see him. Of course not, silly--he's invisible. Weightless, too. And he breathes a special sort of fire the same temperature as the air so it doesn't glow. And on and on and on with the qualifications--you can come up with any goofy idea that's impossible to disprove. That doesn't mean it's a valid description of reality. The afterlife, I'm afraid, is one such idea.

This would require a basis for the assumption of the existence of the dragon. There is virtually no reason to think that an invisible dragon would be sitting on my head. Besides, what difference would it make. There is however, basis to assume that God exists and that there is an afterlife. And, yes, it involves historical documentation. If we are to discount historical documentation when examining religion, why not do the same for science?


If you don't know something, you don't know it, end of story, don't just give up because it's hard and claim to know it without actually figuring out why your notion's correct. Faith is presuming to know that which you don't.

And there is much of this that applies to scientific "theory" - there are many scientific theories that are just that, but yet they are held as principles. So, why does science have exclusivity on the concept of theory? Look at evolution - there are many gaps in Darwinian theory that are glossed over for the sake of propoting his theories as factual.


As I described above, people feel compassion whether they've got faith or not--it's a trait of the way we think, evolved because social animals that treat each other well and stick up for each other have a better chance of survival.

Now we're talking about emotional evolution, which is yet another theory that can not be tested. Who's to say that humans are more or less compassionate now than they were thousands of years ago? Further, not all people feel compassionate or feel the same degree of compassion. This would lead me to believe that compasion is taught rather than inherent to the human race.


Faith has actually been used to strip people of that compassion as often as it's been used to reinforce it--just look at the Crusades, Al Qaeda, and thousands of other incedents throughout history.

Here's the rub - people refer to the Crusades as the norm for Christianity during that time. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The people involved in the Crusades chose to do act on their own behalf in the name of God and Christianity. To say that those people epitomize Chrisitanity is blatantly inaccurate. Christian teaching is totally contrary to the actions of a few radicals - hmmm....much like Al Qaeda. I would not make the leap to say that members of Al Qaeda epitomize muslims either.


Force, no. Coerce, yes. Most people are coerced into accepting whatever faith prevails in their region. You see people raised to believe whatever faith prevails in their area from a very young age. The ideas of religion like Santa Claus are planted in their heads while they're still far too young to think for themselves, and by the time they're old enough to think for themselves, the ideas are so much a part of them that many can't comprehend that the truth could be anything else.

But there comes a time in everyone's life when they decide to think and act for themselves. Not all children raised in Christian families grow up to be Christians. Not all atheists who grow up in atheist families grow up that way either.


I've got hope. I don't have faith.

Hope in what I might ask? And I still contend that you do have faith - you have indicated that you have faith in science. You are relying on science to defint your world view. Not all science is 100% concrete, so there is an element of faith.


Science asks no faith of anyone. It asks that people start out acknowledging that they don't know, and lays out a way of exploring the world with repeatable, confirmable experiments and observations, asking people to always challenge the validity of the methods and conclusions, always prove for ways to come up with something more likely to be correct.

So, you do have faith that will provide the answer you are looking for, whether proving or disproving a hypothesis.


Nobody asks you to take the Big Bang on faith. You can buy any number of advanced physics textbooks, read any number of advanced physics papers, and see the case for it, the evidence, every shred of every detail of it, laid out clearly, and it's all been scrutinized by a thousand different geniuses for any flaw in the logic. People don't just toss arbitrary conjecture around, they come up with ideas and test and test and test.

So, tell me, how has teh Big Bang theory been tested? And, btw - what was the initiating source?


Earthly fulfillment is not all about ice cream and smooching. Or even fishing. Well, maybe fishing. But not the other stuff. We've evolved to feel good about helping other people. Helping fulfill others has evolved as one aspect of self fulfillment for most people. Living for earthly fulfillment of that sort--the kind you get in part by helping others--isn't all that bad, now is it?

Well if this was true, why are there so many impoverished people in the world? helping people is good - for some. Not all agree. Not all people feel good about helping others. In fact, people are inherently selfish and tend to look after themselves before others.


Mention steelhead for me, would you? Tell God to make the steelhead bite!

So, if I asked God to make the steelhead bite and you caught steelhead, your response would be....? :wink:

ORS

[DAB]

Troutnut
Welcome to Anglers Chapel. Something is very puzzling, if you are so dead set against religion why are you reading and replying to posts here on anglers chapel. IMHO you are either a seeker or a trouble maker, but since you take the time to read and post on anglers chapel I would put you in the category of a seeker, and it doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not, because if you were not seeking you would not be reading or posting.
You see Troutnut 26 years ago I would have been spouting the type of stuff that you are spouting. But 26 years ago on EASTER SUNDAY I was invited to go to church here in Sandy . Now to lay some back ground to all of this. The Wife and I were real heavy into the black powder shooting sport , target shooting in a completive mode, hunting ect., ect., we traveled all over Oregon to shooting matches about every weekend Rain or shine, and while doing this I was doing a lot of drinking, and I was not a very good person, to myself, my Lovely Wife, and to my Daughter or to any one else as far as that goes when I got to drinking. I did many things that a MORAL person would not do or be proud of or would want others to know about.
Well on that Sunday there was a black powder shooting match that I wanted to attend in the worst way.
Sunday came and I got my shooting gear together and ask my wife if she was going with me, she said “NO” I am going to church. I told her I was going to the shooting match with her or without her with a few cuss words mixed in to get my point across, well off to the shooting range I went, got there and for some unknown reason I did not get my gear and rifle out I just stood around and talked . When the match was about to start I looked at my watch and saw I had just enough time to make it to church, now I know that I would rather shoot any day than go to some dumb church, but for some reason that I did not under stand at the time. Off to church I went got there just in time for the services to start went in and sat down in the back. A few songs were sung and then the preacher got up to speak , I am here to tell you Troutnut it was as if the preacher was talking directly to me and no one else, He introduced me to Jesus Christ that day and my life has not been the same from that day on. I am now a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ might not be the best servant, but on that wonderful day I came to have a personal relationship with My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Troutnut it is not about going to church or getting religion it is about having a personal relationship with the maker of the universe and that is Jesus Christ.
Now you could talk your stuff till you are blue in the face ,to me and you will not change my mind not one bit ,I know what I once was and what I am now and I am NEVER GOING BACK to that old life of sin and shame. I might be sounding like I am perfect now, but I am by no means perfect, I still sin but sin does not rule my life as it once did.
I received a free gift that Sunday and it is called ETERNAL LIFE .
Truotnut you can have the same free gift ,all you have to do is ask God to forgive you of your trespasses and he will forgive you and give you the free gift of eternal life, and it is because Christ died for you on a cruel Roman Cross, was buried, and arose, alive from the grave on the third day that you may have life, and the thing is Christ would have died for you even if you were the only person on earth.
I will be praying that the HOLY SPIRIT will soften your heart.
DAB

[Troutnut]

So, what makes something common sense? Who deterines which senses are common?



Human instinct. If you're running along and you get to a tree, it's common sense to go around it, not run smack into it. If you're running along and you get to a person, it's common sense not to maim them. As with all things, some people lack that common sense, but in general the "golden rule" that you should treat others as you'd have them treat you is a part of human instinct which to some degree became a characteristic of the moral code of hundreds of seperate, independent human societies as they developed on Earth.


Is then, the only reason to behave morally avoidance of punishment? Or conscience? Or both? If conscience, how do we know what is the appropriate or "right" way to feel?



Conscience. Avoidance of punishment, combined with the seeking of unearthly rewards, is the main reason given by religion to behave morally. Conscience--part instinct, part developed in our upbringing--guides us to do what's right independent of risk and reward. As always, some things cause people to override their conscience--often, that thing is religion.


Why not? And who decides who those people are? Who defines fairness and goodness?



Fairness is quite an objective thing involving people being treated equally. And of course nothing's entirely fair. But it's an easy enough ideal to define. Goodness can be easily defined as trying to make others happy and avoid hurting them. Again, that's a tendency which evolved as a part of human behavior beneficial to the survival of the species, and it's not present in everyone, but most societies independent of religion or connection have that concept.


Christ taught to love your neighbors as you love yourself; treat people the way you want to be treated; honor your family; love other people including your enemies....you know, real dangerous stuff



He also taught people to have faith--that it was a virtue to be willing to believe something because somebody says so, without evidence. This opens the door for people to claim, "I'm a carrier of the word of God, He speaks through me, do as I say, no matter what it is, or God will punish you!" In the past, that has been abused to cause mainstream Christians to do things just as absurd as what Al Qaeda's doing right now--a particular example being the Crusades. At the moment in the world, Christianity is being used to do good, just as most Islam is used to do good, but Al Qaeda demonstrates that when people of faith fall into the wrong hands they can be manipulated to do horrible, horrible things in what they perceive to be the word of God. Their instinctual sense of right and wrong is overriden by their religious sense of right and wrong, which was twisted and mangled by their corrupt religious leaders, and it made them into monsters.


Using your methodology, show me scientific proof that compassion is what is being observed. How would you measure and test compassion in animals? Who's to say that what we perceive as compassion is only instinctive reaction to their environment or circumstance? As humans, we tend to humanize animals and expect them to respond as we do, esecially when the observer finds the animal's appearance is appealing.



For a lot of animals that's the case--people who anthropomorphize cows, chickens, fish, etc, are just silly. But large-brained social animals like chimpanzees and dolphins show the same behaviors which might be associated with compassion as humans do. Dolphins are actually quite a bit less likely to run around killing each other than humans are. Then again, they get to spend their whole lives fishing. I think if all humans did that, we'd be a much more peaceful species, too.


Again, you're asserting your faith in a theory, not even based on any scientific evidence. This is another theory you propose which can not be tested, thus it is faith.



Read up on what "theory" actually means. But yes, of course faith isn't based on reality. Here, let me suggest an experiment: Go to a cliff. Have faith that if you walk off the edge, you won't fall. Try it. (If you're smart, you won't pick a very tall cliff.) Odds are good you'll fall. The only evidence we have to the contrary comes from Bugs Bunny, and I don't know if Looney Toons citations are going to get you published in Nature anytime soon.


Dude! Take a look around you! Do you really think that this planet occurred by accident? You really do not think that a deisgner had no part in the earth's existence?



Yes. The Universe consists of a billion galaxies, each with a billion stars, most with at least a few planets. Keep in mind that a billion is a thousand million, a thousand thousand thousand. That means there are several thousand thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of planets out there. Life as we know it requires ingredients which astronomy has taught us are pretty common elsewhere in the Universe--Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, a few other odds and ends, and the lucky coincidence for simple self-replicating molecules to get started in a primordial froth of trillions of random chemical reactions in each of billions of years. The size and time scales involved are staggering, and while the development of complex life is an impressive thing, it's probably an inevitable result of the rules of chemistry and physics, the conditions of this Universe. It need not be the work of some sentient designer.


I'll have you know that there are many Ph.D.s in many fields who believe in the existence of God.



And not many of them have much expertise in the study of the origin of the Universe. For that, look to people with PhDs in theoretical physics, astronomy, astrophysics, or cosmology. These are people who study that phenomenon. Why should anyone else be an expert on this? These people don't presume to be experts in economics or sociology or anything else, but it's funny that everybody and his dog and his preacher and his friend with the sociology PhD presumes to be an expert in the origins of the universe, even if what they say is based only on faith and directly contradicts the findings of the people who've actually taken the time and effort to look at the Universe carefully and try to really figure it out.


This goes back to your coercion argument - if opinions of those who authored your favorite text books and your Cornell college professors have provided you with the basis of your world view, couldn't it be concluded that you have been coerced to view the world the same way as they do?



Here's the key difference between developing academically in a religious community and developing in a rigorous physics community.

In physics, we're constantly challenged to probe for problems in what we're being taught. We're constantly informed of the limitations of a given equation, or a given theory, and of the tentative ideas being studied to potentially explain various inconsistencies. There's constant encouragement to scrutinize every aspect of everything we learn--to understand the experimental evidence and the logical mathematical conclusions from the ground up.

That's the fundamental difference between looking at the world via science and looking at it via faith. Faith is just skipping straight to the answer and pretending you know it's right, without rigorously examining the evidence. Science means starting out assuming virtually nothing and testing everything you come up with every step of the way, always doubting and looking for better ideas. It's fundamentally a mechanism for being careful to get it right.

Faith has no mechanism to make sure you're right. You just guess and hope. And everybody guesses and hopes something different! Who can realistically expect that to actually give the correct answer?


But why is it so outlandish to presume that those principles that we have discovered, and thos that have not yet been discovere, were designed? If we have people here on this earth that are smart enough to discover these principles, wouldn't it be reasonble to think that somewhere in the universe, there is someone even smarter, who actually created these principles?



It's outlandish because there's no sound evidence of a designer, and it would be an incredibly complex and unlikely new proposition to assume an intelligent designer--where does the designer come from? How does it work? What mechanisms are there in place that allow this designer to create these rules? What are the rules of where this designer works? You've got to assume the existence of all sorts of new complex and unlikely things just to fit a fanciful whim that somebody conscious designed all this.


So, if I say that "I know" that there is a God, I'm lying to you? Even though I can't hold him in my hand and say "see, here he is," doesn't mean he doesn't exist.



If I say that I know that there is an invisible weightless fire breathing dragon standing on your head, am I lying to you? Your answer to that question is my answer to yours.


this kind of arrogantly assumes that we have the capability of scientifically confirming the existence of all things, which we do not.



No, it doesn't!!! You're missing my whole point. My point isn't that science can confirm everything, but that if science can't theoretically confirm something, then you're stuck not knowing! That's a lot less arrogant than assuming that you can somehow know the answer with certainty without actually having any verifiable evidence or ways to test your idea. If you can't verify it, can't test it, then it's just a guess, and it will always be just a guess, and it's dishonest to insist that it's correct!


I could say the same thing about God. Just because you don't like the idea of His existence, it doesn't mean he doesn't exist.



Are you kidding? You don't think I'd be just thrilled to have an afterlife, to have a kindly being up there watching over everything? It'd be great! I LOVE the idea! But I also love the idea that a billion dollars will fall out of the sky into my lap tomorrow (not in pennies, though). Doesn't mean either wish is likely to come true. The whole appeal of the notion of God is that it's pleasant, not that it's likely to be true.


Again, just because we do not have a scentific basis to test this or just because you don't like the idea, iit doesn't mean it doesn't exist.



But there's also no evidence to suggest that it does. We know that thoughts are electrical impulses in the brain. It would logically follow that when they stop, the thinking stops. Suggesting that the thinking continues when the impulses stop is quite a hefty claim which would require some mighty strong evidence, and there is none. It becomes, again, like the invisible fire-breathing dragon standing on your head: you can't disprove it, but it's not realistic.


This would require a basis for the assumption of the existence of the dragon. There is virtually no reason to think that an invisible dragon would be sitting on my head. Besides, what difference would it make. There is however, basis to assume that God exists and that there is an afterlife. And, yes, it involves historical documentation. If we are to discount historical documentation when examining religion, why not do the same for science?



You CAN do the same for science. That's the beauty of it. You can throw out all scientific findings of the past several hundred years and start out from scratch with the same methods of rigorous experimentation, trying to understand the universe by taking experiments and measurements to rule out some alternatives and narrow the ideas down, and given enough time you'll end up with pretty much the same understanding we've got today.

And a two thousand year old book about frogs falling from the sky and oceans parting is really not the first place I'd look to figure out how the Universe started. :P Seems it might be a bit prone to the kind of exaggeration and mythology known from most writings of that time, wouldn't you say?


And there is much of this that applies to scientific "theory" - there are many scientific theories that are just that, but yet they are held as principles. So, why does science have exclusivity on the concept of theory? Look at evolution - there are many gaps in Darwinian theory that are glossed over for the sake of propoting his theories as factual.



You don't know what "theory" means in the scientific context. It's been widely abused in mainstream culture to refer to any random conjecture about how things happen. In science, you start out with a testable hypothesis. You test it every way you can think of. You present it to other scientists and they test it every way they can. Piles of scientists try to poke holes in your hypothesis, and if it stands up to every test anyone can think of for it, it becomes known as a theory. Scientific theories have withstood an incredible amount of rigorous testing and checking, and even then they're open for people to keep testing, keep fact-checking. There's no such thing as "just a theory." In science, "theory," is saying a LOT about the validity of an idea. Religion is no theory, it's just a wild guess.


Hope in what I might ask? And I still contend that you do have faith - you have indicated that you have faith in science. You are relying on science to defint your world view. Not all science is 100% concrete, so there is an element of faith.



I have hope in lots of things--for example, catching some dang steelhead! :P But I have no faith in science. I accept that I fundamentally don't know things with certainty, and accept each finding of science to precisely the degree that the available evidence seems to suggest. In some cases, that's a very high degree. But there's no faith involved. It's all about assessing the evidence and acknowledging the likely odds. But the fact that a given scientific premise is merely extremely likely to be accurate, rather than definitely accurate, does not suddenly magically mean that any other random guess anybody might have, which hasn't withstood any of the same rigorous testing, might be equally accurate.


So, you do have faith that will provide the answer you are looking for, whether proving or disproving a hypothesis.



No, I don't!!! In many cases it DOESN'T provide an answer. Some questions are hard to answer!! But I'd rather be honest that I don't know than pretend that I do.


So, tell me, how has teh Big Bang theory been tested? And, btw - what was the initiating source?



Oh, geez... where to begin? You might start with Gravitation, by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. Or, if you don't have the background in differential geometry, you'd have to start with a few semesters of calculus and at least one of advanced linear algebra and differential equations... well, I can give you the basic concept. There's an effect called the doppler shift, the characteristic of waves that produces the varying pitches as a train roars toward you compared to when it roars away from you. That characteristic of waves also applies to light, and by studying the light from distant stars and galaxies to determine their velocities we've concluded that the Universe is expanding, not around a central point, but around all points--like a 3D version of a bunch of dots drawn on the surface of a balloon growing apart as you blow the balloon up. The conclusion is that it all started out at the same point--now, that's an extreme oversimplification, but it's the basic idea. If you want the nitty gritty details I'm afraid you've got to do the work, learn the math, to understand them.


So, if I asked God to make the steelhead bite and you caught steelhead, your response would be....?



I'll have to see it to believe it! :P Dang fish!

[Troutnut]

Troutnut it is not about going to church or getting religion it is about having a personal relationship with the maker of the universe and that is Jesus Christ.



I think it's more than a little bit arrogant to assume that in such a vast universe of a billion galaxies of a billion stars, thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of worlds, we've each got the opportunity for a personal relationship with some almighty maker. Heck, I can't even seem to get a personal response from the president, and the USA is way smaller than the Universe! :P

Anyway, I don't drink, I don't do drugs... heck, I don't even curse around other people. And I'm an atheist. Guess that goes against your stereotype... oh well. :P


Something is very puzzling, if you are so dead set against religion why are you reading and replying to posts here on anglers chapel.



Funny you should ask. I was actually just exploring this forum for the first time and not paying any attention to the section titles, just browsing the descriptions quick, and "A place to help each other along the way," sounded like maybe angling advice or something so I clicked it, read the first post, got sucked into replying, etc... only after I got involved in the conversation did I notice the whole board was about religion.

[letsfish]

Great posts guys- I come from a background where I examined everything with the "why's" and "how comes" of Science and
loved the scenerios and answers - so I appreciate Troutnut's zeal for the scientific answer. Science has done so much for mankind and the scientific method has hellped clarifify many things.
ORS you offer reality. Because we don't live in a cosmos were physics and math explain everything. Even the physists are fighting over the quantuam theory. It seems if you take quantum theory for what it says - there are 16, no its 47, no any number of alternative universes. Besides sounds kind of "fringe" of reality, kind of iffy.
Troutman you said
Physics has finally given us the capacity to seek real answers to profound questions, answers that are good because they're likely to actually be true,


likely is not very scientific sounding. It sounds more like "kind of sort of..sometimes". If it is as good as you say it is then it is ablolute truth. Perhaps the problem is not in the answers but questions. Or rather, expecting Physics to give you the correct answer when in reality it cannot answer that question because it is bound by the confines of physics.
Troutnut on this I will agree

We need to really discourage religion in all forms, and encourage morality and ethics independent of faith


I agree because religon is man's corruption of the relationship God seeks to have with us and its
resulting practices often hinder true spirual growth. Religion can restrict the individual expression of faith.
James said
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this : to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
However, I disagree on the grounds of personal choice -something God wants us to do and to have-to choose Him not to be restricted(remember Marxism and Stalanism).Religon also allows for assembly of like minded and the expression of like minded. I can't see discouraging that.

And now it's Easter, I pray someday Troutnut you will know a fraction of the greatness and joy of this day.

[Water Ready]

Nicely Said Letsfish! :angel:
Happy Easter! :bowdown: :angel1:

[CATCH AND EAT]

Sad that when someone reaches out in a simple post of faith that there are those of such negative magnitude that choose to try to muddy the water. :sleep:

[Troutnut]

Because we don't live in a cosmos were physics and math explain everything. Even the physists are fighting over the quantuam theory. It seems if you take quantum theory for what it says - there are 16, no its 47, no any number of alternative universes.



Of course they don't explain everything, yet. Guess what? We don't know everything!

If you don't know something, you should try to figure it out, or be honest about not knowing--not make something up and proclaim that it's right because you can't prove it's not! But that's exactly what religion is.

And quantum theory doesn't necessarily imply alternate universes. It's a possibility that, like many things on the forefront of science, hasn't been possible to investigate thoroughly enough yet to determine if it's right or not. So what do we do here--make up an answer? No! We admit that we don't know, and start doing the hard work to figure it out!


likely is not very scientific sounding.



Wrong! The very core of all scientific investigation is things like "likely" and "maybe" and the understanding that you should always be cautious when seeking answers, always be honest about what you do and do not know and how confidently you do or do not know it.

That's what makes science different from religion. It doesn't proclaim mysteriously to have all the answers; instead it provides a method of verifiable, double-checkable investigation to come up with answers that really hold up to scrutiny, and keeps itself honest about uncertainty and unanswered questions.

I consider it a terrible failure of our educational system that you'd say that "likely" isn't very scientific-sounding. That's a big problem with our schools--teachers don't understand science. They, like you, see it as a set of answers to be tossed out and memorized and parroted back. It's not. Science is a process of careful investigation.


And now it's Easter, I pray someday Troutnut you will know a fraction of the greatness and joy of this day.



I do. Colorful candy! :wink: Happy Easter to you, too... may the Easter Bunny be good to you.


Sad that when someone reaches out in a simple post of faith that there are those of such negative magnitude that choose to try to muddy the water.



Muddy the water? Excuse me, but I'm trying to clarify that the man shouldn't feel forced into faith to find moral and ethical guidance. It's an important point to make.

It's very Christian of you to make that comment, though--you can't really argue against what I've said so you go after my right to say it. Very Christian.

[SKP]

The fact is that the Universe came into being via assorted natural physical processes, which are getting closer and closer to being understood thanks to the work of geniuses whose intelligence neither you nor I can even begin to comprehend. You have to start out looking at the world without a bias toward any given answer, and look cautiously at the evidence, always keeping in mind how much you do or do not know, and how confidently you do or do not know it. No such objective examination of the evidence could possibly lead anyone to the conclusion that the world came into being in some fairytale Adam & Eve 7 days yadda yadda yadda.



It's more impossible to believe "the big bang theory" that the universe by physics blew up, and is now coming together and evolving. Take your watch apart, put all the parts into a plastic container. Shake the container. Now put a firecracker in the container. Pick up all the pieces and the container. Shake what's left of the parts and container now until the parts come back together, and are telling the correct time.

Can't do that, why not? Shake all you want for eternity, it will not come back together and tell time, not matter how hard you try. There is a Creator. Trust in Him, and you will be saved, and have your sins forgiven.

It takes more faith to believe such nonsense of physics and evolution, than to believe the Bible story of Adam and Eve and God's creation. How many gazzilions of cells have been created? And they came together through the laws of physics, boom big bang and we are formed? Now that's not believable. One of the laws of physics is everything goes from order to disorder. You are contradicting that law with the physic nonense.

I suggest you read the book of Genesis, John, and Romans in God's Word. Then read the rest of God's Word.

SKP

[Troutnut]

It's more impossible to believe "the big bang theory" that the universe by physics blew up, and is now coming together and evolving. Take your watch apart, put all the parts into a plastic container. Shake the container. Now put a firecracker in the container. Pick up all the pieces and the container. Shake what's left of the parts and container now until the parts come back together, and are telling the correct time



Please don't be so arrogant as to pretend that you understand the Big Bang theory. Your recollection of some horrible oversimplification of it from a year of high school science or something is not enough to qualify you to actually judge the theory.

Go take several years of college math and physics you'll probably need an IQ of 160+ to really grasp, and then read and make sure you fully understand four or five 500-page books consisting mostly of equations you wouldn't even dream of understanding right now, and then you'll have begun to qualify yourself to criticize the Big Bang theory. Until that point, it's unbelievably arrogant to pretend that you've got the knowledge to judge something which has been so carefuly scrutinized by so many of the most brilliant people in the world, and has been held up to such high standards of experimentation and observation.

Sound hard? Yeah, it is. Understanding the Universe, and doing it right, is hard. They're not easy questions and, as much as you'd find it pleasant, you're not likely to get at the correct answers by randomly guessing.


One of the laws of physics is everything goes from order to disorder. You are contradicting that law with the physic nonense.



Again, don't pretend that you know the laws of physics. You don't. You're trying to apply an oversimplified gradeschool interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics to "refute" the work of brilliant men like Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Do you have any idea how unbelievably naive and arrogant that is?

The first step toward understanding anything about anything is to drop the delusion that you're qualified to refute the findings of expert physicists because of something you vaguely remember from the 10th grade.

[Water Ready]

Please take your theories to someone that cares troutnut. The man that originally posted was looking for something specific. I am sure there is other forums out there, that will argue with you. Please feel free to explore the universe, and find what you are looking for.
Happy Easter
He has Risen!

[Chromaflage]

Troutnut, you have now alientated nearly everyone reading this thread by being condescending. To set yourself so far above everyone else based only on IQ and and your affiliation with an institution from which you may or may not have received a piece of paper to hang on a wall is shallow. If that's all you have to hang your hat on, I do feel sorry for you. You mentioned maturity, early on in this thread. Part of maturity is having the ability to communicate without chest thumping. Another part is knowing when humility may be a more effective tool than pride.

Yes, time to take it somewhere else now. I'm sorry that we are not able to continue our little debate. But since you can't seem to maintain a certain level of decorum about it, I see no sense in continuing.

One final question for you that requires only thought and no reply: With respect to God and Heaven, why are you afraid to say "I don't know?" Perhaps it's because you would have to swallow your pride and concede that they may possibly exist. It's two choices - either you say you know for sure (that would be a lie), or that you don't know, which would mean that it's possible and requires dilligent examination.

As I said before, I will pray for you and all others like you, who currently know neither true hope nor true love - the kind only a personal relationship with God, through Jesus Christ can provide, and has done so through the ultimate saccrifice of death on a cross. May His spirit continued to speak to your heart, and your heart one day be softened to His word. He is risen!

ORS

[CATCH AND EAT]

The Impact And Effectiveness of Jesus

"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however articulate.....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personalityh pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."
Albert Einstein-Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 26, 1929

"The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts then any other book form in antiquity, but has survived in a purer form than any other great book - a form that is 99.5 percent pure."
Scholars Norman Geisler and William Nie.

"The memory of any stretch of years eventually resolves to a list of names, and one of the useful ways fo recalling the past two millenniums is by listing people who acquire great power, Muhammad, Catherine the Great, Marx, Gandhi, Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin and Mao come quickly to mind. There's no question that each of those figures changed the lives of millions and evoked responses from worship through hatred. It would require most exsotic calculation, however, to deny that the single most powerful figure - not merely in these two millenniums but in all human history - has been Jesus of Nazareth. Not only is the prevalent system of denoting the years based on an erroneous 6th century calculation of the date of his birth, but a serious argument can be made that no one else's life has proved remotely as powerful and enduring as that of Jesus."
Time Magazine - Dec. 6, 1979

"I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. he would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Eith this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. you can shut Him up for a fool, you can spt at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and cal Him Lord and God. but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about Him being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity

"Clearly the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead (even before the wound to His side was Inflicted....). Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appeasr to be at odds with modern medical knowledge."
Journal of The American Medical Society

Troutnut this is what really matters. Plus you proved that Einstein was really smarter than you give him credit for. :eek: Your arrogance is unfounded and irresponsible here. To bad you cannot keep your head in a level playing field and not try to out think yourself so much. How sad.

As for your insult directed at me personnally here is what I have to say to that. :bearhug: :flowered: Try harder next time. My skin is thicker than that. :smirk:

[TYEE-FISHER]

Thank You, Oregon Redside.

WRO good luck to you!! I am just beginning a relationship with God myself. My wife and children have been attending church for three years. I just started going about 6 weeks ago, and enjoy every thing about it. I have already seen a change in myself, and my relationship with my family. I was a real hardcore non-believer, and wanted scientific proof for everything!!

Im at a point where proving God and Religion wrong don't outweigh the benifit's of trying to prove that there is something there!! To benifit from that is alright by me.

TYEE

[Troutnut]

Part of maturity is having the ability to communicate without chest thumping. Another part is knowing when humility may be a more effective tool than pride.



Sorry. If you went into this field, you'd understand the uniquely frustrating position we're in.

In all other areas of study--history, archaeology, chemistry, economics, mathematics, medicine, you name it--people who aren't experts don't generally claim to be experts, and they don't run around proclaiming the findings and methods of the experts ridiculous because they disagree with their preconceived guesses.

But physicists who study the origin of the Universe are faced with a majority of people who have no understanding of how difficult the question is, no respect for the years of careful experimentation and observation, the hard work that goes into trying to find reliable answers, answers that can be tested and verified.

No, in our field unique among all the areas of science, members of the general public very commonly hold the delusion that we're all wrong and our work is nonsense--and why? Because they've double-checked our work and found an error? No. They disrespect our work because our findings happen to be at odds with a book written two thousand years ago by Middle Eastern goat herders! What a reason!

And to make matters worse, a lot of those people watch a half-hour sci-fi channel special trying to give the public a basic grasp of some extraordinarily complex theory like the Big Bang, and based on the oversimplified, qualitative, brief description they see, they decide that they now have the scientific expertise to proclaim the theory incorrect. You'll notice a couple of responses like that in this thread--"armchair quarterback" scientists, so to speak.

It's very, very difficult to restrain oneself from sounding a little condescending when faced again and again and again and again with something so ludicrous. People insisting on similarly goofy disagreements with experts in any other field would probably be locked up.

I mean, imagine somebody trying to tell the expert economists at the IRS not to worry about giving people their tax refunds this year because he's got faith that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny will take care of it for them. He'd be labeled a nutcase! But if somebody voices a similar opinion that the expert scientists at NASA are way off the mark about the Universe and an unobservable loving all-powerful supreme being was actually responsible--he'll get nods of agreement all around! Can you imagine how frustrating that is for people who take the time to tackle the difficult task of actually figuring out the answers?


One final question for you that requires only thought and no reply: With respect to God and Heaven, why are you afraid to say "I don't know?" Perhaps it's because you would have to swallow your pride and concede that they may possibly exist. It's two choices - either you say you know for sure (that would be a lie), or that you don't know, which would mean that it's possible and requires dilligent examination.



I've never mentioned that I know with certainty that they don't exist. You'll notice I've mostly focused on telling people not to pretend that they do know!

Practically nothing is known with certainty--I mean, it's possible that the world as I know it doesn't exist and I'm really living in the year 3,000 with a virtual reality supercomputer sending my experiences to my brain in a bottle. I can't disprove that, I don't know that it's not the case, but I think we can both agree that it's not very likely. Likewise, the invisible weightless fire-breathing dragon standing on your head isn't particularly likely. Santa Claus isn't very likely. None of these things merit much diligent examination. The God idea is not fundamentally different from any of those--it's just hard to come to that realization when you've been told that it's the truth from the time you were two feet tall.

But that's really secondary. The point is that faith involves pretending that you do know something with certainty, when you really don't. Even if the evidence points, say, with 90% certainty to some conclusion, you're lying to yourself if you take a 10% leap of faith to say you're 100% certain. Religion revolves around declaring answers to be absolutely certain and praising the virtues of not asking why. That's wrong.


As I said before, I will pray for you and all others like you, who currently know neither true hope nor true love



That's the most arrogant, condescending and insulting thing anyone's written in this thread so far. In fact, it's a flat out stupid thing to say. And I don't say that lightly.


and has done so through the ultimate saccrifice of death on a cross.



Okay, I know this is going to open up an enormous can of worms, but here goes. I say of that death on the cross--so what?

Think about it. If Jesus knew he was the son of God and that he'd be joining his father, the all-powerful ruler of the Universe, at his side in a blissful paradise as soon as he died, and that his death would be seen as a beacon of hope for millions of people for thousands of years, was death really all that bad a deal for him?

Personally, I place a much higher value on the sacrifices of the untold thousands of men and women who've died unsung deaths bleeding and alone face-down in the dirt of the battlefields of every war from Iraq to Vietnam to the American Revolution, to defend the freedoms of future generations they would never know and that would never know them. That's real sacrifice, my friends.

[CATCH AND EAT]

Sorry Troutnut, you are the condesending arrogant one in this thread. Cannot address anyone of us without the "I'm better than you" junk. Einstein you are not and a learned scholar? You misused your knowledge fed to you from one of your humanist profs you idolize. The can of worms you opened has sealed your fate as a TROLL on this board. :sick: I wish you well troutnut. :hoboy:

Jesus loves you and is willing to forgive you anytime you call upon His name. :yay:

[Chromaflage]

Everything in my post was rooted in love - whether you believe that or not. Most of your logic and arguments are fundamentally flawed. You assume much and set yourself above everyone else because of an "elite" group of people you choose to follow. When you have enough life experience under your belt, you may see that there is more to this world and this existence than what can be measured by anthropogenic means. Not everything can be measured. There are some things that must be experienced. "I just know" doesn't fit into your concrete world, but physics and cosmology are not the be-all and end-all to this universe.

I don't think I even need to respond to your comments regarding the bible and Jesus death. You know full well what you have done here and you've done it intentionally with the purpose of provocation - I'm not biting. Further, it's likely a result of something that you were taught since you were 2-feet high.

As you will find on this board, there is much argument and discussion. There is rarely anything settled here on these and political matters. We all have to be mature enough to step out before things go too far. If nothing else, I hope that I've at least provoked you to think about this issue.

I'm done here.

ORS

[Troutnut]

You know full well what you have done here and you've done it intentionally with the purpose of provocation - I'm not biting. Further, it's likely a result of something that you were taught since you were 2-feet high.



It's not about the people. It's about the validity of the ideas, the standards of evidence to which they are held. It's about judging ideas independent of who believes them or how long they've been held. It's about looking objectively at what's most likely to be correct and being honest about uncertainty, rather than shunning the admission of uncertainty in order to unwaiveringly believe whatever idea strikes your fancy as the most pleasant.


Sorry Troutnut, you are the condesending arrogant one in this thread. Cannot address anyone of us without the "I'm better than you" junk. Einstein you are not and a learned scholar?



Where did I say I'm better than anyone? I certainly did not.

I have implied that I know more than you do about the academic field I've been working hard to study for many years--the origin of the universe. That wouldn't be perceived as arrogant or condescending at all, had I been studying any other issue, but in this particular field, it is. This is the only field where people who know virtually nothing about it presume to be experts. You wouldn't be insulted if I said you know virtually nothing about physical chemistry, would you? Or that you know virtually nothing about the detailed workings of DNA, or mathematical topology theory, or how nuclear fusion works? No, of course those things aren't insulting, they're nothing to be ashamed of, they're simple admissions that you don't know much about a detailed technical field you haven't studied for years and years. But the moment I dare suggest you're also no expert on the origin of the Universe, an equally difficult technical challenge, I get called arrogant elitist condescending troll. And you wonder why I'm a little bitter about it?

I just started out in this thread to mention to the guy that he doesn't need faith to be a moral and ethical person, and I was hit with a barrage of attacks on my way of thinking and personal insults.


The can of worms you opened has sealed your fate as a TROLL on this board.



Nah... like I said before, I only entered the anglers chapel after just browsing the descriptions really quick, didn't even read the board title. I'm not going to be participating in any other "angler's chapel" threads, but I've been checking this one to defend myself from all the discrimination that's thrown my way for not being religious. :P You'll find I'm not at all a "troll" in general.


"I just know" doesn't fit into your concrete world, but physics and cosmology are not the be-all and end-all to this universe.



Funny, though. People in the United States "just know" that Jesus is their savior. People in Israel "just know" that he's not. People in Saudi Arabia "just know" that Muhammed's the man. And people in India "just know" that cows are sacred. The ancient Greeks "just knew" about a whole community of Gods, as did the Native Americans.

None of these people base their claims on anything concrete, measurable, verifiable. Everybody "just knows" something different, based on where they come from.

I choose instead to be honest about what I do and do not know. I've got little doubt that there are some things that can't be measured, observed, quantified... so it's silly to presume that you know so much about them! Especially when all you've got is that you "just know," and interestingly enough, all the things you "just know" are different from what equally confident people "just know" elsewhere in the world based on the same lack of evidence.

All I'm really supporting here is sticking to sober standards of evidence. The fact that a question is hard or impossible to answer by scientific means is not a license to jump to conclusions based on a whim and a guess; instead, you can simply admit to not knowing the unknowable.


You know full well what you have done here and you've done it intentionally with the purpose of provocation - I'm not biting. Further, it's likely a result of something that you were taught since you were 2-feet high.



What are you talking about? Provocation? I was responding to your personal insult that I can't know true hope or true love, and you say I'm the one provoking? Get a grip! All I did was bring up the incredibly valid point that death by one who knows he's about to take a very privileged position in the afterlife (and will accomplish in death more than in life) is really not the "ultimate sacrifice" you claim, when compared to the thousands of unglorious, unpublicized, painful, deaths of people who've fought and died anonymously to defend the freedom of generations they would never know. Sorry, but I place a much higher value on their sacrifices than on Jesus', and frankly it's hideously disrespectful not to do the same.

[CATCH AND EAT]

Troutnut, you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to the religious field. Certainly you are not the expert here at all. Your comparrison in the deaths of others compared to Jesus is horribly disrespectful. Though their deaths are a very sad occasion they are in no way the same or as important as the Death and Reserection of Jesus. Nice try and very selfish thought. :sleep:

[Troutnut]

Your comparrison in the deaths of others compared to Jesus is horribly disrespectful. Though their deaths are a very sad occasion they are in no way the same or as important as the Death and Reserection of Jesus. Nice try and very selfish thought.



Selfish?

Yeah, it's really selfish to respect the deaths of people who fight and die to defend freedom. You really got me on that one, didn't you.

[CATCH AND EAT]

Actually, yes, I did.

I suppose when you are lying on your death bed I wonder if you will be changing your tune. :bigshock:

"Nice to meet you Troutnut but I am afraid I don't know you." Then what will Physics get ya. "Well Lord I proved this in all my studies......." :alert:

[Troutnut]

Oh, I see. So Jesus' sacrifice was greater than that of soldiers who've died anonymously defending the freedoms of others because we have to suck up to Jesus or we'll get a red hot pitchfork in the butt after we die. Got it. Makes perfect sense!

[CATCH AND EAT]

A crude way of putting it but I think you have the general gist here. And yes Jesus Sacrifice far outweighs any nobel loss of life from our most valued soldiers. No soldier can offer eternal life but Jesus can.

Very sorry you are so bitter TN. Good night.

[letsfish]

Troutman,
You pulled me in.
C&E, ORS and others have done a great job of being polite and open to you.
You started out composing your thoughts quite well.
But now you are claiming discrimination and yet you rip on people for their ideas. Just to name a few things.
And then you post...
So Jesus' sacrifice was greater than that of soldiers who've died anonymously defending the freedoms of others because we have to suck up to Jesus or we'll get a red hot pitchfork in the butt after we die. Got it. Makes perfect sense!




Jesus did die in an ugly, violent death. You must certainly agree.
But not for His glory. He, even aware of the impending violence and death prayed "My Father , if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done."
He did it because it was his Father's will. His Father allowed his death because He loved us(you, me, everybody else) and we were destined(because of sin=wrongdoing) to live and die apart from Him. The only intercession was Jesus, His death, and victoriuosly, His resurrection.
Christians talk about the "free gift of eternal life"- it wasn't free to the Father or the Son. Think of the price they paid. It is however, free to you and me, everybody- we don't have to be good or behave in a certain way.Anybody's attempts of righteousness will not save them -His mercy has already done it. But gifts must be accepted.
Now, in light of this gift,which was paid for by Jesus's death for all men, for their reconciliaton, because of their wrong doing. We magnify His name and glorify Him -He did it for us, for those that could care less and those that accept Him as there Savior.
So you see we do not trivilize those that die for another, in fact, we highly respect them as you do. But we do recognize the greatness of the sacrifice-done out of obedience and love(even love for those that hate him!). He died for for those soldiers you spoke of who died for the freedom of others.He died for the "others". Everybody.
He died for their/our freedom. But not a temporal, even life- long freedom,but a freedom for eternity! That is why His sacrifice is the ultimate.
Sorry, it took me so long to make my point- I hope it was made and didn't send you to sleep :shrug:. :wink:
Something else(then I'll quit, promise!)-
in response to ORS's statement
As I said before, I will pray for you and all others like you, who currently know neither true hope nor true love

you wrote
That's the most arrogant, condescending and insulting thing anyone's written in this thread so far. In fact, it's a flat out stupid thing to say. And I don't say that lightly.




I can assure you he did not mean to come off arrogant or condescending.I know his kind- all too well, I'm one of them as you have deduced. He is sincere, he cares-he is going to pray for you because he knows you are missing out on something great! He truly cares about you and realizes with God's help you may one day know the unique true hope and love of Christ.When a Christian says he will pray, though the results may be powerful, the action is one of humility.Please don't consider C&E, ORS or any of us Christian snobs. Just look at his quote in context
As I said before, I will pray for you and all others like you, who currently know neither true hope nor true love - the kind only a personal relationship with God, through Jesus Christ can provide, and has done so through the ultimate saccrifice of death on a cross. May His spirit continued to speak to your heart, and your heart one day be softened to His word. He is risen!



I hope this clarifies things. If my interpetations of ORS's statements are wrong please clarify for us ORS.
I hope this gives you an idea of depth and greatness of the sacrifice.As you can see when someone dies for you it is easy to get passionate.
Have a great week and get some sleep. (How do you produce a great website, find time to express your viewpoints at length, do all the daily chores, and work?-No sleep) :wink:
Jim

[Chromaflage]

Jim, you hit the nail on the head. Thank you! I was hoping that someone would recognize that my statement was taken out of context. Yes, the first part may have seemed a bit exclusive without the rest of the statement. What I have said, I have said from the heart and out of love, and I wish nothing more than for all to experience and enjoy the depth and breadth of love that only God can show his children. This love is unconditional. We can never earn it, but we can only accept it - yes, by faith. God has written His laws on the hearts of men and has revealed himself in many ways. When I say that I will pray for someone, I'm actually saying that I love someone enough to intercede on their behalf. I do have faith that God's spirit can soften even the heardest of hearts, just as he did for Paul. "Whatever one should ask of faith, obedience will give."

Blessings to all!

(btw, Jim, who were you addressing in the last sentence of your post?)

ORS

[letsfish]

Glad it was clear. Except for the last sentence. I will clarify that. Troutnut has a great website- for the flyfisher in particular.I see you have a site up and going that relates to your field of work and expertise. I guess the quetion could have been directed at either of you. Not being a computer knowledgeable guy- I marvel how you who pull off a website (especiallly one with so much traffic as ifish does), can also hold down a job AND persue leisure activities). I guess the mountain looks bigger than it is . :whazzup:

[SKP]

:hoboy:

[jokester]

And yes Jesus Sacrifice far outweighs any nobel loss of life from our most valued soldiers. No soldier can offer eternal life but Jesus can.



RIGHT ON BERNIE!!! :applause: :applause: I think that's one of the best statements i've ever heard on IFISH!!

As honorable as the death of any soldier is, Jesus sacrificed FAR more by giving his life that day! His selfless act outweighs anything anyone has done, is doing, or ever will do!! He gave the ULTIMATE sacrifice so we could have eternal life and live with him forever! :bowdown: :bowdown:

-jokester

[SKP]

troutnut,

Do you want to accept this same free gift of eternal life that Jesus gave, or not? I'll post some scriptures that will be helpful to you to show you God's simple way of salvation.

The bible says in I John 5:12 "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." KJV.

Either you have Him or you don't.

Romans 10:13 says, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Either you call upon the Lord to be saved, or not. It's that simple.

John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Jesus gave, won't you accept Him?

SKP

[Troutnut]

Well, I'm getting bored of bickering with you guys, so this'll be my last post on the "chapel" section.

I've made my points quite well and if you're interested in understanding them you can just keep re-reading my previous posts until they're clear.

If you're interested in a great book about critical thinking and about how to go about thinking as opposed to what to think, I'd recommend The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It'll help anyone improve the way they tackle new issues and decisions.

If you're interested in sort of a basic understanding of the Big Bang beyond what you got in high school but still not prohibitively technical, I'd suggest A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Don't make the mistake of trying to judge the Big Bang theory based on this book, because it too is greatly simplified for the general public. It will, however, give you a little better idea of the basic concept of the theory--even that's much more than most people understand.

Anyway, have fun with your dieties and ghosts and angels and goblins and what-have-you. :smile: Gotta go work on my site!

[CATCH AND EAT]

That would be deity, singular form, only one God. And thank you I will.

You can argue the big bang theory all you want but when it comes right down to it where did all the gases come from, the particles, matter and so on? How did we develop intellengence? Some how some way this stuff,even if you believe in the big bang, was created. Not just something that always was there.

[smoltcatcher]

weel iknow how you feel wen to catholic schools most of my life. after i left home didnt wont any thing to do with church. but i always tried to do what was right. by gods standards anyway. grew up old fashoined. live that way still. respect for your elders. and say yes sir and no mam. dont hurt any one unless they hurt some one close to you. respect mother earth. but i dont go to church much ethier. my church is on sunday morning on the river. with my boat my uncle and the sun coming up on the water and lots of peace and time to reflect on my life and family. so you dont always have to be in a church to be in touch with god and yourself. my dad says i need to go to church more often and i say he needs to go fishing more often. he is also a minester in our family church where i went to grade school. so always remeber god is with us no matter where we are. god blees you and yours. team trunk monkey and saladbar

[Buck]

Every once in awhile, when I find myself doing or saying something that contradicts Christ's teachings, I sit down and read the entire New Testament over again to remind myself of how amazing God's love for us really is and how important it is for me to share that with others. It's hard to convey the warm feeling you get when you say Happy Easter to someone and feel the strength of their faith in the Resurrection of Jesus when they respond to you. Wow!

[Green Willie]

Wow, we seem to have forgotten someone here. So WRO, how are you, and have you been attending church since your original post. Remember, God does love you, and Jesus died for all of us, you too, and we have eternal life through Him.

Mike

[willametteriveroutlaw]

I have been to a couple of churches in the past few weeks, but what I have really appreciate are my friends private bible studies that he has been hosting at his house and hope to make those a regular part of my life. I feel that I can learn more with those and they seem to have a more lasting effect than sitting in a church for me. Plus it gives me leads for a study plan every week.

[Green Willie]

It's great to hear that you are involved in a small group bible study. That is such a valuable time. You know, and like the people. You can feel free to ask questions without feeling like they're "dumb questions". And, you develop long-lasting relationships with other believers. Finding a church home is important as well. You get an opportunity, at least once a week, to engage in a larger time of corporate worship and study. And, you become involved with a larger "community" of believers. My personal feeling is that the three fundamental legs of the stool are: 1) personal and family study and prayer time; 2) small group study and prayer time; and finally 3) church body participation in study, prayer, and body life activities. Hang in there, and glad to hear that you're doing well.

God Bless you!

JN

[LQQKASTAR]

WOW! I just stumbled in here,i cant beleive i read every post and looked at that nuts site too....my eyes hurt.
that dude was out there.
take care all

[Spotted Owl]

Just remember that if we were perfect we wouldn't need a saviuor.Then we'd have no reason to go to church.A perfect church is an empty church. Pray about it and ask for guidance and discernment. ............praying4U Mrs.Sled :smile: :smile: :smile:

[The Steelheader]

Proverbs 12:15 " The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise." This guy will use this verse against me watch. Christians heed God's counsel, we don't look at things from a human standpoint. God says His ways our higher than ours, don't sweat the small stuff. That's why He is God and we aren't. Some things are meant to be unwritten.

It's so great to see Christians band together and stand up for the truth. We stand on God's principles and will not be altered.

John 10: 25-27 ..."I told you, and you do not believe, The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." Isn't it nice to have the Holy Spirit discern things for you?

The Bible also tells us that people are given over to a debased mind. Only Jesus can turn this dude!

I thank the Lord for Godly people as yourselves. I will pray for all on here too, especially Bill Nye the Science Guy! :shocked:

[The Steelheader]

I started thinking about King Solomon after I was done here. Solomon was widely known as one of the greatest, smartest, richest kings in the Bible. Also one of the most blessed.

In Ecclesiastes 3:11, " He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end."

So, for troutnut, and the rest of us, God has put a deep seated compulsive drive to transcend our mortality by knowing the meaning and destiny of the world. That searching attitude you have about looking for answers in your crazy math is God given, sorry. Somebody said it before, it takes more faith to not believe in a divine creator than it does to believe in huge explosions.

Doesn't matter ultimately break down anyway?

The only way to find peace? To know our Eternal Creator, Jesus.

Ecclesiastes 1: 12-18 The Grief of Wisdom: " I, Solomon, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven, this burdensome task God has give to the sons of man, by which they be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered. I communed with my heart, saying, "Look, I have attained greatness, and have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem. My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge. And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."

God gave Solomon the chance to try and find happiness without Him. He partied, feasted, increased his knowledge, yet found out that God was the only thing worthy of his focus. The same is true today, God will not force you. But through searching and trying to prove God wrong, you will prove Him right.

The knowledge we need is given from God. All we need to know is from Him. Everything else is vanity and folly.

I love the Bible.

[The Steelheader]

God is leading you WRO, you are off to a good start. Small group studies are awesome.