Thread of the Temple of the Search for Truth

[1ICrying]

Hey gang - I'm back, your favourite drive by Christian. Still believin' in that gosh dang holy Bible, I guess I'm back for another tour of duty into your wretched midsts.

Who doth search for truth?
Entereth all who hath nothing better to do.
Careful on the polished granite.
Let's sit here in a circle and discuss this
Okay if I light some incense?
its my temple, so...,I guess I just will.

So, let's search for the truth shall we.
I'm, as mentioned, still under the magical spell of the Bible, and all it's blissful promises,
And you? What is your

TRUTH?

Where are you going? What's your game, man? Food for worms? Dunno? Don't care?

Please share.


Please, no pushing, swearing or gambling in the

Temple of the Search for Truth


The Reverend 1ICrying presiding

 

[steve_bank]

I
I'll bite ... okay what is truth?

 

[Elixir]

“Presiding”?
Have a nice presidence.
Truth is what is.

 

[pood]

Hey gang - I'm back, your favourite drive by Christian. Still believin' in that gosh dang holy Bible, I guess I'm back for another tour of duty into your wretched midsts.

Who doth search for truth?
Entereth all who hath nothing better to do.
Careful on the polished granite.
Let's sit here in a circle and discuss this
Okay if I light some incense?
its my temple, so...,I guess I just will.

So, let's search for the truth shall we.
I'm, as mentioned, still under the magical spell of the Bible, and all it's blissful promises,
And you? What is your

TRUTH?

Where are you going? What's your game, man? Food for worms? Dunno? Don't care?

Please share.


Please, no pushing, swearing or gambling in the

Temple of the Search for Truth


The Reverend 1ICrying presiding

What is your position on the age of the earth and evolution?

 

[1ICrying]

I
I'll bite ... okay what is truth?

Congratulations Steve, for being the historic first entrant to the Temple Of the Search for Truth.

And bite you did. Unfortunately, I'm going to need to ask you go back and have another look at the question, because if you ask me what is truth, you're just going to get a bunch of Bible stuff, which you probably wouldn't agree with. So I was hoping that you would bring some of your truth to the table as well so that we could then proceed in a truth like direction. Respectively yours, 1I

 

[1ICrying]

“Presiding”?
Have a nice presidence.
Truth is what is.

Thank you Elixir, I shall.

Truth is what is. Bingo! That is probably as close to the truth about truth as we will get here in the thread of the Temple.

For was it not God himself who said 'I am what I am'? Or was that Popeye? Either way,

God being Truth, said "I am what I am" or in other words, I is what I is, or in other words, Truth is what is.

Thank you Elixir, I am satisfied. Shut er down boys. We have a winner.

 

[1ICrying]

Hey gang - I'm back, your favourite drive by Christian. Still believin' in that gosh dang holy Bible, I guess I'm back for another tour of duty into your wretched midsts.

Who doth search for truth?
Entereth all who hath nothing better to do.
Careful on the polished granite.
Let's sit here in a circle and discuss this
Okay if I light some incense?
its my temple, so...,I guess I just will.

So, let's search for the truth shall we.
I'm, as mentioned, still under the magical spell of the Bible, and all it's blissful promises,
And you? What is your

TRUTH?

Where are you going? What's your game, man? Food for worms? Dunno? Don't care?

Please share.


Please, no pushing, swearing or gambling in the

Temple of the Search for Truth


The Reverend 1ICrying presiding

What is your position on the age of the earth and evolution?

Sorry Pood, Temple's closed down. Ill just say somewhere between 6000 years and 6000 Billion - whatever the science tells us. Whatever the actual number, I just believe there was something/someone/God behind it all. It wasn't just a fluke. We don't know, but this might just be one of a zillion Universes, that God has been big bangin around town a long time. So where did God come from you might ask? I guess that would be nearly impossible for us humans to comprehend, but I believe that God is beyond time....and has just always been. I believe that's what the Bible says somewhere. Probably there was a big brawl amongst all the top Gods and the strongest came out on top. Someone had to. And I guess Satan is the number two God (in strength) that will not yet give up quite yet. Gracias Pood. I might just keep the Temple open a little longer for just such questions.

 

[pood]

What is your position on the age of the earth and evolution?

Sorry Pood, Temple's closed down. Ill just say somewhere between 6000 years and 6000 Billion - whatever the science tells us.

So, if the science tells us the earth is about 4.6 billion years old and that humans are products of evolution that link us to common ancestry, your interpretation of Christianity accepts that? Bear in mind that evolution shows there never was a Garden of Eden, that life has always been a struggle for survival, and that there was no Adam and Eve, no first man and woman. Rather, there were seminal populations of humans, but not a first man and woman. So the age of the earth and evolution wholly discredit a literalist reading of Genesis, and it undermines the Bible’s stated reason for Christ being on earth, to somehow redeem Adam’s original sin (science shows there was no Adam). You’re OK, with this? If so, what’s left of Christianity?

 

[pood]

Sorry Pood, Temple's closed down.

Already it’s closed? That was a short search for “truth.”

 

[steve_bank]

I
I'll bite ... okay what is truth?

Congratulations Steve, for being the historic first entrant to the Temple Of the Search for Truth.

And bite you did. Unfortunately, I'm going to need to ask you go back and have another look at the question, because if you ask me what is truth, you're just going to get a bunch of Bible stuff, which you probably wouldn't agree with. So I was hoping that you would bring some of your truth to the table as well so that we could then proceed in a truth like direction. Respectively yours, 1I

I know you will quote the Holy Babble. That is what Christians do.

However I am asking how do YOU know the truth and nutin' but the truth?


The response is inevitably self referential..

How do you know he bible is true?
Because god says so.
How do you know god is true?
Because god us in the bible.
How do you know the bible is true?
Etc,etc,etc.......

BTW, do I win a toaster or something for being the first?

 

[Elixir]

Sorry Pood, Temple's closed down.

Already it’s closed? That was a short search for “truth.”

I’m sorry - I gave it away. Mea Culpa, as they say in Christendom.

 

[steve_bank]

Vancouver 1ICrying And The Temple Of Doom

 

[steve_bank]

Closed? I was looking forward to sacrificing some animals to please god.

 

[1ICrying]

What is your position on the age of the earth and evolution?

Sorry Pood, Temple's closed down. Ill just say somewhere between 6000 years and 6000 Billion - whatever the science tells us.

So, if the science tells us the earth is about 4.6 billion years old and that humans are products of evolution that link us to common ancestry, your interpretation of Christianity accepts that? Bear in mind that evolution shows there never was a Garden of Eden, that life has always been a struggle for survival, and that there was no Adam and Eve, no first man and woman. Rather, there were seminal populations of humans, but not a first man and woman. So the age of the earth and evolution wholly discredit a literalist reading of Genesis, and it undermines the Bible’s stated reason for Christ being on earth, to somehow redeem Adam’s original sin (science shows there was no Adam). You’re OK, with this? If so, what’s left of Christianity?

Hi Pood. Thank you for our question. For myself, when it comes to Genesis, I have not taken it literally, but more as symbolic. So maybe there was no exact Adam or Eve or Eden, but what is the meaning behind these stories? So there's no real Adam, I don't think we need to throw the entire Bible out. What's left? The rest. The promise of a Messiah. The arrival of that Messiah who fit that promise to a T.

 

[1ICrying]

I
I'll bite ... okay what is truth?

Congratulations Steve, for being the historic first entrant to the Temple Of the Search for Truth.

And bite you did. Unfortunately, I'm going to need to ask you go back and have another look at the question, because if you ask me what is truth, you're just going to get a bunch of Bible stuff, which you probably wouldn't agree with. So I was hoping that you would bring some of your truth to the table as well so that we could then proceed in a truth like direction. Respectively yours, 1I

I know you will quote the Holy Babble. That is what Christians do.

However I am asking how do YOU know the truth and nutin' but the truth?


The response is inevitably self referential..

How do you know he bible is true?
Because god says so.
How do you know god is true?
Because god us in the bible.
How do you know the bible is true?
Etc,etc,etc.......

BTW, do I win a toaster or something for being the first?

No toaster Steve.

I believe the Bible is true for a variety of reasons: it exists, for one. And then if you read it, you can either decide it's bull or there's something to it. I decided for myself that there is something to it - based on what I read in it, and based on what I read about it. You obviously came to a different conclusion. So you have your truth and I have mine.

I believe that I will one day go to heaven. What is your belief and where does it put you in fifty or so years? What is your big answer on how to get out of this place...alive? Thank you.

 

[Worldtraveller]

So what other religious texts have you read?

What percentage of truth/BS (or metaphor) is sufficient for you, personally, to buy in?

What are your criteria in this so called truth?

Bible (which version(s))
Koran
Gitas
Shinto scriptures
Book of Mormon
Buddhist scriptures

There are a lot more, but let's start here. TIA.

 

[steve_bank]

I
I'll bite ... okay what is truth?

Congratulations Steve, for being the historic first entrant to the Temple Of the Search for Truth.

And bite you did. Unfortunately, I'm going to need to ask you go back and have another look at the question, because if you ask me what is truth, you're just going to get a bunch of Bible stuff, which you probably wouldn't agree with. So I was hoping that you would bring some of your truth to the table as well so that we could then proceed in a truth like direction. Respectively yours, 1I

I know you will quote the Holy Babble. That is what Christians do.

However I am asking how do YOU know the truth and nutin' but the truth?


The response is inevitably self referential..

How do you know he bible is true?
Because god says so.
How do you know god is true?
Because god us in the bible.
How do you know the bible is true?
Etc,etc,etc.......

BTW, do I win a toaster or something for being the first?

No toaster Steve.

I believe the Bible is true for a variety of reasons: it exists, for one. And then if you read it, you can either decide it's bull or there's something to it. I decided for myself that there is something to it - based on what I read in it, and based on what I read about it. You obviously came to a different conclusion. So you have your truth and I have mine.

I believe that I will one day go to heaven. What is your belief and where does it put you in fifty or so years? What is your big answer on how to get out of this place...alive? Thank you.

After all the time spent on religious treads it is hard to be serious.

You do what all Christians do. You pick and choose from the bible. Conservatives literally hate gays based on Leviticus, yet ignore the dietary requirements. Keeping kosher so to speak.


If the creation storyy is symbolic as you say, then you are your own arbiter of truth. As are Christians in general. To me considering all of ancient mythology the Abrahamic god is symbolic in the OT of the Hebrew male as ruler of the family. Patriarchal where wife and kids are property.

Christians 'know' what god wants, and that has led to 2000 yearss of violent conflict and oppression in the name of what god wants. In the 90s there were t shirts and bumper stickers 'god hates fags'. Colonial Christians through the 20th century justified slavery and racism from an interpretation of a a passage. The Mark Of Ham.

Out in the real world I would say you are welcome to your beliefs as I am as atheist, as long as it does not dimish others in te name of what a god wants.



As you put this in Relgion vs Scince.

The choices are limted.
1. A god winked the universe or Earth into existence. Expressed in different forms in different mythologies.
2. The universe winked into existence out of nothing without any causation.
3. Everything is the result of natural processes form star formation to us humans.

In ancint ties lacking science observing genrrations of offspring inagiming a first human couple would have been a logical conclusion. Observing humans making things would lead to a then reasonable conclusion something created the Earth. IOW Yahweh..

 

[Learner]

I
I'll bite ... okay what is truth?

Congratulations Steve, for being the historic first entrant to the Temple Of the Search for Truth.

And bite you did. Unfortunately, I'm going to need to ask you go back and have another look at the question, because if you ask me what is truth, you're just going to get a bunch of Bible stuff, which you probably wouldn't agree with. So I was hoping that you would bring some of your truth to the table as well so that we could then proceed in a truth like direction. Respectively yours, 1I

I know you will quote the Holy Babble. That is what Christians do.

However I am asking how do YOU know the truth and nutin' [...]

BTW, do I win a toaster or something for being the first?

No toaster Steve.

I believe the Bible is true for a variety of reasons: it exists, for one. And then if you read it, you can either decide it's bull or there's something to it. I decided for myself that there is something to it - based on what I read in it, and based on what I read about it. You obviously came to a different conclusion. So you have your truth and I have mine.

I believe that I will one day go to heaven. What is your belief and where does it put you in fifty or so years? What is your big answer on how to get out of this place...alive? Thank you.

After all the time spent on religious treads it is hard to be serious.

You do what all Christians do. You pick and choose from the bible. Conservatives literally hate gays based on Leviticus, yet ignore the dietary requirements. Keeping kosher so to speak.

So you 'picked & chose' these 'gay hating' conservatives giving the impression they represent all Christians?

The dietary requirements of the OT are not necessary for Christ followers.

If the creation storyy is symbolic as you say, then you are your own arbiter of truth. As are Christians in general. To me considering all of ancient mythology the Abrahamic god is symbolic in the OT of the Hebrew male as ruler of the family. Patriarchal where wife and kids are "property".

Humans as property did happen during biblical times, of course, but it doesn't seem to be the case in concept, for the Abrahamic God & Jesus:

Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Jesus Christ.

Gen 2:24, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and 'they shall become one flesh'.

1 Corinthians 7: 4, For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Christians 'know' what god wants, and that has led to 2000 yearss of violent conflict and oppression in the name of what god wants.

Nope... Jesus taught man how they are to live for the next two thousand years plus, because, and just as it's written... God isn't running this world. You see, man has been independent in the world from God, because mankind chose to be that way, following a different way, a different god.

1 JOHN 5:19, We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

2 Corinthians 4:4, In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Ephesians 2:2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience

In the 90s there were t shirts and bumper stickers 'god hates fags'. Colonial Christians through the 20th century justified slavery and racism from an interpretation of a a passage. The Mark Of Ham.

No doubt then, the scenario must have been 'those Christians colonists for slavery, versus, those Christians who wanted to abolish slavery"

Out in the real world I would say you are welcome to your beliefs as I am as atheist, as long as it does not dimish others in te name of what a god wants.

You should find this to your liking then, where Jesus demands, people should love their enemies & love their neighbors' as themselves etc. & etc..

As you put this in Relgion vs Scince.

The choices are limted.
1. A god winked the universe or Earth into existence. Expressed in different forms in different mythologies.
2. The universe winked into existence out of nothing without any causation.
3. Everything is the result of natural processes form star formation to us humans.

In ancint ties lacking science observing genrrations of offspring inagiming a first human couple would have been a logical conclusion. Observing humans making things would lead to a then reasonable conclusion something created the Earth. IOW Yahweh..

If the Abrahamic God was true ... your statement would still 'say the same' thing anyway.

 

[steve_bank]

Learner,

You can try and spin the recorded history of Christianity. A Christian god and Jesus that includes gays and rights for women is a new phenomena, and it is not 'biblical' as Evangelcals I have known say.

Seattle and western Washington in gneral is poltically progressive. Gays do not have as much harassment as in other places like Texas but it exists around here.

Westboro Baptist Church - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the 90s the Anglican Church over here had n angry split mostly over gay rights ad female ministers. The anti gay side became part of a virulent anti gay congregation in Uganda. In the 90s Christian politicians went to Uganda to advise them on anti gay tactics.

The spirit of the OT is alive and well in the USA.

Look at Catholic Poland. Lech Walesa is famous for the Gdansk Shipyard uprising against the Soviet occupation. As a politician in a free Poland he wanted gay politicians to stand outside the legislative chambers wen in session. He was president.

Christians create ther own fantasy of what Christianity, god, and Jesus are. Modern liberal Chrtans spin the OT. It was written for a dfernt time and culture and no longer applies. Conflicts with the bible being the inspired words of god.

Paul, a major Christian influence, wrote against gays and said women should walk a little behind men, and women should never teach men in public.

So, however you are deriving Christianity, as the conservative Christians would say it is pobably not biblical. And gong by what the OT and NT says I agree. Not that I agree with what the bible says.

To Evangelicals neither Catholics nor Mormons are authentic Christians, and I imagine that would include you.,

 

[1ICrying]

So what other religious texts have you read?

What percentage of truth/BS (or metaphor) is sufficient for you, personally, to buy in?

What are your criteria in this so called truth?

Bible (which version(s))
Koran
Gitas
Shinto scriptures
Book of Mormon
Buddhist scriptures

There are a lot more, but let's start here. TIA.

Hi World Traveller, Thank you for your questions. I am no expert in religious studies to be sure, but I do have a few books kicking around like World Religions and Religions of the World, A couple Bibles, probably King James, a Koran somewhere, read the Bhagavad Gita way back, know little to nothing of Shinto, know only enough about Book of Mormon to think it was written likely by a con man by the sounds of it. Buddhism, I have a few books lying around. I do like Taoism and the teachings of Lao Tsu.

Beyond books I have a few drug-induced mystical experiences, and just the semi-mystical experience of everyday life. I need about 57% truth vs bullshit before I buy in. But seriously, my beliefs are just that - beliefs, based on a lifetime of experience, so they cannot always be quantified. Spiritual stuff probably rarely can be, but for now, ill stick in my Bible thumping pigeon hole. And I guess you consider yourself an atheist (based on the little tag under your name I see here). So, World Traveller, out of all these books you listed, which do you think contains the truth? Probably none. So, where do you think you'll be in 75 years? TIA