Welcome to the Philosophy Forums! If you are not a member, please join the forums now. It's completely free! If you are a member, please log in.

I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline
User avatar

Misty

  • Posts: 2018
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: August 10th, 2011, 8:13 pm
  • Location: United States of America

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#346  PostFebruary 25th, 2012, 7:46 am

James S Saint

When do you think it will be ready? How will we access it as this thread will not last long and the people here will
lose contact? Can you give a hint of what it is? Did you invent it yourself? Other details?

-- Updated Sat Feb 25, 2012 6:48 am to add the following --

Where can I access 'Serpent In The Light?' I could only find Serpent of the Light and Serpent of Light on internet. I want
to know what it is.

-- Updated Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:19 am to add the following --

It is my belief that there are not any unknowns in our world. When someone is given credit for an invention there are
many minds that have/are thinking the same thing. All knowledge is in our world and minds yet to be accessed.
Things are not always as they appear; it's a matter of perception.

The eyes can only see what the mind has, is, or will be prepared to comprehend.

I am Lion, hear me ROAR! Meow.

Did you know?

  • Once you join the forums and log in you will get to enjoy an ad-reduced experience. It's easy and completely free!

Offline

James S Saint

Banned

  • Posts: 957
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: October 14th, 2009, 5:48 am

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#347  PostFebruary 25th, 2012, 3:03 pm

Misty wrote:James S Saint

When do you think it will be ready? How will we access it as this thread will not last long and the people here will
lose contact? Can you give a hint of what it is? Did you invent it yourself? Other details?

Misty...
I am talking about an entire college curriculum, not merely a course nor a short thesis.
Prerequisites to the course would include; statistical analysis, tensor analysis, and analytic geometry just for My "Afflate Analysis" course which is basically just a study of noise akin to chaos theory, but more refined. But also required would be physics, psychology, sociology, and economics. The course is about Rational Metaphysics which I briefly introduced on another thread with;
Wherein all existence is explained through definitional logic such as to reveal even what Science's contemporary physics has yet discovered. Rational Metaphysics explains why all physics entities do what they do; why positive and negative attract, why gravity exists and how it works, why light travels at that particular speed, what causes inertia, why energy is conserved, how the strong and weak forces actually function, why particles quantize, and so on. Rational Metaphysics provides the only true Unified Field Theory (as far as I am aware). And the theory has even been proven, but not published yet...waiting on academia.

In addition it then, in an analogous manner, gets into explaining all behavior; economics, sociology, psychology, and so on.

Now imagine that you got teleported back to 1st century Rome and you are sitting at a bar when you mention nuclear physics. The guy beside you then insists that if you can't prove it to him by scratching it out on the bar right then and there, then obviously you are just selling him some new religion you invented.

And in addition, you consider that even if you really could explain enough of it to him and others, "what are they going to do with it?" Do you really want the Roman empire to be the first nuclear armed society during the 1st century? Rational Metaphysics reveals 3 very serious weapons. The most obvious ones are of course the most dangerous to have in the wrong hands. It isn't a light-weight subject.

One of the introduction "first day" questions would be;
"You have a substance A that has the sole property of increasing or decreasing the potential of the substance A immediately adjacent to it proportionally to its potential (which defines its potential). Now mathematically show the first 3 derivatives of Substance A with respect to time."

Misty wrote:Where can I access 'Serpent In The Light?' I could only find Serpent of the Light and Serpent of Light on internet. I want to know what it is.

"I want.. I want.. I want.."
Well, you can't have it.
Ever heard of Atlas Shrugs?
That isn't it.
But related.
And I doubt it would be online, because I never published it. :mrgreen:

Misty wrote:It is my belief that there are not any unknowns in our world. When someone is given credit for an invention there are many minds that have/are thinking the same thing. All knowledge is in our world and minds yet to be accessed.

I very largely agree.
If I invent something for the first time one day, the next day someone else would probably be inventing it also.
Key word; "probably".

It isn't what someone knows as much as how they put it all together.
Clarify, Verify, and Instill the Hopes and Threats that lead to the Maximum Momentum of Self-Harmony for the Living - Measure your Progress.
Else
From THIS age of sleep, Homosapian shall never awake.
What remains in harmony cannot perish.
Offline
User avatar

Bermudj

  • Posts: 1159
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: December 17th, 2011, 1:28 pm
  • Location: Cricklewood, London, UK

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#348  PostFebruary 26th, 2012, 5:40 am

Misty wrote:Bermudj,

I don't think I have deliberately put myself into that situation but that it always finds me. Because of my biological
makeup and the experiences of care givers placed upon me and then my own perception of my experiences puts me
in these situations. I have been betrayed in every relationship I have had in my life. I feel used and thrown away.


I have similar experiences. For a time I felt like if I were a cloth that they had all used, put all their dirt on it, and given that it was of no use to them, they threw it in the bin.

Once I was getting healthy again, they came back to make use of the cloth, but this time I put a stop to that.

This aspect of putting their dirt on me is true in the sense that once I was ill and I could not help them, they began accusing me of their sins.

Misty wrote:It is not the entire fault of others but my own sum total makeup combined with lack of proper communication skills then combined
with the same dilemma of others. Just as we were endowed with extreme sensitivity others are endowed with hardness
and meanness - not their fault either.

I agree that is the way they land on this earth. That is not their fault. But it is their fault not to do something about it.

Misty wrote:It seemed/seems the more I am kind the more trouble I find/found.


I agree entirely with this.

Misty wrote:Depression birthed
my anger which pushed to defend myself and seek experiences inappropriate to my makeup, which of course brought its
own trouble.

I have gone through something similar, but luckily my anger did not get me into more trouble.

Misty wrote:I am trying to find that person again as I liked her very much.


I wish that you find her. I am also on that healing process.
Do whatever you do, do what a good man would do, and what is a good man?, I do not know, but at every point, every turn, do what a good man would do.

Jesús Antonio Bermúdez-Silva
Offline
User avatar

Misty

  • Posts: 2018
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: August 10th, 2011, 8:13 pm
  • Location: United States of America

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#349  PostFebruary 26th, 2012, 10:33 am

James S Saint

So those on this thread will probably lose contact and never be able to access your discoveries. Bummer.
Things are not always as they appear; it's a matter of perception.

The eyes can only see what the mind has, is, or will be prepared to comprehend.

I am Lion, hear me ROAR! Meow.
Offline

James S Saint

Banned

  • Posts: 957
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: October 14th, 2009, 5:48 am

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#350  PostFebruary 26th, 2012, 11:56 am

Misty wrote:James S Saint

So those on this thread will probably lose contact and never be able to access your discoveries. Bummer.

As much for me as them. I have spent countless hours trying to simplify things enough for quick easy access and understanding. But in every case, I ended up having to just start over with an added element complicating the issue. I made the final proof for the UFT via a processor arrangement and thus to "see the proof" requires seeing the processors and their programming first hand. The only other option is to do as most and merely accept truth from whatever the elite in Science say. It is all a bit like reinventing physics from scratch yet ending up with the same understandings plus the "why"s behind them. It is a big field.

-- Updated Sun Feb 26, 2012 11:52 am to add the following --

What is more disturbing to me is that despite the years of work that I have put into this, due to my age and the slowness of academia, it is highly probable that no one at all will ever know of what I have discovered and proven. Even getting the book completed is dubious.
Clarify, Verify, and Instill the Hopes and Threats that lead to the Maximum Momentum of Self-Harmony for the Living - Measure your Progress.
Else
From THIS age of sleep, Homosapian shall never awake.
What remains in harmony cannot perish.
Offline
User avatar

Bermudj

  • Posts: 1159
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: December 17th, 2011, 1:28 pm
  • Location: Cricklewood, London, UK

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#351  PostFebruary 26th, 2012, 4:07 pm

James S Saint wrote:it is highly probable that no one at all will ever know of what I have discovered and proven. Even getting the book completed is dubious.


Well this is very sad, because you should attempt to ensure the material is published so others can at least read it. Regardless of whether they agree with you or not, or whether you can defend it or not. If it is material that is truthful and will enlighten then it deserves to be in the public domain.
Do whatever you do, do what a good man would do, and what is a good man?, I do not know, but at every point, every turn, do what a good man would do.

Jesús Antonio Bermúdez-Silva
Offline
User avatar

Misty

  • Posts: 2018
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: August 10th, 2011, 8:13 pm
  • Location: United States of America

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#352  PostFebruary 27th, 2012, 5:51 am

Bermudj,

I was not seeking sympathy so I thank you for understanding. Innocence lost is not just for the sexually abused as
innocence lies in a child's mind to feel loved, worthwhile, protected, free to be, etc. and most parents miss this
mark, including myself, even though I did my personal best with the tools I had. I have to extend this to all parents, because we don't know what makes any one person who they become. But, you are right, all should take responsibility
and become better people. The problem is that humans, like the universe, is full of chaos and mystery, unfair,
beautiful, ugly, scary, and both predictable and unpredictable. I get weary trying to discern. I wish you healing as well.
Things are not always as they appear; it's a matter of perception.

The eyes can only see what the mind has, is, or will be prepared to comprehend.

I am Lion, hear me ROAR! Meow.
Offline
User avatar

Bermudj

  • Posts: 1159
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: December 17th, 2011, 1:28 pm
  • Location: Cricklewood, London, UK

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#353  PostFebruary 27th, 2012, 3:23 pm

Misty wrote:The problem is that humans, like the universe, is full of chaos and mystery, unfair,
beautiful, ugly, scary, and both predictable and unpredictable. I get weary trying to discern. I wish you healing as well.


I could not agree more. I keep on reading, observing, trying to find a pattern, but so far there is no clarity. Just now I have come back from trying to find some one. This is quite important. He happened to be there, but he said to me that I was lucky, because he had been moved to another branch a few years ago and he was just covering from some one else, and that is why he was there. Now I ask myself, suppose he was not there? Then that means that I would have asked someone else. Would they have known him? Would they have known that he worked at that branch and had been transferred to another? And there are so many other possibles or probables.

Thanks for wishing me well in the healing.
Do whatever you do, do what a good man would do, and what is a good man?, I do not know, but at every point, every turn, do what a good man would do.

Jesús Antonio Bermúdez-Silva
Offline
User avatar

Misty

  • Posts: 2018
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: August 10th, 2011, 8:13 pm
  • Location: United States of America

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#354  PostFebruary 29th, 2012, 11:46 am

Bermudj and All, Have any of you read 'The Impersonal Life' by Joseph Benner?? It was first published by Anonymous in
the 1940's. Just started it - WOW! May help you, too.
Things are not always as they appear; it's a matter of perception.

The eyes can only see what the mind has, is, or will be prepared to comprehend.

I am Lion, hear me ROAR! Meow.
Offline
User avatar

Bermudj

  • Posts: 1159
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: December 17th, 2011, 1:28 pm
  • Location: Cricklewood, London, UK

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#355  PostFebruary 29th, 2012, 12:36 pm

Hello Misty,

Thanks I will have a read.
Do whatever you do, do what a good man would do, and what is a good man?, I do not know, but at every point, every turn, do what a good man would do.

Jesús Antonio Bermúdez-Silva
Offline
User avatar

Misty

  • Posts: 2018
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: August 10th, 2011, 8:13 pm
  • Location: United States of America

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#356  PostFebruary 29th, 2012, 3:37 pm

Bermudj,

I think this book Impersonal Life will give you insight to your body/mind dilemma. One can go to amazon to review. It is less than 100 pages of small size book. I hope we can talk about it after we
read it. My email address is : sueandroy.1@netzero.net just in case we lose touch from this forum.
Things are not always as they appear; it's a matter of perception.

The eyes can only see what the mind has, is, or will be prepared to comprehend.

I am Lion, hear me ROAR! Meow.
Offline
User avatar

Bermudj

  • Posts: 1159
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: December 17th, 2011, 1:28 pm
  • Location: Cricklewood, London, UK

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#357  PostMarch 2nd, 2012, 11:37 am

Hello Misty,

Thanks for the e-mail address. I have not yet been able to get hold of the book, "The Impersonal life". The local library does not have a copy. They told me that they would look for it and I should know in a couple of weeks. I currently have few funds so as to be able to purchase a book. This is the good aspect of being in the UK, the public libraries are reasonably well linked.
Do whatever you do, do what a good man would do, and what is a good man?, I do not know, but at every point, every turn, do what a good man would do.

Jesús Antonio Bermúdez-Silva
Offline

Windy34

  • Posts: 278
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: July 13th, 2011, 4:20 pm

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#358  PostApril 20th, 2012, 5:48 pm

Theist wrote:Hi, everyone

I'm new to this forum. I'm a believer in God. I say prayers. I speak to God. and I try to keep Him in my memory every moment of the day. There are moments (mostly during prayer) I can sense that I'm influenced by God's grace. I can see how He responds to my supplications through the kind of internal spirituality I feel during prayers. There are times that I feel so expansive and enormous that I feel I just can't fit into my body. I can sense and feel my experience. And they just can't be delusions. Although my experience is subjective and personal, I think I am able to reasonably argue for my faith in God and His existence. I successfully managed to transmit my experience through a great deal of conversations, arguments and mutual contemplations to a strong-minded Atheist who thought God is just a nonsensical concept to begin with. But after a few months, she gradually started to sympathize with me until she became as an ardent believer as I am, if not more.

Now, in this forum, I like to expose myself to your questions. I'm willing to respond to your critical challenges to my faith. With my unique approach I think I can convince some of you about the existence of a universal source and authority that starts to influence us once we allow ourselves to be exposed to His constant heavenly energy. I'm waiting for your critical responses. I hope you don't deny me this opportunity.

Thank you!



How can you tell the difference between whether your feelings come from God or yourself? How do you know if God gives people certain feelings? How can you prove God's existence because if God did exist he would be invisible? So believer and nonbeliever would never be able to prove God's existence.
Offline
User avatar

Eston

  • Posts: 73
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: August 19th, 2011, 3:33 pm

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#359  PostApril 20th, 2012, 11:47 pm

I admire the depth and power of your faith and the way it makes you feel, and I can conceive of a person like you living her life with a white-hot intensity and dying with a sense of completeness and accomplishment.

What I don't think you can appreciate is the power of survival drive when it is focussed on an article of faith. The kind of faith you describe is, when you come right down to it, an exprlosion of energy based on desire, not evidence. Survival drive is a potent force and when focussed to the extent yours is can be easily translated into fanaticism--as was likely the case with Hitler, Jim Jones, Timothy McVey, and many others. I am not accusing you of this, I am merely pointing to a possibile outcome of a faith based not of fact but feeling.

All religions are expressions of survival drive deriving from the human awareness of mortality and, since they are based on hope, not evidence, they are all subject to the charge of vanity if not hypocrisy. I cannot speak for anyone but myself when I say this: A life based not on the reality that comes from integrity, but from wishful thinking, is an expenditure of energy that could have been spent on making better the here and now. "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?"
----
Eston Roberts
"All reality is derived from metaphor."
http://www.EstonRoberts.com
Offline

Schaps

  • Posts: 116
    ( View: All / In topic )

  • Joined: March 30th, 2012, 2:42 am
  • Location: Russian Gulag
  • Favorite Philosopher: Nietzsche

Re: I'm a Theist, Please Challenge Me!

Post Number:#360  PostMay 18th, 2012, 7:33 am

On:Philosophical Belief "in" God

The commonly used term "believe in" has no good meaning.  Rather.  one "believes THAT....", God exists, God is good, God listens to prayer etc.  Having clarified the semantics, here is a "challenge" that "Theist"  may find interesting ( as have I )!

The challenge focuses upon the age- old dilemma of a baby's suffering.  

• A baby is born and immediately is suffering from an incurable illness, from which after a short time he/she dies an agonising death. 

What is the nature of a god that a. Causes such a suffering ? - assuming God is OMNIPOTENT and is the creator of ALL and everything? 

Is this suffering for the purpose of some "greater plan" or mysterious undefined "goodness"?

b. Choses not to relieve that baby's suffering ? - again assuming God is both present ( omnipresent) aware ( omniscient)  and capable (omnipotent ) of relieving suffering?  c. Why is that baby not granted an opportunity to reflect on these very questions him/herself ( and in so doing possibly derive some appreciation of a greater plan/goodness) - but merely left to suffer and die?

If God did not or was not the cause (creator ) of the baby's suffering - God is not omnipotent. It follows then that I can not trust that God will be able to: •provide relief of suffering  •cause the sun to rise each morning  •awaken me from sleep erc. 

If God is omnipotent  and omnipresent, then the observation that the baby suffered an agonising brief existence and died - attests to the God being a monstrously cruel monster who both causes suffering and fails to relieve it.   I utterly reject that god. 

If God is neither omnipotent, omnipresent nor omniscient then of what "value" is that Gid to me? 

The challenge then, is for "theist" to derive comfortable responses to the aforementioned questions. These are existential dilemmas which are at the essence of "philosophy".   I am of the opinion that each individual "theist" has to be able to reconcile this particular challenge in order to avoid insanity and despair! Failure to do so, results in existential depression and the conclusion that either God does not exist in the form of "omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent" or - that God is dead.

I will add that I have made some progress towards reconciling this challenge - but I note too that the ( ? unanswerable ) challenge itself serves as a motivating force to derive "purpose and meaning"  to my life ( not yours).

Each being is alone in his/her search to derive meaning and purpose for life- and to act on those purposes. Philosophising does not a life create!
PreviousNext

393487_FreedomWorks Special Edition DVD

Return to Philosophy of Religion, Theism and Mythology

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests

Philosophy Book of the Month Updates

The January book of the month is Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott. Discuss it here or buy it here.

The November book of the month is On the Internet by Hubert L. Dreyfus. Pick it up, read it and discuss it with us as a group!