Temple of Illusia

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if I believed prayer would accomplish anything, but praying for a miracle is about as constructive as snapping your fingers and expecting world peace to result.

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p4p whined:

thought i'd stop by your board again and either join in or start a new topic.

Thought this time around MIGHT be different.
Not a chance. Sorry i came back.no offense LG but the ppl at your board are nasty and disrespectful.
 

I don't feel i want to put up with that or have to.
You didn't invite me-i volunteered.
GB!~
p4p

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Le replied:

YOU are the one who is disrespectful. We go out of our way to help you understand things, but you don't even TRY to understand any of it. Further, your responses don't exhibit any original thought, as you merely quote unreliable sources and use the old "because the Bible says so" excuse. Sorry, but you can't prove your case by quoting a known pathological liar, and as far as some of us are concerned (myself included), the Bible isn't any more reliable than a pathological liar.

This is a free country... You are free to waste your time praying to your invisible friend in church, you are free to waste your money in tithes that the poor might see a small percentage of, after the rest lines the pockets of priests and bishops and builds grandiose churches that don't need to be so grandiose (and don't need to be built, imo). You are free to believe what you want to believe... But when you try to use your unfounded beliefs as "proof" when it is NOT, in a forum where actual evidence is expected up front, you can't expect us to take you seriously. In fact, I was nice to you long after I lost my patience with you. Yes, I would be the one praying for patience if I believed prayer would accomplish anything, but praying for a miracle is about as constructive as snapping your fingers and expecting world peace to result. It just ain't gonna happen, and prayer only serves to give a believer the false hope that something good will come out of it.

"God" doesn't put love in your heart and "Satan" is just an imaginary scapegoat for when people do bad things. We are all responsible for our own actions, and even have the ability to change the way we react to things internally, beginning with the way we look at things.

I don't know why I'm typing all of this, because I know I'm not going to change your beliefs. But maybe, just maybe, it can help you see that atheists (that is, people who simply have an absence of belief in deities) are not intrinsically evil. I don't hate "God," because I don't know if any deities exist, although I do know that the Bible is severely flawed and therefore cannot be considered evidence either way. If, on the other hand, I did consider the Bible reliable (which I don't), I would not find the "God" of the Old Testament to be worthy of worship, because that character is painted as very selfish and vindictive, murdering anyone who doesn't worship him and ordering others to do so as well.

That said, I don't hate you. I pity you, because you live in a world that is filled with deceit, and you willingly and wholeheartedly follow that deceit. As irritated as I have been with you at times, I really do hope you're happy and content with your life, because despite your willful ignorance and thick-headedness, I feel you might actually believe you are helping others in your crusade. I hope someday you will find another way to help others that will actually help them, but at least your heart seems to be in the right place, and that's a start.

Best wishes,
Lesa

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p4p made the false claim:

But i won't be back.

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"We go out of our way to help you understand things"
what a nice implication.we have to go to our board to learn something because we are just not as smart as you guys.
This means we disagree with you basically.If we agreed we'd be just as smart as you guyz.

 "Further, your responses don't exhibit any original thought, as you merely quote unreliable sources and use the old "because the Bible says so" excuse. Sorry, but you can't prove your case by quoting a known pathological liar, and as far as some of us are concerned (myself included), the Bible isn't any more reliable than a pathological liar."


You're entitled to your opinion.
I have never said "because the Bible says so". There isn't a Catholic in the world that's an adherent of sola scriptura.I rarely quote scripture. In most of the posts it's the other person who brought it up first.


Sir Frederic Kenyon, in The Story of the Bible, notes that "For all the works of classical antiquity we have to depend on manuscripts written long after their original composition. The author who is the best case in this respect is Virgil, yet the earliest manuscript of Virgil that we now possess was written some 350 years after his death. For all other classical writers, the interval between the date of the author and the earliest extant manuscript of his works is much greater. For Livy it is about 500 years, for Horace 900, for most of Plato 1,300, for Euripides 1,600." Yet no one seriously disputes that we have accurate copies of the works of these writers. However, in the case of the New Testament we have parts of manuscripts dating from the first and early second centuries, only a few decades after the works were penned.

Not only are the biblical manuscripts that we have older than those for classical authors, we have in sheer numbers far more manuscripts from which to work. Some are whole books of the Bible, others fragments of just a few words, but there are literally thousands of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other languages.
So your idea that the bible was composed by pathological liars doesn't hold water.I think you used the term pathological LIAR.That in itself is not correct,since it was written by many authors.
 "You are free to waste your time praying to your invisible friend in church, you are free to waste your money in tithes that the poor might see a small percentage of, after the rest lines the pockets of priests and bishops and builds grandiose churches that don't need to be so grandiose (and don't need to be built, imo). "

The poor see a large percentage LG. If you really want to talk about grandiose we can go there. I bet you spend far more tithing to your celebrity gods(and you're free to do so)to pay for their mansions,limos,drugs,alcohol and high life styles. Yeah,they give to the poor but it's your money lining their pockets. I can show you grandiose homes built for creature comforts that the poor can only imagine. At least a church is built once for worship.NOT for ego and comfort.
I can go there if you want and we'll see just how much the churches and religous institutions do for the poor.I don't mean just financially either.
"But when you try to use your unfounded beliefs as "proof" when it is NOT, in a forum where actual evidence is expected up front, you can't expect us to take you seriously. "

I get your point.You don't have to take anything seriously. On the other hand you don't take anyone seriously that doesn't agree with you.So it's pointless.Until we come around and go lock step you're not going to take us seriously anyway.There's sufficient evidence that God exsists. The problem is no amount of evidence would convince you.
Note;i said SUFFICIENT evidence.
GB!~
p4p

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... For Livy it is about 500 years, for Horace 900, for most of Plato 1,300, for Euripides 1,600." Yet no one seriously disputes that we have accurate copies of the works of these writers. However, in the case of the New Testament we have parts of manuscripts dating from the first and early second centuries, only a few decades after the works were penned.

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"God" doesn't put love in your heart

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Gone With the Wind was published in 1936, and I'm sure no one disputes that we have accurate copies of that work either, more than seven decades after the work was first penned, but we all know that book was a work of fiction.

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a perfect, all-seeing, all-knowing God keeps changing his mind, has to walk to a city to see if claims against that city are true, and can't forsee the mistakes he's about to make?

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love is a transcendental.Where does it come from?
Since hate is the exact opposite where does that come from?

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Yep Gone with the Wind was a work of fiction. We also know that the period of history it was written during actually exsisted(sic) and to that extent it's accurate.

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We know that the ppl mentioned in scripture actually exsisted(sic). Those ppl are not works of fiction.

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We know that the places mentioned in scripture also exsisted(sic). Those weren't made up either.

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We also know that some historical events of scripture actually took place and those are accurate;not fiction.

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You have no proof it's myth.There's no evidence-in fact to the contrary- that it's muth(sic) so all we have is your opinion that it's myth.

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God does not change His mind. You cannot take passages out of context either.

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You also need to understand that while the bible is truth and the ultimate author is God;it's also human ppl inspired by God writing;HUMAN authors LG.

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Still you do tend to take passages out of context;there are factors you don't take into consideration.Genre,poetic license, historical circusmtances(sic), expression etc. The human aspect of inspiration involved in scripture.

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