The fact of the matter Johnny is that there is no God: The God worshipped by the Christians/Jews/Muslims only exists in the imagination of the "followers".

The proof is that if there was a God who in any way influenced us and events in the physical universe the God would be able to give humanity proper instructions. The other possibility that the God just doesn't give a damn about us is of course present but if that is the case we should still just reject the deity as just so much superstition.

The God made other errors in judgment and blamed the "followers" for his short sightedness, yet the excuses for the God have come to a head. There God who depends on excuses and justification for his existence is no God!

Best RG

Behind every excuse lies a failure, to justify a failure only compounds its magnitude.

In order to create a sane society it is necessary to debunk the current religious system of deceptions. The notion that Judaism/Christianity was the first society that created an ethical society to sustain the society of man is fallacious.

The Gnostic society which existed until the sixteenth century was far more able to create this ethical society. Their problem was that they believed that to kill anyone was wrong which enabled the unscrupulous Christians to slaughter them by the millions.

I believe that the real reason Christianity survived where others failed is because the world never before saw a religion who so unscrupulously would slaughter all opposition. People who did not follow the religious concepts were murdered without remorse as the Christians would say; "God will sort the souls".

The major flaw in Christianity is that they state we are all sinners; a curse on the entire human society!

A philosophy which stated that humanity is all basically honest ethical and moral and any transgression is an insult to "man" and an affront to God would have seen a far saner society than we have today.

There is no use speculating regarding past societies, the society which we have today is the only one available and to fix it current religions must be debunked.

Best Rasmus

Behind every excuse lies a failure, to justify a failure only compounds its magnitude.

the world never before saw a religion who so unscrupulously would slaughter all opposition

Actually, I thought this "slaughter" business was an attribute of the Romans, who believed initially in a modification of the Greek Pantheon. I would attribute to Christianity the sin of adoption rather than that of creation.

The major flaw in Christianity is that they state we are all sinners

Actually I think this is its great strength. Because none of us is a God, and therefore we all err, by accident or intent. We all do things that put us out of right relationship with each other ("with God").

The concept of sin, to be effective, cannot be mentioned separately from that of forgiveness, the power to recognize error, correct for it, return the erring party to the group, and move forward. This is a dynamic of great and positive power.

Of course, most "Christians" don't practice it.

In order to create a sane society it is necessary to debunk the current religious system of deceptions

This idea has been promoted in the secular realm for many years. The idea that you must first destroy before you can raise up. We are practicing this now in Iraq, and wondering why there is unmanageable chaos. We practiced it on Russia with the demise of the Soviet Union. Russian society drifted in crime and chaos for a decade, and is now under the command of the near-dictatorial Vladimir Putin. We practiced it on Germany in 1918. German society lurched from crisis to crisis for fifteen years, and wound up with Hitler.

To take away a system, without understanding why that system is so attractive and building your alternative to take advantage of that understanding, is an exercise in selfish power that is, at best, inconsiderate to those subjected to it, and, at worst, puts them at risk of falling under a worse despotism.

No, the slaughter was not attributed to the Romans, there is very little evidence the Romans slaughtered many Christians.

The slaughter I speak of was that perpetrated by the Christians and especially after Pope Innocent III. After his edict to destroy the so called "Albigensians heresy millions of Gnostics were butchered throughout Europe.

These people did posed a threat to Christianity as they were not advocating a doctrine of superstition but one of knowledge. These people were Cathars; Albi was a city where they were especially numerous.

The statement we are all sinners is the creation of an excuse for the more basic instincts in humanity and we need no such excuses. It is a crime against humanity for though we may not all be completely ethical we do not need a false doctrine saying we are failures.

To create a sane society the debunking of current religions must go hand in hand with the establishment of a philosophy which enables man to see himself as more than a piece of physical flesh which came about through the whim of some inconsiderate deity. It has to go along with a philosophy which states we have n o excuse for any crimes against our fellow "man".

Best RG

Behind every excuse lies a failure, to justify a failure only compounds its magnitude.

... but I consider the image of the "loving God" far better than the alternatives I've seen to date.

I have two children that I love more than anything in the world, I would give my life for them any day of the week but I would not want to take care of them and look after them telling them how to live their lives

But is this not precisely what you did when they were small? There are many who wish they never had to leave that comfort zone and make decisions for themselves. The metaphor of God as Father (and/or as Mother) appeals strongly to such people - who greatly outnumber the intellectuals.

There is far more to us than these bodies

No. No. And No. It is a testimony to nature that the machines that we are have the power to think so. But we are just machines. Made of ashes and dust, and soon returning to ashes and dust. Machines that have evolved social codes, and metaphors to transmit them, in an effort to delay the return to ashes and dust, to delay the return of their offspring to ashes and dust. Those machines are all we have. I refuse to play the game of dueling metaphysics.

If your metaphor of transcendance helps you rock your boat, yours and those who think with you, wonderful. That's much better than the alternative, which is, essentially, despair.

If there existed one single metaphor that spoke to all people with the same power, we wouldn't be having this discussion. There is not. There are multiple metaphors, each one of which has power to different groups of people at different historical moments. We progress not by beating on somebody else's metaphor and championing our own, but by learning how each metaphor works in its various situations and attempting to harness that power in a way that stops us from constantly being at each other's throats.

The Greek concept of hubris expresses the antithesis of sin, the idea that we humans have, or can get, all the information we need to promote ourselves in the world. Believers in "sin and forgiveness" build missions for the poor and destitute. Hubris built Auschwitz. I'll take "sin", thank you.

O ceallaigh, I used to see things in much the same fashion you do by saying that:

"It is a testimony to nature that the machines that we are have the power to think so. But we are just machines. Made of ashes and dust, and soon returning to ashes and dust. Machines that have evolved social codes, and metaphors to transmit them, in an effort to delay the return to ashes and dust, to delay the return of their offspring to ashes and dust. Those machines are all we have."

This is indeed wrong as I found out in my later studies and while it may be hard for most to understand I'll try once more to make you understand. Read it and think it over before you condemn it!

Now, I desired to make another attempt at making you see what I refer to when I state that we do not exist in time. It is difficult for me because it was something I grappled with for years and I do not know exactly what it was I was thinking of when the concept became clear to me.

I know that at about the same time I was contemplating this I was also attempting to see us all as the “C� instead of the “E� or “M� in Einstein’s famous equation.

One of the things I contemplated also was that if we did not exist in time, then where did we exist? If we existed in the heart, as was mentioned by ancients, we would exist in time/space. “Out there� is also in time space, so any such concepts were out.

The one unexplored dimension where I discovered we would have to exist is “now�!
Not the now which is these few seconds in which this is read, not “now� as microseconds but “now� as existing apart from time space.

This “now� apart from time/space has to be where we view from; it has to be where we perceive present circumstances from and contemplate knowledge and information from. Everything in the physical universe moves in a one dimensional linear time dimension, continuous; and if we were a part of time/space we would also only be moving on this same linear dimension through time, taking care of our needs as they presented themselves. Being hungry we would take care of the hunger, seeing attractive members of the opposite sex we would be seeking to assuage our desires.

As it is, humanity is completely different from all other animal species. Yes, we do have the same desires, but there is something more to us; and that “more� is the “self�. This “self� to me is asexual, and can find as many or more friends in relationships which are not of a selfish nature, as friends which one employs to use for food, sex or survival.

The knowledge that the Bible is just so much bunk is displeasing to many people but to throw away spirituality with the Bible is like throwing away the baby because it comes with the afterbirth. Discovering the afterbirth can’t live does not mean that the baby can’t!

Best Rasmus