Religious nuts vs bolts

You don't! That's the difference between religion and empiricism. There are no verifications that can be made on theological assertions.

Yes, but the litmus test is this: Who decides which voice is which? Who decides which voice is heavenly or otherwise.

DW suggested that it depends on whether or not someone can get people to BELIEVE them.

And to build on that concept, what is the quorum -- how many people does a nut/legit have to have believing in them before they are "bona fide" ?

1 person?

A thousand?

That depends on which sect/denomination one wishes to embrace one's dogma and revelations. For Catholics, the pope is required (eventually). For most Protestants, it could well start with one true believer and spread from there.

We also seem to be leaving Moslems out of this, and they're some of the biggest nuts on the Fundamentalist tree.

My own bottom line: The sum total of our life's force does not communicate in words, rather in emotions, sensations and inspirations. I have felt a variety of close experiences with something beyond me, but a "personal" deity, speaking in English? Never have, don't believe it works that way.

Quite.

Same shit different wrapping.

I think if someone was hearing God, then God being at least a metaphor for the Highest principal, the person concerned would act in a very informed and intelligent way. If this were the case that individual would/may inspire people around him/her to act via these same principals. This in my eyes would be no bad thing.
If on the other hand the person is imagining God talking to them, given that they are in a mentally confused state to think God is talking to them in the first place, I think probably their actions would be quite different.
Jesus never quoted from the new testament(obviously it didn't exist at that point), he was an independent.(that's if you believe Jesus existed at all)
I think that people who say they are talking to God but only quote from the bible are in my eyes dubious.

Twelve seems a good number.

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

To follow on from that; if a God (if such a thing exists) wanted to communicate with us mortals, it seems logical that he would choose to use one or more of us mortals to do so - yet he would do so in the sure (all knowing) certainty that they would be branded odd at best and insane at worst and almost universally ostracised - other than by other similarly 'misguided' folk of course.

Of course one may argue that he does it this way because he is testing our faith - that if we were to just believe what these people were saying then all would be well. Naturally that's what we would expect such people to say. So the fact that we don't believe them should be equally expected. Yet despite this, God keeps trying the same method?

It seems to me that at the very least, God requires a new communications strategy.

I dont think is wise to catholics to obey a pope that looks oddly similar to palpatine .

Finally, consider his appearance in the form of Jesus. While the Jews are expecting a warrior king savior to come and set the world right with power and might, instead we get God in the form of a helpless mewling baby born to an ignorant unwed teenage mother in a pig trough. He grows up presumably suffering all the potential for evil that jason_el is talking about, and finally submitting to that evil to die a painful nasty death as his organs shut down one by one hanging there in horrible pain while nailed to a board. Jesus might as well be the kid that jason was referring to.

There is something timelessly profound in Jesus' helplessness and here is where we have to look for understanding of God's attitude towards suffering and evil, and the use (or lack of use) of his divine power to prevent it.

During Jesus' life, he does a few cheesy miracles that are not much more than parlor tricks if you consider that he is The Creator incarnate. Since he foresees all of what is going to happen, and he chooses to do the Jesus thing voluntarily, it is a clear and resounding signal that although God has created the universe, he is voluntarily self-limiting his influence on it physically. The Greek term for it is Kenosis. Rather than smiting enemies and righting the wrongs of Roman political oppression, curing all diseases for ever, ending all hunger, instead he starts a viral marketing campaign to prepare mankind to be his hands and feet in the name of love then he lets mankind string him up for it.

Again, there is something important here. It's as if God is saying, "hey, do you want to know what I think about the universe's natural processes, scary as they might be? Well, let me demonstrate to you my high regard by emptying out all of my power and submitting myself to it at its complete worst. Let me become human like you, let me suffer like you, let me die horribly like you could possibly do. Why? Because I love the universe and I love life, and I love you, more than you could possibly imagine. I know you won't believe me, so let me demonstrate my regard for it by submitting to it. I can't explain it to you, so I will sacrifice myself to it as a demonstration. Furthermore, know now that I am a God that suffers as each creature in his creation suffers. Also know, that in the end, as I rose from the dead, that in conquering death, I am saying that there is no more pure evil. Everything bad has the potential for good. Suffering may be a part of it, but accept my promise that there is a point where it all ends and there are "no more tears... and the lion shall lie down with the lamb..." (Revelation)."

This is a much better answer than God gives Job, when Job is lying in the mud with his skin falling off, echoing jason_el's words, demanding what kind of a God would allow a universe where such suffering was possible. Like his answer to Job, and like the example of his life in the form of Jesus, he is trying to say that you won't ever understand it, but this world is so astonishing wonderful in God's eyes that any alternative form of it would be pointless. Any meaningful world in terms of human life, anyway, must have the potential for contigency. That naturally leaves open the potential for suffering, but only because you can't have any kind of life without the capacity for some form of choice, some amount of free-will, etc.

Great post.

I couldn't disagree more.

It is meaningless to use your own scripture to prove/support your ideas that come from those scriptures. It's self proving and therefore irrelevant to any argument.

The Times is the best newspaper because I read it in the Times.

I like Dong's logic.

JA, I believe you are working on software. Are you intending on launching your product without instructions or a user's guide? and won't you have user support?

Who creates or makes anything and hopes that someone else will develop the user's guide?

One of two conclusions; either there is no God, or if there is, we don't register on their radar.

JustAsking, please grant me permission to steal liberally from that exceptional post. It will prove useful in a discussion I'm about to hold with a believer friend.

And thank the goddess that you have an issue with your genitalia, or you wouldn't be amongst us sharing that wisdom!

HB8

Actually i agree with both of you . I agree with averageaverage that JustAsking write great posts. and i agree with you in what you said. I not agree with some of JustAsking views per se because i dont accept christianity .

LPSG