Mortality and injustice (natural and human) are the only things that trouble me about the absence of God.
Because there is no wise and compassionate overseer to battle and suppress injustice, the world is full of it, and humanity must struggle on its own to rectify this defect. But humanity lacks the wisdom and powers of a god, so it realizes justice imperfectly and incompletely and only at great cost. We evolve our society into a better state so slowly most of us will never live to see the better world we strive to create and leave behind for those who will succeed us. We battle crime and disease and corruption and tsunamis and ignorance and insanity and every natural and human injustice, and we would all be rid of these things at once if we could, and the world would be wonderful without them.
The greatest benefit of a world with a god in it would be that none of this would plague us. That it does plague us proves this world has no god in it. Eventually, we will be able to create our own worlds, and through trial and error we will create on our own the better world that a god would have created in the first place, had there ever been a god. But that is still a long way off. In the meantime, we continue slowly building a better world out of the one we're in, so that each generation leaves a world behind that is at least a little better than the one before it.
Unique among these evils is death. Which is unique because of its finality, thoroughness, and irreversibility. It is annoying that I will cease to exist in a few decades. I still don't lose any sleep over this, since after I'm dead I won't be around to worry about it, and when I'm around, I'm not dead, and thus have nothing to worry about. I enjoy the life I have precisely because it is all I will get. But I would very much have liked to live a great deal longer, to accomplish and experience a thousand things I so much wish to, but know I'll never have time for. Through technology we will defeat death ourselves eventually, and although I'm not likely to live long enough to be among those who enjoy that triumph, I am very happy for those who will. But once again, a world with a god in it would not have death in it to begin with.
Though these things trouble me, they trouble me only because I know they are true. Accepting reality for what it is, instead of hiding from it in delusions of magical salvation and eternal life, is fundamentally required of anyone who intends to actually make the world a better place, and their own lives better. The sooner you acknowledge the defects of the world, the sooner you will be motivated to roll up your sleeves and get to work fixing it, while making the best of what you have.
Comments
"infinity has no end" is self evident, by the very definition of "infinity". Speaking in riddles is not going to convince anyone.
I would agree with your conclusion that most religions are mutually exclusive, but that does not mean yours is the correct one.
To claim that the bible is not logically false when it is clearly filled with contradictions is just arrogant. The quote at the end is the worst, to paraphrase - I am correct because I say so.
What contradictions?
Thanks.
http://www.godcontention.org/christian/is-baptism-necessary-for-salvation
If both sides are correct, then my side, which states that the other side is incorrect, is itself incorrect.
I believe I understand your intended argument, that you personally cannot tell what the Bible says about baptism, and neither can many other people (including many self-professed Christians), therefore the Bible is contradictory. However, it should be fairly clear that your failure to understand what the Bible says does not make its author's claims contradictory. My response to your claim is that one side of the contradiction you insist the Bible affirms is in fact not affirmed by the Bible.
[continued]
Even if I am wrong in my position and my understanding of scripture regarding baptism, this itself also does not make the Bible contradictory. Instead, the negation of my view would be correct, and I would be wrong.
If you are not saying my position is wrong, then you are saying you yourself are wrong, since my position is that the Bible does not affirm that baptism is required for salvation, and you insist that it does.
"What contradictions?" - McCabe
"You must be baptised to be saved, and it is not the case you must be baptised to be saved." - Philo
"The Bible only says it is not the case you must be baptised to be saved." - McCabe
"Many Christians don't agree." - Philo
"Just because people disagree, that doesn't make the Bible contradictory." - McCabe
"Your aim is to obfuscate with straw men. I am totally disinterested in the subject (so I post continually on it). I guess I am just more tolerant than emotionally and dogmatically blinkered Christians like you." - Philo
That conversation just took a turn for the bizarre.
"If you were in fact wrong, what evidence would persuade you that you were?"
I could follow several paths of correction, including God telling me I'm wrong.
"More quotes from the bible?"
Not isolated quotes, no, but with context and explanation, such that the alternate view made better sense of scripture than my current understanding, sure.
"What if someone claimed to have personal revelation from Jesus which was different to the revelation with which you have been vouchsafed?"
If their personal revelation made better sense of scripture to me than my own current understanding (an understanding for which "revelation" alone is probably not the right word), again, sure (1 Thessalonians 5:20).
Apart from direct divine revelation, scripture is the authoritative guide. All human claims must be compared to it (Acts 17:11).
To the more substantive issue - I notice that yet again you refer to scripture as "authoritative" when I have clearly demonstrated that it is not. As I said, depending on which verses you cherry pick and which you ignore, you will come down on one or other side of the baptism "issue". Not being a Christian, I have no vested interest in either position and can see (from the work of Christian bible scholars) that both sides have multiple bible verses to "justify" them and each side ignores the verses which support the other view. Ergo the bible contradicts itself.
http://www.godcontention.org/christian/is-baptism-necessary-for-salvation
I was not intentionally ignoring anything.
Thanks for the assist!
However, those who take the opposing view have other verses from the bible which permit them to take this very specific and explicit command at face value, and again according to their choice of verse and interpretation of same, they also are perfectly correct.
Ergo both sides can and do cherry-pick the verses in the bible which support their position and ignore, rationalize or explain away those which don't. QED.
1. Those who believe and are baptised.
2. Those who do not believe.
However, the debate in question is over a third category of people:
3. Those who believe and are not baptised.
This category would include people like Abraham, Moses, David, the thief on the cross, and Cornelius before baptism, when he had, according to scripture, already received the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:45).
Mark 16:16 does not address the circumstances of the category of people in question and thus has no direct bearing on the conversation at all.
Thanks for bringing it up.