anyone else lost faith?

if einstein didnt make sense to you would that make him the idiot or you?

ill explain more clearly.

i dont believe in god. however i was brought up a christian. as were you. you are asking a question that you are asking to christians. i gave you the answer a christian would give because i know the gist of what they believe, since i, and supposdly you, were tought it growing up.

I dont need to believe in a theory to know how it works

you do physics. its not like you have to believe in the ether to know what the scientists were on about. caus otherwise youd have to fail either the theory of ether, or the many theories of electromagnetism.


and so, i dont need to believe jesus was the son of god to know that christians believe he was the son of god!!

 

oh and on the subject of animal intelligence

animals are smarter than you think

you know the only few things that seperates us from animals are that we can structure our thoughts into communicatable concepts, and so, learn; and in terms of intelligence, humans have a concept of 'meaning' that other animals have not been shown to convey. animals have no hands to easily manipulate their environment, no speech to communicate how to manipulate their environment. if your dog could speak its thoughts in english then you would be able to communicate with it and teach it heaps! but instead you must communicate through the essential things it knows instinctially. food, care, simple signals. if your dog had hands, it would quickly learn how to open and close doors, eat with utensils (though it doesnt need to caus it doesnt care about being tidy and 'cultured') and even turn on many apliances. if a human went into a dogs body they could work out how to do many of these things because humans have an instinct to manipulate their environment due to the fact we have grown up with hands and society teaches children to do so. dogs can physically do many things with their resources but they dont need to and so they dont have that instinct to do so, since you are there to feed them. if you leave an animal alone with a box of food they will try all they can to get the food out of the opening. many animals CAN and DO do this actually, myself regularly seeing ravens opening food packets to get whatsinside, from normal plastic wrappers to slightly opened lunchboxes.

if you put a human be themselves in teh wildlife, they wont be much smarter than a monkey. since theyve got hands though and very good hand control, they would be able to learn how to manipulate their environment, and link cause to effect more efficiently and clearly.

pigs are actually considered smarter than dogs, and dolphins are considered near-human.


many animals are actually smarter than humans in differnet parts of the brain. most animals can navigate and recognise familiar things 100 times better than humans. many animals can identify their senses and detect dangers, interpret the environment, and know how to live in order to heal themselves when sick or injured.

all humans can do intellectually higher, is have a concept of meaning, and have a short term memory capable of linkning together various indirect cause and effect.

human intelligence is mostly confused with human knowlege. which has to do with humans ability to record and communicate thigns they know better than most other animals.


sorry this isnt the focus of the thread but it works me up when people make out that animals are stupid and -below- humans.

humans cant do anything for themselves, they need to create weapons and devices in order to overcome animals. and even then various animals have outsmarted human attacks. humans are shit, we are lower in superiority to many animals in many ways. we just happen to cheat and thats why we have the upper hand. any shit person can cheat and beat those with the true power.

just like a hax0r can use cheats.. theyre manipulating their environment to get the upper hand in counterstrike. humans are the hax0rs of the environment makingf out that theyre better than the players whod whoop their ass wihtout their cheats.

pidgeons and mice survive more and better than humans. clearly we are not even the most surviving organisms on our planet anyway.

 

yeah i knew the ate them only the priest people where the ones who ate them.

 

yeh like that guy who was cured of dementia

 

Don't let the devil get to you, man. He's a LIER and a DECEIVER, he's trying his best to lead you off track! Don't listen to that fallen angel in the deepest pit of hell! Don't listen to the feelings he gives you!

Surround yourself with fellow Christians...otherwise the world'll rub off on you.

 

Nope. Not to contact God. They did that to pay for their sins, as far as I know...

And Pigs are intelligent. VERY intelligent. So are chickens, surprisingly enough.

Pigs are as, or more, intelligent than dogs. It's proven.
(BTW: In old testament times they were forbidden to eat pigs, beef, or anything with clovered hooves.)

 

Stoner, I see you acknowledge instinct.
But what is it?

 

fuck yeah pigs are intelligent. one could even argue their more intelligent than some humans, but i wont go there.
i agree with you 100% stoner bill, animals are a LOT more intelligent than we think they are. all animals have personatities, truely, if you pay attention, every animal has its own way of doing its thing, no species of animal acts in a robotic consistent manner. i think this applies even in some of the smaller animals, even rats can be extremeeely personable and unique creatures if you just pay attention to them, and open yourselves up to them. youll see they have a lot more going than what meets the eye.

and i think every animal has its own special ability or purpose, which is to say that humans are not BETTER than any animal just because they can control it. every animal is truely different in what it does. some animals have amazing abilities and can accomplish things a human could never accomplish. for example cow dung grows magic mushrooms, which are a fascinating amazing drug imo but thats not what were talking about.
another great example is the animals that fled and some even saved some people from the tsunami that killed TONS of humans. if animals can sense the future , or are in tune with the earths vibrations and frequencies, how can we say that were better than them when they could end up saving our lives one day? everything is unique, and humans are not some exclusive supreme animal built to reign and control and have its way with the planet all in the name of GREED.


and burbot, you quote jesus saying "the person who eats all vegetables is a fool, but the person who eats all food is wise" or something like that. alright lets try to apply this to TODAY, right now. who, do you know, eats a diet purely of vegetables? who do you know that eats ANY vegetables, or vegetables in large quanities compared to the other gunk our supermarkets offer? things change. and they have definatley changed for the worse for these amazing species of animals and our diets. our diets are mush and almost the perfect yin to the health of yang. do you think if jesus knew that millions of people were getting dramatic negative changes in their health and causing humongous amounts of suffering and negativity unto the world and the environment, do you think that compassionate loving miraculous being would advise or embrace that diet? no way, thats the kind of shit i see jesus raising hell in the marketplace about and fucking some shit up over.

 

i guess i define instinct as the parts of the mind that arent controlled by reasoning. the programmed brain functions that are independant of what someone has learnt or not (though what someone has learnt can affect how the instincts parcieve their environment, eg, something scary will instinctially make someone scared unless they know already that the thing wonthurt them)

though im sure if i took more time i could define it better

 

You may define instinct, but can you explain it?

 

oh.

i wont bother doing so in the christian forum, because my explination would include the dismissal of the soul.

 

It just sounds like to em that you were raised christian becasue maybe your parents were christian,that doesnt make you christian,the prayer of salvation does(maybe you ahve jsut checking)
i was also raised christian and wheni got to high school i rebeled agains it and didnt beleive it any longer,i got to a point in my life where nothing made sence in my life and i saw no point of living............i blamed god....as alot of us do adn told him to show up if he was there! and he did,that was the day my life changed,i began to know jesus for myslef!

friend you haveto find jesus for yourself,dont worry about what your famly think (take advise of course though) your relationship with god is between you and him.have you asked him to reveil the truth to you?
we as humans always try and find logic in everything,but dont you realsie that our god is not a god of logic but miracles,what people say will never happen,or are impossible he does!

 

well...
the crisis of faith...
hmmmm, d'ye like reading books?
'cause some of these printed words could help you work on what to do with this ummmm "god-energy" so many of us seem to be in contact with...


1) who was this jesus fella anyways?
god incarnate? the one who would fulfill the requirements that (some) jews of the period expected of the messiah? a hick rabbi with delusions of godhood? a magus? an essene schismatic? a tantrik adept? the code-name for an amanita mushroom eating sex cult? an invention of an exceptionally able fabulist of the third century? an alien? a time-traveller?
a few books to explore some of the more plausible explanations:
the passover plot; the jesus party; those incredible christians (etc.)
jesus the magician
the essene gospel of peace of jesus christ
rescuing the bible from fundamentalism

(gosh there's plenty more, but maybe later, eh?)

~
now, as to christians & the environment...
well, the christian bible is broad enough to support a number of views--- anything from reagan & bush's "jesus is coming back any minute now, so let's use up all the raw materials we can while there's still time" to those who consciously wish to be "good stewards" of this planet, & do their best to leave it in better shape than we got it (remember the parable of the talents?)

~

now, as to your spiritual direction...
if you still have an attachement to the christ figure so powerful in our cultural history (but have problems with acknowledging the crucified rabbi to be god incarnate)...
well, there's always folks like unitarians (UU), as well as folks coming from some place like deism (many of america's founding fathers were not christians, but were in fact deists)...
~
& as to christianity & vegetarianism --- well, some of those translations into english reading "meat" may have sometimes meant "sustenance" & not specifically "cooked animal flesh"...
& there have been many christians who, for scriptural reasons, felt that killing an animal so that it's body can be consumed as food, is wrong, & so they just don't eat meat...


~~~
oh, and cattle do not have "cloven hooves" (google "kashrut dietary laws", mmmkay?)
swine, deer, camels, maybe --- but not cattle or oxen or sheep...

now "fish without scales", that's another bit of dietary laws...

 

yeah, but thats the kosherones if im not mistaken...Jesus cleansed all the food,mind you i think it is in the letters part of the NT, and im not the biggest believr in Paul, but still...