First off, I'm a noob to christianity, so I guess I apologise in advance for any mistakes oversimplifications http://www.totse.com/bbs/biggrin.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/biggrin.gif)

Ok, well, I've been reading the bible a bit...and I dunno, something about alot of it really speaks to me. I agree with most "common" christian morals, fidelity, not murdering people, doing your best despite the fact you're inherently flawed, etc etc.

I take almost nothing in the bible literally though, nor do I feel it's very important to take it literally, what you want are the basic ideas. I am of the opinion that even if the bible is the word of god, it's the word of god as expressed through flawed, ignorant humans, translated badly, etc etc.

I also find the concept of the big man in the sky ridiculous. I believe that something like a god, some kind of commonly shared spirit, exists in many people (something akin to the Friends Society "light within")...in this sense it is real, in this sense it shapes the world, in this sense it is all powerful. I don't believe in a single supernatural entity. Then again, I'm not sure if the distinction is too important, as it's something people will never conclusively know.

So is there any school of christian thought/organisation that subscribes to a similar kind of view? or are my beliefs not really christian at all?

quote:Originally posted by rabbitweed:

First off, I'm a noob to christianity, so I guess I apologise in advance for any mistakes oversimplifications http://www.totse.com/bbs/biggrin.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/biggrin.gif)

Ok, well, I've been reading the bible a bit...and I dunno, something about alot of it really speaks to me. I agree with most "common" christian morals, fidelity, not murdering people, doing your best despite the fact you're inherently flawed, etc etc.

I take almost nothing in the bible literally though, nor do I feel it's very important to take it literally, what you want are the basic ideas. I am of the opinion that even if the bible is the word of god, it's the word of god as expressed through flawed, ignorant humans, translated badly, etc etc.

I also find the concept of the big man in the sky ridiculous. I believe that something like a god, some kind of commonly shared spirit, exists in many people (something akin to the Friends Society "light within")...in this sense it is real, in this sense it shapes the world, in this sense it is all powerful. I don't believe in a single supernatural entity. Then again, I'm not sure if the distinction is too important, as it's something people will never conclusively know.

So is there any school of christian thought/organisation that subscribes to a similar kind of view? or are my beliefs not really christian at all?

You were doing ok until that second to last paragraph. The analogy of light and darkness comes to mind when you said,

"I believe that something like a god, some kind of commonly shared spirit, exists in many people (something akin to the Friends Society "light within"

The analogy is simple, where there is light there can be no darkness and where there is darkness, there is no light.

Make sense? God manifests Himself through love and binds us through the many dimensions of it. Our lives are transformed into a willingness to lead a "christ like" lifesytle by the redemption of our souls by God's love for us.

Where love can be seen as the "light" in this analogy. "Darkness" describes the absence of love. Or if there is a light within us, it is the true love that is in us (The Holy Spirit). Whereas love can not co-exist with hate as hate is the absence of love.

No person should say they love you then do you any harm.

I do not believe there is a big dude surfin the clouds either.

quote:Originally posted by Interest:

The analogy is simple, where there is light there can be no darkness and where there is darkness, there is no light.

Varying degrees of light and darkness always battle it out. For example, there's some sun shining through some light coloured curtains, making it darker, but I can still see.

quote:Make sense? God manifests Himself through love and binds us through the many dimensions of it. Our lives are transformed into a willingness to lead a "christ like" lifesytle by the redemption of our souls by God's love for us.[/B]

I can dig that yes.

quote:Where love can be seen as the "light" in this analogy. "Darkness" describes the absence of love. Or if there is a light within us, it is the true love that is in us (The Holy Spirit). Whereas love can not co-exist with hate as hate is the absence of love.

No person should say they love you then do you any harm.

I do not believe there is a big dude surfin the clouds either.[/B]

Love can co-exist with hate all the time. And as all humans are flawed and imperfect, must not love/light always coexist with hatred/darkness? If we had only light within, would that not make us better than human?

The truth is you need to decide your religion yourself. I agree with your view of the light being inside us. This is seen in variating degrees in every religion.

Please note...

Anyone who tries to influence your religion has sinister motives of thier own. Do not trust them.

I have to ask, because you said you are new to Christianity: What exactly are you looking for?

I spent until 4:27 AM last night contributing to a discussion on the existance of god, I wrote two of these things explaining my understanding. Here's the one on god. It has a link to my myspace blog which gives a bit of insight into the nature of the universe to put all of this stuff into perspective.



I've started writing now and I've come to find that my understanding of the universe in which this the existance of a god is being debated must be covered before something like this is analyzed. I've pages typed, it would be easier to just write a book with all the information I must cover, I suppose I'll be getting around to that eventually though, it seems inevitable at this point.

Anyway, this god thing...

First of all, to understand anything, it's best to observe it with yourself, and all others removed from the picture. This is the only way to eliminate your own preconceptions and dispositions. To remove the presence of others for this thought experiment, anything read or heard can be forgotten now. If that is manageable so far, analyze this idea of god and it will begin to clear itself for you.

The common, modern image of god is an invention. It is a learning tool that got out of hand. Having gods as angry monsters in the sky that see you when you happen upon a mistake and throw angry lightening bolts at you and all of that is just absurd. The fundamentalist thought that everthing in that idolized book is the "word of god" and completely literal is short-sighted and purposefully naive.

Judaic religions seem to be one of the few that have such large portions of followers mis-understand the religious texts as literal stories of true events. All the eastern religions have myths too, but they're understood as such, it's as though you're reading Aesop's Fables or something of that sort. Sure there's probably a moral to the stories, and if you've not enough sense to have figured it out on your own so far, it'll probably do a good job of explaining it to you. Especially since many of the old testament stories are recycled versions of older analogy stories anyway. The stories that proved efficient at getting across a good point, those were kept, names and locations changed to make it relevant to the audience, then reused.

One must understand what exactly it means to believe in one god. That means that all the cultures of the world, are worshiping the same god. That explains all the philosophical similarities, but you must understand that this "god," isn't anything anthropomorphic at all. It has no human qualities whatsoever. Any personification is only an attempt at uncovering a facet of the nature of this god.

Dogmatic beliefs are just silly. Stop that.

Any insight into god that a book might detail, is completely attainable through nothing but personal reflection. You are as good as any other person before you at understanding things, and therefore there's no excuse for not surpassing those who've gone before you in books such as the bible for developing this understanding of the nature of things.

We are god as much as anything else is. When Jesus stated he was the son of god, well he was right, but that's nothing special. I'm the son of god too. When one dies, the physical body doesn't change at all. The body retains the same chemical composition it always had, only the life bit that sparked you into existence is gone. This could be referred to as a soul or any other number of things. As this life-spark is gone, I'll assume that it's gone somewhere as well. Where this physically is is a bit of a trickier question, for the moment I'll posit that it could be a parallel dimensional reality higher than what we're used to perceiving. This explanation would mean that an entity existing on a dimensional-plane higher than our 3-dimensional one would interact with us as only a single point of existence in our universe. This would provide the soul with a sort of puppet relationship with the body, which is basically the nature of that relationship anyway. In reality, it doesn't particularly matter where or how this destination exists.

Faith is just laziness disguised as something good by the people who are teaching you all sorts of strange stuff that you would need a healthy dose of faith to believe. If something is true, then with a rudimentary amount of intelligence, you can certainly find it to be so on your own. Indeed, that is how any analysis of god started in the first place.

Your analysis of god seems to be from a standpoint that's sprung up as a reactionary to christianity. To understand something like god, all dualistic views are going to have to be dropped. In the search for truth, one must disregard what isn't known to be true and continue on, if you focus on pointing out the things that you think you're beginning to glimpse are not true to the people who believe such things, then you derail yourself.



To completely disregard christianity: In all cultures, there is, or has been at one time before people were so distracted from thinking, an understanding of The One. A simple understanding that everyone is one, and every thing is one. All that is truth leads to this one. And this One is what is god.

I'll post my analysis and destruction of the physical universe on my own blog here.

http://tinyurl.com/rma7q

Religion/God is something one must find by him/her/itself, not through others.

religion really confuses me.

http://www.totse.com/bbs/mad.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/mad.gif)

quote:Originally posted by rabbitweed:

Love can co-exist with hate all the time. And as all humans are flawed and imperfect, must not love/light always coexist with hatred/darkness? If we had only light within, would that not make us better than human?

I agree..I was talking about God in regards to the analogy of "love" and "light"

Where God is there can be no darkness - This is a spiritual analogy and not literal.

The point is I can't say I have God in me and then tell you how much I hate you and curse your very existence. There would be a great deal of conflict deep within my soul that prevents that sort of thing from taking root and over running my being.

quote:Originally posted by Interest: I agree..I was talking about God in regards to the analogy of "love" and "light"

Where God is there can be no darkness - This is a spiritual analogy and not literal.

So people who are touched by god show love and light. I like that.

Then why do priest, people who are closer to god than you, molest children, you can't honestly see this as an act of love, can you?

Thats kind of hypocritical....happens alot to you Christians doesn't it? You preach acceptance but shun others beliefs, you preach peace but don't have any problem with war, you preach alot of things Jesus said, but Jesus it the only one of you who seems to follow them.

quote:Originally posted by Aft3r ImaGe:

So people who are touched by god show love and light. I like that.

Then why do priest, people who are closer to god than you, molest children, you can't honestly see this as an act of love, can you?

Thats kind of hypocritical....happens alot to you Christians doesn't it? You preach acceptance but shun others beliefs, you preach peace but don't have any problem with war, you preach alot of things Jesus said, but Jesus it the only one of you who seems to follow them.

bah you could replace christian and jesus in that paragraph with islam and muhammad. you can't hold a religion accountable to its people and any religion as big as christianity or islam will have a lot of variety. there is hypocracy but that is in the establishment, not the religion itself.

one of the beautiful things about us being able to read for ourselves these days is that you can take you own opinion on the religious texts.

quote:Originally posted by Aft3r ImaGe:

So people who are touched by god show love and light. I like that.

although it's sarcasm....

quote:

Then why do priest, people who are closer to god than you, molest children, you can't honestly see this as an act of love, can you?



I'm assuming you are asking a question to be answered and not just rhetorical.

to see the answer is to understand the spiritual. You see, we are told that the enemy of God can use scripture and pose as an an angel of light.

Remember this is at the spirit level.

You can never look at someone and listen to their words to discern if they are telling you the truth or not. This is because truth will appear threefold - in thought, word and action. The "action" is the "fruit" of the spirit man. Bare with me.

Therefore a true Christian by the grace of God will hold all aspects of this in their person. Meaning they will have the full integrity of their thoughts, words and deeds lineing up and pouring out onto others consistantly. Jesus said, " A tree is known by it's fruit" so by the "deeds" of someone will we know if they are a true Christian or a demon posing as an angel of light.

So to answer your question - no, just because someone says they are a CHristian and then by their actions prove likewise it is not hard to see the "truth"

It is just another way the enemies of God confuse and destroy faith.

quote:

Thats kind of hypocritical....happens alot to you Christians doesn't it?

Not as much as the media portrays..no. Believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see when it comes to the mass media.

quote:

You preach acceptance but shun others beliefs, you preach peace but don't have any problem with war, you preach alot of things Jesus said, but Jesus it the only one of you who seems to follow them.

True statement - Jesus was the only one who did it perfectly. For us, we can only seek forgiveness.

I never preached "acceptance" - It is clear and proven true that God is exclusionary and divisive. It is evident in Totse alone. Not everyone will accept the gift of salvation and redemption. Not all people will be "accepted" in heaven and we have to prepare for that here and now.

I have a problem with war - unjust war that is but there is a time and a place for war but there is never a time and place for pacifism -

" Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me. " George Orwill -

You socialist should appreciate that -