Offensive Symbols in KAG --> Offensive Symbols in General --> General Chat on Religion

Whilst Pastafarianism is truly awesome, and it calls itself a true religion, most people accept that it is merely a parody religion, so I was discounting it. :P

 

Moreover, to add to what TBS said, 1 000 000$ is a finite amount, which poorly correlates with the concept of an infinite god.

Thus is the danger with analogies that touch on divinity-- most things people are familiar with (and hence make good material for analogies) are non-infinite in nature, which is problematic when you're dealing with ultimate realities and everything is quantified in terms of 'all knowing/powerful/etc.'.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa! Totally not what I meant, bone! Sorry if it came across like that! Clearly I need to learn to annunciate better as I type. :p

What I was shooting at was that, at the end of the day, any significant decision gets made either with or without the consideration that God might have an opinion about said decision. Ofc you can be unsure of the exact nature of the whole god thing and still make significant decisions-- it's just that, when you have a decision to make, you'll either factor in the possible existence of god, or you won't.

My point was that, practically speaking, there are no agnostic decisions. Either God's your lodestone while navigating, or He isn't.
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Re: tangible experiences of God--
TBS, Hella, anyone else interested: What kind of personal, tangible experience/encounter with a supreme being would you be/have been looking for? I'm genuinely curious. There's the miracle thing, obviously, but anything else apart from that?
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Goona have to disagree with you on that one, DJ.

Sure, 'walking by faith not sight' comes into it a times but 'walking by faith' presumes that you have a solid faith to rely upon. The writer of Hebrews offers us an excellent definition of faith ("To have faith is to be sure of that which we hope for & to be certain of that which we cannot see." ~Heb 11:1) which highlights the problem with saying 'You just need to make a choice and believe'; namely that unless one has good, solid reasons to be "certain of that which we cannot see" (i.e. certain of God's existence & intentions towards us) it is impossible to have faith-- which means walking by it is also kinda impossible.

Ah, but saying "He merely wants you" doesn't really give us a satifactory answer, does it, DJ? After all, what is meant by the verb 'wants'?

Not meaning to pick on you, DJ, but there's some issues here... :L Least of which, if you don't mind me saying, you're coming across as rather Arminian. Poke me sometime about maybe exploring the nature of a completely infinite, totally sovereign God. :p
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#1: Do you want a serious answer, or should I just crack jokes here? 'Cos I know a few funny ones, plus the serious answer will be a long and involved thing that will take me past my bedtime to write+proofread. :p

#2: Have you read C.S. Lewis's Miracles? It's a heavy read, but v. good thought-chow. In it he mentioned 'corn-kings', which I suspect is quite relevant in this instance. The matter is too complex to go over now, but in essence, it relevance here could be termed:

Well, if there were a God, and that God created humanity & then sought out relationship with humans particularly-- so much so that God became human to accomplish said relationship. Maybe if all that were so, maybe... Maybe there's something inherent in the human form that speaks of God? Something so deeply ingrained that it's recognised by many people as they go about trying to come to terms with who 'God' might be and because of that something they end up incorporating human likeness into the gods they make?

Or maybe not?

(Sorry for that hideous run on sentence above-- shows how difficult it is to condense the topic down to manageable size.)

Basically, the argument is that you can't use the fact that many religions share a particular trait to draw any kind of conclusion about their validity. If you pick one religion then you can use it as a lens to see maybe why the others have formed the way they have, but that's it-- correlation does not veracity revoke.

(Man I feel cryptic, sorry about that. In my defense, it's a huge topic once you start delving into parallel religious development-- not something we can really delve into here without pulling out a lot of technical talk & requiring people reading the tread to go read lots of musty tomes.)
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Eww. Why go for parody when you could go for mythos? If we're seriously talking worldviews that no one seriously believes, give me Lovecraft's work any day-- soooooooooooo much classier. :3
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Wait, so Jesus was the one who said "Fastest way to make a billion bucks? Start a new religion." Aww man, and here I was thinking Hubbard came up with that all on his own. :(
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NB: I'd have been done an hour ago, but you fags kept posting. >.<

 

To relate, the same reason any good movie based on animals or inanimate beings anthropomorphizes them, so that we can relate.

You guys have had quite some discussion in the last few pages, as far as the donation platter, it usually actually goes to a decent place, but I suppose it does depend on the church, and there is always a good reason to want to at least KNOW where something is going, I agree.