Things you didn't know about God

[MigL]

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

It's no accident that desert cults like Christianity had prophets who preached communist values and egalitarianism, and pushed back against materialism and wealth acquisition.  It's interesting to see how such a religion gets later coopted by economic/political entities and gradually starts to shy away from collectivism and embrace mercantilism and then capitalism. 

Substitute Karl Marx for Jesus and Communism for Christianity, and you have the same results, but much more recent.
Every institution can be perverted by unscrupulous people for their own ends.

[mistermack]

21 hours ago, Peterkin said:

True: not all examples of God's use and approval of the death penalty were presented in the OP. One would have to be far more conversant with the bible than mistermack appears to be,

Guilty. I was brought up Catholic, and the Catholic church still doesn't encourage bible reading. They would rather tell you the bits that suit their own narrative than have you read it for yourself. That's why they killed people for translating it, years ago. 

Popes were very happy to apply capital punishment, back then. 

[joigus]

On 1/4/2022 at 6:10 AM, mistermack said:

I found out today that God is MASSIVELY in favour of the death penalty. 

I looked up Onanism, (after a reference to masturbation) and it's a pretty good read. 

Judah had two sons, Er and Onan.

God slew Er because he was wicked. Case closed. The death penalty is moral. Although of course, being God, he would KNOW without any doubt that Er was indeed guilty of being wicked. We mere mortals convict on REASONABLE certainty, so there is always that bit of uncertainty I guess. But in cases where there is no doubt at all, then the death penalty is moral, because God didn't just say so, he actually performed the execution himself. 

God then spoke to Er's younger brother, Onan, and told him to have sex with Er's widow. Onan did as he was told, but he pulled his willie out, before he came, and ejaculated on the ground. So God slew him as well. It seems he was a real fan of capital punishment. 

So Onan not only got killed, but he suffered the indignity of giving his name to masturbation, even though his crime was actually just pulling out.

The story then follows Tamar, the widow of Er that Onan was supposed to get pregnant. She asked Judah if she could marry another of his sons, but he said no.

So she dressed up as a prostitute, covered her face with a veil, and met up with Judah on his travels. Not knowing it was his daughter-in-law, Judah negotiated a price for sex  with this "prostitute" , I think it was one goat, and Tamar got pregnant by him. 

Later, when it became obvious that Tamar was pregnant, Judah said that he would kill the man who got her pregnant, and Tamar produced the goat. So Judah realised that he had actually vowed to kill himself. 

It's all there in the good book. Lots of stuff that I didn't know about God. Particularly, how right wing he actually is when it comes to the death penalty. Truly, the Lord is a Republican !!

Another lesson to be had here is: Never pay your debts in goats. 

[TheVat]

One wonders what other debt/credit systems were available for career whores. Let's take the case of Alice.  At some point, she's going to have all the goats she needs.  So the next client, Bob, who offers a goat payment, she needs him to provide some sort of IOU instead.  Then, say, she needs a new bed a while later.  She's a whore, so her beds wear out.  She takes the one-goat paper to the carpenter, Ray.  He can be compensated by transferring the goat paper, which he can take to Bob and get a goat.  But what if Ray is also not needing a goat?  Then he will trade the Bob IOU to someone else. 

Anyway, biblically, it all works out ethically because there is no usury - i.e. interest.   The debt, however it transfers, remains one goat.  This seems important here, since you don't want Lucille the seamstress (who is the seventh recipient of the Bob goat IOU) to show up and say, gosh Bob, this IOU is dated over a year ago....maybe we take an extra leg off one other goat, too?  

[joigus]

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

One wonders what other debt/credit systems were available for career whores.

Camels, I suppose, must have been another form of currency.

Pigs and eels were off the table, probably. 

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

So the next client, Bob, who offers a goat payment, she needs him to provide some sort of IOU instead.

Payment by IOU, the root of all evil. I think that's a good candidate for the original sin.

And, just to keep on-topic by the skin of my teeth, yes, God is a Republican, and a fervent Catholic/Protestant (and so on), and a (fill in with your team's name) supporter, and is on our side in war no matter who we are, and writes straight with crooked lines, and...

I almost forgot: And works in mysterious ways.

 

[Cognizant]

"What if God was one of us..."

It was very interesting for me to hear the opinion that the teaching of Christ has much in common with quantum theory. You get in what you believe. The outcome depends on the observer. That's great, I think but still it's a plain explanation of divine truth)))

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, Cognizant said:

It was very interesting for me to hear the opinion that the teaching of Christ has much in common with quantum theory.

It helps that the people who most firmly believe don't understand either.

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, Peterkin said:

It helps that the people who most firmly believe don't understand either.

LOL +1

[beecee]

On 4/15/2022 at 4:11 AM, Cognizant said:

"What if God was one of us..."

It was very interesting for me to hear the opinion that the teaching of Christ has much in common with quantum theory. You get in what you believe. The outcome depends on the observer. That's great, I think but still it's a plain explanation of divine truth)))

We may not understand fully, quantum theory, but we do have evidence of it.

https://www.magellantv.com/articles/can-quantum-physics-teach-us-about-god-and-ourselves

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2lk8tw/in_quantum_mechanics_what_exactly_counts_as/

"It has been understood and generally accepted for a few decades now that an "observation" or "measurement" in QM occurs whenever the macroscopic state of the measurement apparatus becomes entangled with the state of the system under study. In practice what this means is that observation occurs whenever the the measurement apparatus interacts with the system under study through any interaction that is strong enough to cause some bit to flip or a needle to move. So, for example, if you completely isolate your electron in a vacuum chamber, no measurement occurs until, for example, a photon from the electron escapes into the walls of the vacuum chamber. Then the electron's wave function "collapses" because it has become entangled with the vacuum chamber, which in turn is entangled with the measurement apparatus, so that any bit that flips or needle that moves in the measurement apparatus is correlated with whether the electron was at point X or Y, for example".

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The  Universe acts in (sometimes) mysterious ways.

We still have no direct evidence of any god acting mysterious or otherwise.

[Cognizant]

One more curious thing is that almost every miracle (well, why almost... EVERY miracle) could finally be explained by science... or scientists may say "we cannot explain it now but we'll try in the future"... or science simply cannot prove if the miracle really took place or not. And here comes faith. But what exactly is faith?.. as nobody of us here (I'm sure ) can move mountains or resurrect the dead then our "faith" isn't even as big as a grain... (according to Jesus)... and maybe we simply have "a feeling of faith" but not faith itself. Kinda of an emotion... and therefore we all can neither fully explain the world by scientific method, nor do everything we want being created in the image and likeness of God ahahahahaha

 

[Phi for All]

10 minutes ago, Cognizant said:

And here comes faith. But what exactly is faith?.. as nobody of us here (I'm sure ) can move mountains or resurrect the dead then our "faith" isn't even as big as a grain... (according to Jesus)

Faith is believing completely without any evidence whatsoever, so it's no mystery why nobody can move mountains with it. Using trust rather than faith, I never believe anything 100%, so I always have some leeway for skepticism and doubt. Still, the knowledge I gain from trusted sources is far more reliable than anything somebody wants me to believe through faith. 

Faith asks us to use our strongest form of belief on things that have nothing observable to support their existence.

[Cognizant]

26 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Faith is believing completely without any evidence whatsoever, so it's no mystery why nobody can move mountains with it. Using trust rather than faith, I never believe anything 100%, so I always have some leeway for skepticism and doubt. Still, the knowledge I gain from trusted sources is far more reliable than anything somebody wants me to believe through faith. 

Faith asks us to use our strongest form of belief on things that have nothing observable to support their existence.

Well, I can say that if I'm sure in something that doesn't exist now and could possibly not happen - but I'm sure, I have a bright knowledge it would happen - it really happens. That's how my vein wound on the palm was healed in 1 night  I am Christian and I prayed ofc, but I strangely knew I'll be allright soon - and it happened.

And.. if I have any doubt (rational/fear-driven) I get nothing haha

Edited April 20, 2022 by Cognizant