Questorius,
Thanks for the info. I worked with people with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD/DID) for five years helping them integrate their alternate personalities into one, so I enjoy psychology. The research on Atheists shows, across the board, that nearly every Atheist has issues with their father, whether it be an absent father or an emotionally-unavailable father, etc. That’s why I was asking. The emotions and beliefs of our subconscious form from birth to age 7, and from that point on, we’ll relate to God, subconsciously, fairly similarly to the way we relate to our biological father. But consciously, we’ll often have a different sort of view of God and relationship with Him. However, some people’s subconscious feelings and beliefs bleed more heavily into their conscious beliefs. Just depends on the person and their situation.
So you believe that everything could be created by an impersonal, unintelligent, even unconscious being or “thing”? Interesting. Well, I can’t go along with that one since it takes intelligence to create the laws of the universe and the incredibly intricate and sophisticated structures we have present in life on earth. And Evolution theory is so incredibly easy to disprove it’s not even funny. The odds that it’s possible are virtually impossible according to evolution scientists as far back as the 50s who sought to test its plausibility. And by Dawkins own research and confession, we know for sure that neither punctuated equilibrium nor mutation are the driving forces behind evolutionary change. In fact, he admits that we still don’t know what drives evolution. His book that claimed his computer model proved that there didn’t need to be a God to direct Evolution actually proved exactly the opposite. Even Dan Brown in his book Origin pointed that out, as well as many other scientists. But anyway, what I’ve noticed both in my own observation is that in cultures where fathers are by in large emotionally unavailable or extremely strict with their children (like the Asian cultures), the religions in those area end up having an impersonal deity, such as “the Universe,” or in Islam, “Allah,” who is a distant god who doesn’t interact with his people on a personal level, and doesn’t love them unless they love him first. This is all textbook, caused by father wounds. Again, it’s uncanny how clearly it presents itself. But it usually doesn’t matter if you tell someone that who has those issues, because that doesn’t affect change in them. They actually would have to bring up the repressed emotions related to their father and process them in order to see change. So it really does no good to discuss it, but I figure some people who enjoy research might hear it and decide to look into it. And some might be a little ticked off if they find that their subconscious is running the show against their will. Either way, it’s an interesting subject, as if evolution. You know, Mohammad had horrible father and mother wounds growing up. And wouldn’t you know it, his behaviors and actions as an adult are exactly what you’d expect them to be from what happened to him growing up. His religion reflects those issues perfectly.
You say the contradictions in the Gospels are what turned you Atheist? You know, if you ever ask a detective what he thinks about eyewitness testimonies, he’ll tell you that he never believes the witnesses, because their stories always conflict. My wife’s a brain researcher and she says that human memories is extremely unreliable. So detectives know better than to trust witnesses. TV shows and movies grossly misrepresent stuff like that. My point is that the Gospels aren’t necessarily contradicting each other. They’re the retelling of the events from different people’s perspectives decades after they happened. So of course they’re going to be a little bit different than one another, but they’re pretty dark close. That’s not half back for people remembering events that happened decades before, I’d say. And Hebrew writers weren’t exactly worried about everything lining up exactly right. They’re more concerned about writing from the heart to convey the message within the stories. The language of the heart is story and body language. That’s why Christ died on the cross–to show us, visually, that God isn’t holding anything against us. He did that so our hearts would drop all of their judgments against their self which would in turn drop their shame. And that’s exactly what near-death experiences show us.
When people get to heaven in near-death experiences, they relive everything they did that hurt other people, but this time, they have to feel how it made the other person feel. They relive it all at the same time, extremely quickly, and when it’s done, they feel awful. God basically does it bring all of their shame to the surface to be dealt with. The person usually says something like, “That was so bad, so wrong.” Then God comes close and says, “No, no. Not good or bad, not right or wrong…just a lesson learned.” The people say at that point, they realize that it was their own judgment that was causing them all their pain in life, not God. They say they realize God was never judging them. That’s when the realize there is no good or bad, no right or wrong, and they drop all of their shame. And immediately when that happens, they feel God’s love engulf them and it’s indescribably amazing. So, like you said, there’s no good or bad, no right or wrong…God agrees with you. lol Not only that, but if you do some good solid research into the Ancient Hebrews, you’ll find that they had the same belief. They believed in function and dysfunction, but not good and evil. Those are our culture’s words, not theirs. They have no equivalent words or concepts in their culture. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil should be translated The Tree of the Intimate Knowing of Function and Dysfunction. And there’s no judgment on those words function and dysfunction. These people were nomads, so a dysfunctional person could cause people to die. So they had to be very careful and loving when dealing with dysfunctional people. And if they couldn’t help them, they had to deal with them harshly. So this idea of no good or bad makes a lot more sense in their culture than in ours. And verses like this one make a lot of sense, too:
Isaiah 45:7 - I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
The Ancient Hebrews were Eastern Philosophy, just as everyone was back then before the 7th Century B.C. Western Philosophy came later and had good and bad things it introduced. But in their view, God is a balance of chaos and order, but His will is perfect love. So He uses darkness and light for His good purpose. This can be seen in stories such as Ahab and the prophet Macaiah. Macaiah says that God and the hosts of heaven were on His left and His right (which means some were good and some were evil–these are angels and demons). He asks them how they can make Ahab attack the king of Assyria and get killed. One of them says he will be a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab’s prophets. God says, “Go, you will be successful.” So clearly, an angel of God isn’t a lying spirit, so that was a demon. God actively uses demons for His purposes and He treats them with respect all throughout scripture. Jesus treats the demons called Legion with much respect. They beg Him not to send them to the Abyss, but instead to cast them into the pigs so they can kill their selves and be dispersed back into the world to cause more mischief. lol I mean, seriously? Jesus is just gonna let them go back into the world and cause trouble? Yep! So yeah, He treats them with respect and kindness. He knows He’s in control of everything, so they’re not a problem. I agree with you–there’s no right or wrong, no good or bad. What there is, though, are loving actions and unloving (selfish) actions. And that’s what we see in the world. The standard of “good and bad” or “right and wrong” is what causes so much shame in the world. If we ran things differently so as not to build so much shame in people, we’d see a lot more loving people with a lot less shame in the world. But that ain’t gonna happen this side of heaven. lol
Thanks again for the info. Much appreciated. Good luck, man.
As a kid I used to be fascinated with ancient Romans whose names often end with -ius. Seems I got carried away by my inner child when creating my nickname 