Poll: If you are a Trump supporter, do you consider him to be a “good Christian?”

[hog88]

We're trying to study discuss Holy Spirit in church currently. I am leading the discussion in 5 days. Very curious about God in us as a construct of our experiences.

I had someone once tell me that that little voice, your conscience is what separates us from animals. It's what lets us know right from wrong and while following it might not always lead to the most enjoyable or profitable outcomes you never regret it in the long run.

I tend to believe that.

 

[Septic]

I appreciate the share. But that is more an exercise in defining than it is application.

How to you approach moments where logic and reasoning or inadequate and you make a choice based on faith/hope/trust, etc?

Experience?

Without experience, one can just follow their gut or as MP mentioned, intuition or instinct.

 

[McDad]

When the Holy Spirit enters your body..he says Whoah..lotsa room in here.

You shouldn't yak around about people's weight.

 

[hog88]

You shouldn't yak around about people's weight.

Yep, this is a heavy subject.

 

[GordonC]

Experience?

Without experience, one can just follow their gut or as MP mentioned, intuition or instinct.

unless the instinct comes from experience

 

[McDad]

Experience?

Without experience, one can just follow their gut or as MP mentioned, intuition or instinct.

Like MP, you attribute those to mind?

 

[MercyPercy]

That's as good an explanation as any other.

Do you think creative ideas, epiphanies, and such are also emanating from mind, then?

Yes.

 

[Septic]

Like MP, you attribute those to mind?

I'm not sure. I haven't put enough thought into it to have formed an opinion, but it's plausible, sure.

 

[McDad]

I'm not sure. I haven't put enough thought into it to have formed an opinion, but it's plausible, sure.

Yes.

Have either of you ever heard stories of people who have lost a loved one and even though they live across the country the person wakes up at the exact moment the loved one passes away? Do you consider those stories to be bogus and if not is that something in the mind that is waking a person at the exact time a loved one passes away?

 

[MercyPercy]

Have either of you ever heard stories of people who have lost a loved one and even though they live across the country the person wakes up at the exact moment the loved one passes away? Do you consider those stories to be bogus and if not is that something in the mind that is waking a person at the exact time a loved one passes away?

I wouldn't say it's completely impossible because, regardless of what anyone tells you, the scientific process is not perfect. Only the sith deal in absolutes.. etc. But I haven't seen any evidence that would suggest anything more than coincidence.

 

[Orangeslice13]

I’m intrigued by people that have a hard time with my colorful use of language when they find out that I’m a believer in the G-d of A, I and J. I say that because I just thought to myself. “Holy ****, what a great conversation.” I’m proud to know you guys. It’s a testament to the respect that’s in each of you that’s this conversation is being had in such a respectful way.
So from my point of view, this has been good ****. It’s been a good read. y’alls **** has been on fire tonight. I think it does in fact qualify as “Holy ****”

 

[Orangeslice13]

I wouldn't say it's completely impossible because, regardless of what anyone tells you, the scientific process is not perfect. Only the sith deal in absolutes.. etc. But I haven't seen any evidence that would suggest anything more than coincidence.

I absolutely love that quote and hope it was on purpose to point out the hypocrisy of the Jedi, as that statement “only a sith speaks in absolutes” is an absolute statement.

 

[McDad]

I wouldn't say it's completely impossible because, regardless of what anyone tells you, the scientific process is not perfect. Only the sith deal in absolutes.. etc. But I haven't seen any evidence that would suggest anything more than coincidence.

Appreciate the convo.

Sorry if I derailed or got tiresome.

Related to your reply, hospice nurses have incredible stories that bolster my belief in a world beyond our ability to quantify, sense, or comprehend.

 

[BigO95]

That’s reading into the Bible a claim that isn’t being made

The information is certainly there.

 

[Orangeburst]

I wonder if Yak Prescott can lead the boys to the promised land.

 

[hog88]

I wonder if Yak Prescott can lead the boys to the promised land.

Keep yaking it up..

 

[PEPPERJAX]

The devil absolutely hates the book because of the fulfilled prophecy. It wasn't written after the fact but many years before. Perhaps you should dig a little bit deeper in history.

Daniel chapter 11.

 

[PEPPERJAX]

The bible has about as much legitimacy as the tablets Joseph Smith claim to have discovered (buried in a hill) and translated.

People write and say a lot of crazy things.

Don’t talk about Brother Joseph that way.

 

[volinbham]

Have either of you ever heard stories of people who have lost a loved one and even though they live across the country the person wakes up at the exact moment the loved one passes away? Do you consider those stories to be bogus and if not is that something in the mind that is waking a person at the exact time a loved one passes away?

I believe there is more than the mind but I don't know what it is. It just seems to be the arrogance of man to believe that all can be explained by the mind or man-created thinking. Is it an energy? a force? an entity? No idea.

 

[GordonC]

I believe there is more than the mind but I don't know what it is. It just seems to be the arrogance of man to believe that all can be explained by the mind or man-created thinking. Is it an energy? a force? an entity? No idea.

and the assumption of the superiority of everything logical or rational being necessarily "correct"

 

[MercyPercy]

I believe there is more than the mind but I don't know what it is. It just seems to be the arrogance of man to believe that all can be explained by the mind or man-created thinking. Is it an energy? a force? an entity? No idea.

Plenty of things we couldn't explain throughout history that we were able understand eventually. It's arrogant to think we have should have it all figured out now. I'm not willing to leap to the supernatural without evidence because we don't understand something today.

 

[volinbham]

and the assumption of the superiority of everything logical or rational being necessarily "correct"

given the likelihood of other intelligent life in the universe, our logic or rationality could be neither

 

[Orangeslice13]

@Septic
“The word of G-d”
So…

The “Word of G-d” is introduced in John ….

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.



The “Word of G-d” is not a Hebrew term or idiom. It’s not widely used as a concept in Judaism. So people always think John is introducing or revealing something new here. The typical explanation you’ve probably heard is “Jesus is the Word”. But that’s not exactly what is going on there. I have said this a bunch so you may have heard me say “my G-d is a G-d of laws. His standard given to us is called the law (Torah) so it makes sense that his creation is set up on laws” this is a very Hebrew way of thinking. We say that all the time. Similar statements can be found in Hebrew writings all the way back to 200 BCE. So what John is doing here is borrowing from a Greek philosopher to explain a Hebrew concept to people who will be new to the Hebrew way of thinking. Specifically the Greek philosophy of Thales of Miletus, who lived in the seventh century BC.

Thales argued that, contrary to the idea that the world was largely erratic and unpredictable in its operations, it was actually subject to rigid laws of nature, and that these laws could be discovered using reason and observation.



This meant that G-d – or, depending on which belief system you subscribed to, a whole pantheon of gods – created the world upon some clear and knowable principle, and that this principle is constant rather than changeable and arbitrary.

One of Thales’ followers, Heraclitus, used the term ‘Logos’ to refer to this rational principle. ‘Logos’ means ‘word’ but it also denotes the entire rational structure of knowledge as Thales and Heraclitus had theorised it. And as the term ‘Logos’ was taken up by more and more philosophers, it came to refer not to some abstract entity but to a thing, even a person: the person who had created this orderly system of knowledge and principle in the world. Logos, if you will, became personified.

This tradition spread beyond the Greek world, and was taken up by the Jewish followers of YHWH or the Old Testament G-d In Yeshua’s (Jesus) time, a man named Philo the Jew popularised the term Logos as a reference to the rational aspect of YHWH

So when John begins his gospel by taking us back to the very beginning – of time and of the world and the universe – he is using the term Logos in light of this thinking.

So ‘In the beginning was the Word’ means ‘In the beginning was Logos’ which means ‘at the beginning of everything, there was the entity we know as God, who embodied, and created, the rational principle on which everything is founded’.





****yes , I cheated and borrowed parts of this from a paper I wrote and other parts from a paper a friend wrote as I didn’t feel like typing it all out again. I hope that was at least informative and didn’t bore you to death. ******

 

[volinbham]

Plenty of things we couldn't explain throughout history that we were able understand eventually. It's arrogant to think we have should have it all figured out now. I'm not willing to leap to the supernatural without evidence because we don't understand something today.

not arguing that we should have it all figured out by now - more arguing the likelihood of things out there that our Western thinking will never figure out.

 

[MercyPercy]

not arguing that we should have it all figured out by now - more arguing the likelihood of things out there that our Western thinking will never figure out.

We may need @EasternVol to help us out.