Topic: Religious beliefs on bitcoin - page 14. (Read 22413 times)

Many people, when faced with the reality of personal responsibility, prefer to let magical sky beings take responsibility for the difficulties in their life.

That's cool, to each their own. Just as long as they don't try to push those beliefs on me and mine.

As to the OP, Bitcoin is not the "one currency to rule them all" from Revelations. I'd be more worried about RFID chips, frankly. Those things are going to be showing up everywhere pretty soon.

I still have very difficult questions that I ask God.  Sometimes He gives me an answer, sometimes I do not get an answer or it takes a while to get one, and sometimes the answer He gives is not what I was hoping for, but that is part of the journey of faith.  Even Jesus, when faced with the daunting task of dying for our sins prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."  Even Jesus was given answers to prayers that were not the easiest to accept.  So much so, he sweat drops of blood while he agonized over facing the cross for us.  Also, I think that for those of us that are logical, we find we need more answers than some that are perfectly content not really understanding much (even though I think it is prudent for all Christians to understand as much as they can about their faith, other faiths, science etc...)  We should not be burying our heads in the sand.

If you don't mind my asking, what were some of those difficult questions?  If you are comfortable in sharing them I would be interesting in knowing what they were, especially ones that were so difficult you lost your religion from them.

John 20:17
  "Don't cling to me," Jesus said, "for I haven't yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

 Also, why does Jesus(Peace be with him) constantly refer to himself as the son of man?

    All of the prophets offer guidance and good example.

   Many mystics speak of an experience called union. This is the state in which the "I" dissolves and the individual consciousness merges into universal consciousness. Maybe samadi, nirvana, enlightenment, God consciousness, enlightenment, ecstatic trance, are other words for this. Jesus(peace be with him and with his blessed mother and disciples) was likely one who attained this state. For those who have attained this level of consciousness, the concepts of "I" and "We" may become absurdities. Expression of this union by Hallaj and its interpretation by exoteric thinkers resulted in his being put to death - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansur_Al-Hallaj .
     It is easier to worship an image since it is something that the imagination can grasp, whereas the ultimate reality(eternity) is too vast for the limited reasoning of the intellect. The first images of Jesus or Buddha(peace be with them) were first produced several hundred years after the original teachings, enough time for the essence of the teaching to become diluted and/or corrupted.
   In this sense, the establishment of the trinity was a good appeal to the masses, because it allowed the image of Jesus to take the place of the idols of the Roman temple, thus making Christianity more compatible with the existing rituals.

   This is all conjecture based on a few years of study, I hope it may be helpful to any seekers here, and may I be forgiven if I am mistaken.

Concentrate, ktttn, pay attention & i'll talk you through this:  This ain't alt.fan.karl-malden.nose, stay on topic.  
The question you should have asked is "did [ i ] spend much time with dixie cups," the answer to which would have been "didn't everyone?"

No. But my faith in science, math, particle physics and programming can be checked.
You spend much time in ancient scribeville?
Wait.. dont answer that.

You are that magical man, take some LSD and watch as you make something out of nothing.

How so?  You spend much time at CERN? 

Not true.

...And faith in dixie cups is more founded than faith in quantum mechanics.  What's your point?

Abrahamic religions are obsolete because bitcoin philosophy and technology are not built into them.
Faith in programmers is more founded than faith in ancient scribes.

No offense, but I always thought having imaginary friends was kinda silly. I can't say I've had that experience, however real it may have been to you.

EDIT: It's different. I've seen God regularly answer prayers in ways that I could not remotely influence on my own let alone concoct.

I had an imaginary friend too at one point. He was totally real to me, I loved him, and I trusted him. It was a close relationship, but I somehow eventually outgrew it. Perhaps it was the realization that it was all just my imagination, all in my mind, and that my friend was really nothing more than a plush rabbit. Perhaps it was a deeper realization that my friend couldn't answer any questions I didn't already know, and thus he was just something fully contained within my mind. I don't know. But I eventually lost my religion the same way, when I was confronted with very dark and difficult questions, and god couldn't answer them because I myself didn't have an answer either.

I think the young man was rather hasty on both counts. He was also seriously outgunned. Had he known how perverted some of the Hadith are, he might have had some ammo.

That's an assumption. I was raised Pentecostal. I had experiences that could be rationalized in that way. Eventually, in learning how cults operate, I became highly suspect of Christianity as well. I am all too familiar with that sheer sense of dread that such a huge percentage of the planet's population could be devoted to such self-perpetuating deceptions. But there was still a drive to find out more.

Eventually I wanted to test and see whether there is anything more than meets the eye. I sought out the most seemingly secular advancements in the use of what they called "psy" phenomenon, incredulously, to see if I applied rigorous testing criteria, could I come up with something compelling, something besides rhetoric, hearsay, and tingly things. I bit off more than I could chew. To my utter shock, it worked.

Long story short, it was all downhill from there. Ten years later I was finding that everything mysticism has to offer is just a carrot before the horse. It does function, impossible things happen, but not to the end that it promises (which is why it's frequently debunked, why divination is practically useless). I was a slave to the darkness and depravity that came with it all, until the day Jesus broke through and changed everything.

He leaves the 99 sheep to find the one that is lost, that I can attest to.

Walking with him since then has been a learning experience. He teaches me that I can trust him, and he proves faithful every time, always above my expectations. It's a relationship now, not a belief, not dependent on anyone else's opinion. It's not something I can un-realize.

+1
I thought discussions of the Koran can't be properly had in this language.

When i was a child, I believed in ghosts, monsters, and Santa Claus, all things supernatural. When I was a little older, I believed in god and Jesus. So I do understand your explanation of these things fully, since I have experienced all those things personally. It's just that eventually I've come to understand it as nothing more than mass delusion, self deception, and peer pressure. All atheists who used to be Christians had the same experiences and realizations. So it's not you who knows or sees something that atheists don't, it's the atheists who have seen the same thing you have, who now know something you don't.

Can you rephrase that please?

1. My mistake, it was the two-horned one. Should have googled it first. Mohammed was telling the story.

http://quran.com/search?q=sun+water

Apparently there are a number of efforts to reinterpret this passage. Your meeting-place version is new to me.

Sahih Intl (with context):
Indeed We established him upon the earth, and We gave him to everything a way.
So he followed a way
Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it [as if] setting in a spring of dark mud, and he found near it a people. Allah said, "O Dhul-Qarnayn, either you punish [them] or else adopt among them [a way of] goodness."

Muhsin Khan:
Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun, he found it setting in a spring of black muddy (or hot) water. And he found near it a people. We (Allah) said (by inspiration): "O Dhul-Qarnain! Either you punish them, or treat them with kindness."

Pickthall:
Till, when he reached the setting-place of the sun, he found it setting in a muddy spring, and found a people thereabout. We said: O Dhu'l-Qarneyn! Either punish or show them kindness.

Yusuf Ali:
Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it set in a spring of murky water: Near it he found a People: We said: "O Zul-qarnain! (thou hast authority,) either to punish them, or to treat them with kindness."

If you meet at sunset, and report that the sun went down, that makes sense. If you meet at sunset and report that you found it in a pool of mud or water surrounded by people, that is a little bit more difficult to understand. Perhaps the "report" was figurative?

The Bible's got a few tricky ones too, I'll admit, virgin birth, healings, resurrection, and all. They're all unlikely bad science as far as a godless world is concerned.

The important thing I want to convey is that Jesus' message throughout the gospels is NOT the message that Islam says it is, and his glorification is not polytheism as the Quran insists. His claims to be the son of God (yet one with God) were consistent throughout the gospels. If there's anything in the Islam that I would have you question, that is it. You'd have to discard more than half of what he said, in statements echoed through many writers in the early church.

A) You dont know how those things stack up relative sacredness in my head.
B) You don't get to put words in her mouth.
beginningtoseeapattern.pdf

I wonder if anyone was guessing way back when that their novels would become so incredibly popular, people would still have debates about them the world over, two millennia later, let alone live their entire lives according to them and for one, or often more than one, character.