Topic: Religious beliefs on bitcoin - page 16. (Read 22398 times)

Sorry, we covered that. Your equivocation on "causing death" doesn't help you. It is translated as both and is the same commandment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_kill



"Pretty much" what the difference is, is that I am providing evidence for my arguments. You are simply reiterated unsubstantiated opinions. The bible is proof of nothing.



Sometimes.



Simply typing a few words after my comments is not support of your argument.



The choice of papyrus was insignificant? OK, I think we're done here. You're either being disingenuous or have no concept of how the bible came to exist in its current form. If you aren't aware, google "bible papyrus scraps" or some such and learn that the bible is really just ancient Mad Libs with scraps of faded paper. The debate over translations and missing parts have done nothing but splinter the overall faith. If 42,000 denominations arguing over who is "right" isn't significant problems then you would have no concept of what is significant.



Religion at its finest: "the bible doesn't condone slavery, it simply condones slavery"
I don't need any argument here because you are arguing for my point. Thank you!

Its a cop out because youre using prejudiced terms, and quoting ancient fiction as though you had some way to verify it, despite it not meshing with any real world medical science aside from the secular mind over matter effect of the human animal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elvOZm0d4H0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

To call science cruder than religion is to not visit the LHC.
To posit that the external universe is a He is to mistake the macro for the micro. You declare what you cannot prove, which is foolishness. If you cannot even begin to define reality as hod, you cannot follow it, you don't have any semblance on a grip on what to follow, besides some "sheep herder's social primer" to quote eloquence incarnate.

God is not outside the virtual reality if your mind. If I am wrong, I need evidence to tell me how.

Did you know that stem cells have been cloned? The religious implications of this from a LaVeyan standpoint are more approving than the Christian one.

I like it!

Hashin fer Jesus - find a block fer God. Hallelujah! If you can get the moral majority to love Bitcoin you got it made. Throw in some apple pie and a baseball game and let's wrap this shit up!

I'm sorry that your ability to use reason and epistemology has been crushed into non-existence. It must have been a horrible experience.

Indeed my christian friends mentioned the exact thing when I introduced them to bitcoin, and they were very excited about the system because of the bible's prediction of one currency and it seems destined to happen. Personally I think it's a great thing to get the religious motivated as they have a very large and widespread network and it's a great way to spread bitcoin to a larger audience.

That's ludicrous as well. Saying that God did something isn't an automatic copout, it's a queue to see how he did it. He made the sun come up and go down? Oh cool, how did he do it?

If you're Mohammed, apparently the sun sets in a pool of warm water. He knows, because he followed the sun to where it sets.

How did he heal a man's shrivelled arm, or chopped off arm, or cure leprosy or demonic oppression? Could it have something to do with the nature of the reality? Can that be explored? Yes and yes. Does it reveal something fundamental about his nature? Yes to that as well.

God isn't an end, but a beginning. Heaven will NOT be boring, by the way. If you think this universe has potential for adventure, just wait and see.

I've long held that those laws and customs were for a time, and they accomplished what they were there to do in history. Romans 8 describes best how moral law fits with Christianity,

So, what you're saying is, god couldn't give us absolute rules to follow, because he couldn't force us to follow actual moral guidelines, or didn't think that we would accept them, or didn't believe that the clerics and churches would be able to enforce them with an iron fist of absolute theology? And thus god didn't write down actual moral laws in the bible, but just sort of guidelines that were vague and palatable enough for us to accept? What other of god's biblical laws are not actual moral laws, but just palatable suggestions?

"I don't know and I don't care" is the worst sin of all. Atheists are agnostics who wanted to know, and found out there is not only zero evidence for God's existence, there is no reason for him to exist in order for the universe and everything to come into being. Saying "I don't know, and don't care" is only a tiny step away from "I don't know, guess god did it."

Back up there.. Where's the verse that says he lived?

EDIT: We believe in a God powerful enough to raise people from the dead, even raise them up immortal. Living in a fish is nothing.

It was a mammal 

That sounds like something that fell under Levitical law.

I'm not sure what the goal was there, but it was probably both to force the man to live with the outcome and stigma of his actions, and most importantly to make sure that the woman and child would be looked after in the ensuing struggle. The society was already patriarchal, so to phrase it in terms of the woman being in control might not have been as well received. That doesn't mean that anyone would necessarily force the issue if she was unwilling. Many of the laws around menstruation had the welcome effect of protecting women, but you might not guess from how they are phrased.

Divorce, for instance, was instituted by Moses because at the time men would marry, and remarry, and remarry, but the women were still considered "his." As Jesus put it, Moses allowed it because of the hardness of their hearts, but neither practice was ever the way it was meant to be from the beginning.

Our hearts are not wired for our present casual way of thinking about sex, intimacy and relationships. You can only know the joy of complete intimacy joined with complete commitment in two ways: ideal marriage, and an ideal relationship with God, who knows your heart more intimately than you do. One of these relationship is possible, the other is meant to be an image of the other, and can be, but it requires a Christlike degree of patience.

For now, we see through a glass darkly, but we know God is far more concerned with sustaining the eternal things within us than with the perishing things of the world.

Our experience does define us, and even if it's bad, it makes us who we are. If you like who you've become, you probably wouldn't have your life happen in any other way, since if that bad experience could somehow be wiped from the past, you wouldn't be you anymore. At least that's how I feel. I truly believe that what doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger. However, I find what your pastor said to be incredibly sad and misguided. Life isn't hell, life is whatever we make of it. If you can't make the best of your present situation, can't strive to better yourself, and can't be happy with what you have, then you'll never be happy in heaven either. After all, if you can't find happiness with what you have here, how would a few extra things make you any happier there? Living in heaven you'll just eventually get bored with what you have, even if it's more stuff, and will continue to feel like you are in hell. And if you do find happiness in what you have or in what you do here, then why wait for heaven? To me, personally, the strive for knowledge, experiencing new places, foods, music, entertainment, people, and things is what brings me joy, and overcoming hardships and building on top of them is what brings me pride in myself and my life. If what they say about heaven is true - that in heaven we will know everything, will never need for anything, will never feel strife, and will live for ever (which is an amount of time we can't even really comprehend) - then that would truly be hell for me.

You would be correct. The country is becoming more secular, and churches are losing attendees all over the country. Much of it has to do with the churches preaching fire and brimstone about things like cohabitation, sex before marriage, contraception, and homosexuality, and the younger generation, after having gay friends, reading up the truth about contraception, and accepting that it's OK to have sex before marriage to try things out, are realizing that this preaching is nothing but old dogma and ignorance, and are leaving the churches in droves. In a way, the churches have brought the downfall on themselves, when they noticed their flock start to dwindle, and way overcompensated, driving everyone away. I can't say I feel sorry for them.

Doesn't sound weird, it sounds typical. Your god has commanded you against your actions and you want to convince yourself otherwise, so you "pray on it" and surprise surprise, the ruler of the universe gives you an exemption.



I wouldn't think of it this way yet. Even those who were in even earlier still needed a few years to make any money, if that was their goal. If you believe Bitcoin has a chance then owning just a few should return a sizable gain once it explodes.

I divided my tiny stash by 3. One third I just hold, never move. One third I buy and sell during daily/hourly swings. Another third I buy/sell all at once when I think major moves will happen. So far, I'm "ahead" but only as unrealized gains. I pulled out my original investment a while ago so if I lose it all then I never really lost anything at all but my time and "potential gains".



I think it is plainly spelled out in the bible passages I have already posted, among others. The central thrust is to give everything you have away and "give no thought to the morrow" while following Jesus' teachings. Here's more bible teachings greed is causing you to ignore:

Mathew 6
19“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.20“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal;21for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.23“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
24“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.



There is no excuse for forcing a woman to marry her rapist. None. Why would you think it was OK back then unless morals are relative, not absolutely handed down from your god? Or was it that your god was just wrong?

When you are dealing with matters of eternity and infinity, parallel items are indistinguishable, but one realm containing another is not hard to visualize.

As a theist (I suppose), my God is, in a sense, internal as well as external. Everything is in Him, yet He is in me. I do not define him, but now I have begun to define myself as he sees me: I am in Christ, thus he sees only Christ in me. The multidimension/higher order/infinite/spiritual mechanics of this seem much more intricate and subtle, though. I suspect we don't have the language to fully convey it, even if we could begin to grasp it.

Science used to see the world in 4 humors and 4 elements, adding a fifth whenever it didn't jive. Our understanding has grown exponentially, from biology, to chemistry, to particle physics, to informational dimensions, to quantum physics, and it's only begun to get stranger and quarkier, leaving more questions than answers. I'm not against science, but sometimes I wonder if atheists (and their satanist protagonists) are. Why should it surprise anyone if we eventually discovered that the reality is orders of magnitude more organized than we though, but we can hardly tell from the present state of continual degradation that we see on earth? Were you to encounter counter-entropic evidence, it ought to cause you to question.

In closing, it's as much foolishness to say I don't know and I don't care as it is to declare what you cannot prove. (Yes, I know that goes both ways.)

I wouldn't want to follow a God that I can define, or who obeys my crude scientific assessments. I tried that before, and found something that is definitely not God. Don't test God, but ask him, and he'll convince you. He knows how to.

Agreed. Only sort of turned on its head. -ish
Acknowledging bald fallacy legitimizes consideration of it. Every time.
Both atheists and theists refer to external gods, Agnosticism is internal, psychological, deals with questions of knowability in terms of that argument.
This places the debate correctly, but does not entirely answer it.

You're not even listening to what I'm posting, I'm not saying he was a "bad" Christian, I'm saying he did not even believe in Christianity at all.


Hitler allied himself with the church earlier on because he did not think he could defeat it. I highly doubt Hitler was even a Theist


But I'm sure there is


great controversy over the issue as to whether or not Hitler was Christian.

And I suppose I must concede to your point that there is no evidence that

Hitler was an athiest.

Ah well, I can only speculate from his actions that he was not Christian.


It's not like Hitler would ever use Christianity as tool to gain acceptance either, that is too far fetched.

No.
More like atheists constantly twisting and contorting the bible to attempt to make themselves seem logical.

The difference is between the separation of the words kill and murder.

Which is pretty much what you were doing, or perhaps I don't see your actual argument.
From what I read, which may not be what you intended, as you seem to think you made a point:
1. The word moral is a weapon
2. I think God is bad, despite believing all morals other than mine are bad
3. Atheists can have morals without religion

None of these are actually making any points, just stating what you believe.

So the strongest group decides?

I didn't.

... what?
I completely answered your point, and you say it's thin without even criticizing my actual point?

This type of response from you is getting kind of boring, there's nothing to argue against. The most coherent point you made was choice of writing material, everything else being really ... pointless.

Because the bible is the inspired ward of God? The choice of papyrus as writing material was logical, and quite insignificant.

I'm not condoning child abuse.

The bible does not condone the modern conception of slavery, and in fact condemns it. If you had read my post at all you would have noticed this.

It does condone a specific form of slavery, namely the payment of debts. The idea was if you could not conceivably pay a debt you owed someone you would work in order to cover part of it.