Cynthetiq

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/found-n...te-change.html watching the video in that thread, I thought of the belief in a higher power. To me the same risk management matrix can be applied to the risk that God may or may not exist.

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=7e18e50b58eb7e0c6ccb
I try to wake up knowing that today is a good day to die.

Are you ready for end of time?

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

hannukah harry

i wish i lived in an area that had a larger god fearing (read: evangelical) population. that way, if those who are true-believers are raptured, i'd have my pick of houses, cars, and whatnot. if the end times are comin', i'm ready for a free-for-all!

seriously though, i think the idea is nuts. especially if my limited memory/knowledge of the bible is right, the whole rapture/end times thing isn't particularly well detailed in the bible. it's just people making shit up.

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shabbat shalom, mother fucker! - the hebrew hammer

Cynosure

I cannot help but think that many fundamentalist Christians who watch that video, do so with a barely suppressed glee. They watch it and say, "Praise God!", but what they're really saying is "Yes, Lord - let it be so!"

I know an awful lot about the so called "Rapture", as well as about the kind of people who believe in it and support it. I was brought up in a fundamentalist Christian church, and, from my older childhood and into my teens, and even into my early 20s, I attended countless preachings, teachings, and seminars about the Rapture and the End Times. And thus, I once (as a teenager and as a young adult) believed in the Rapture. But nowadays, though I still believe in God and in Christ, I have since come to learn that the "Rapture" (BTW, the word itself does not exist in the Bible, and neither does the concept, really) is a gross and willful misinterpretation of certain key passages in the Bible, by revisionist historians and by preachers (and their followers) with an anti-world and self-interested agenda.

dc_dux

For $40/year, you can now get "rapture" insurance and leave email messages for up to 62 of your unsaved friends and family to be delivered in case of "the rapture".

WHY?

We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the "tribulation period" after the "Rapture"...Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made.

"WHY" is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!

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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

roachboy

this is not philosophy.
at best, it is inverted paranoia--you know, inverted in the sense of rather than being a Persecuting Phantasm, it is a Phantasm that persecutes others but not you, if you are one of the Special People.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

tiger777

I guess they didn't get the memo that every single generation believes their time is the end of time, what a coincidence.

btw dc_dux that made me laugh

ottopilot

With my luck, my anti-spam or email protection software would probably just delete it.

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"It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo

curiousbear

I dont beleive in God in a literal sense. I dont know about the End of Time.

But I am looking forward for the end of my time.

Jozrael

A: The Rapture is quite well documented in the Bible.

B: If we are to believe the rest of it, we're nowhere near.

There's something like 400, 600 odd prophecies that have to be fulfilled beforehand? We still have like...150 to go?

When some of the big ones start happening (treaty with Israel) then I'll start praying :P

tiger777

I know you're probably joking but a lot of people out there are like that. For them to start all of a sudden praying and following the bible because they feel the end times are near is like someone being a serial killer then praying to Jesus to save him on the execution chair. Very pathetic and flat out wrong. I don't care what the bible says no God of infinite wisdom would be foolish enough to reward a mass murderer who for 1 second pretends to follow Christ over someone who follows Christ whole heartedly their whole life and denounces him 1 second before their death.

If you examine why "they" would setup the rules like this it becomes very evident. Ask yourself what can be gained by claiming a mass murderer can repent and be saved? Pretty easy conclusion, this is the only way to try to control this murderer and give him a chance to stop commiting ghastly crimes. If you say, "Oh you're fucked you're gonna burn in hell for eternity" then the mass murderer would be like, "well I better get my money's worth and kill more." So while this strange rule does have a reason and desired outcome, it only works on people who cannot reason and examine things properly, thankfully for the writers that is most of the population.

Willravel

By my understanding, the Rapture isn't the end, but rather the beginning of the end.

If the Rapture is real and happens, I'll miss all my catholic friends and family but I guess they'll be in a better place.

Cynosure

Not a good argument for your case. Since the Bible clearly supports capital punishment, a person tried and found guilty of being a mass murderer would be summarily executed. So, nothing is really "gained" by society, nor is any restitution made toward the murder victims and their families, by converting a mass murderer to Christianity, just before that person's execution.

EDIT: Oh, and another thing: I can reason and examine things properly. In fact, I even excel at it. And yet I have come to the belief, after exhaustive reasoning and examination, that God and Christ exist. (However, I do not believe the earth was created a mere 4,000 years ago. Nor do I believe in the Rapture.)

jorgelito

Me too buddy, me too. Go figure...

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"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

tiger777

The new testament teaches if you believe in Christ all of your sins are forgiven and you go to heaven.

Cynthetiq

Not necessarily directed at you will, but If that's the case, then why can't the same logic for minimizing global warming not apply here? Why not take the same risk in doing something rather than nothing?

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Sun Tzu

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To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.- Stephen Hawking

Willravel

Good question. The way I see it is there are myriad religions all with their own "end times". Some of the are bad and some are good. The worst is that of the fundamentalist Christian, where people are punished for all eternity for being themselves. Still, if I commit to that, I have to balance that against all the other bad armageddons. Fundamentalist hell is bad, but when compared to a coalition of other hells, it's not that bad. I'm left in a stale mate of scary afterlives, so any choice I'd make would be the illogical one. It's a "get out of religion free" card argument.

Cynthetiq

hmmmm.... maybe logic train is exactly how I feel about the environment in regards to global climate change.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Willravel

Logic train?

Cynthetiq

the one you were just on that explained how you felt, #17

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Willravel

Right, but I was trying to apply it to the other situation in my head (then there was smoke coming from my ears.... no sleep for 4 days). So you're saying that the many different worst-case climate scenarios might cancel each other out like they did in mine?

Edit: but the problem is that there are different routs for the different hells in religion. In global climate change, the solutions are all the same regardless of the nightmare worst-case scenario.

roachboy

according to this, the world has ended 63 times already:

Failed end of the world predictions from 30 to 2000 CE

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Cynthetiq

not at all. follow the matrix in the 1st video. there's only really the 3 possibilities.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Willravel

Right, and there's really only one worst-case scenario, whereas with religion there are hundreds (or thousands, if you count different denominations) of worst-case scenarios.

Cynthetiq

I don't see it that way, even with the variants of religions, they basically are still the same matrix. Making infinite matrices is kind of silly to the point of absurdity, so it's just the same.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Willravel

Just look at the difference between Lutheranism and Methodism. Lutherans believe that works don't matter, just faith. Methodists believe in both works and faith. You see that as the same? I don't. Now look at the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. Now look at the difference between Christianity and Islam. Now look at the difference between an Abrahamic religion and an Eastern religion. Now look at the difference between a deistic religion and non-deistic religion. We're talking about huge differences between the different routes to damnation or some sort of punishment. Can you really equate Islamic hell with Hindu Narakam?

hannukah harry

when you start to consider that they're all bullshit, then equating them all is pretty easy...

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shabbat shalom, mother fucker! - the hebrew hammer

Martian

I think the thing that surprises me most is learning that there s a Godtube. I had no idea.

I'm also wondering how rapture insurance works. Does somebody volunteer to stay behind and make sure the emails get delivered, or do they just have a script set up to auto-execute when Jesus comes around?

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I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Anormalguy

IF there is a rapture (I'm an agnostic on good days, an atheist on bad ones), I'm going to laugh at all of the people who only thought they were going to heaven.

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In a society where the individual is not free to pursue the truth...there is neither progress, stability nor security.--Edward R. Murrow

Willravel

Of course, but Cynth was using a specific method of deduction in the form of a Punnett square from the other thread. All I got out of it was that global climate change is the dominant phenotype, but I think it can be bred out over the course of a few generations.
-----Added 19/9/2008 at 01 : 02 : 56-----
There's also a conservapedia (wiki for fundies). There's a picture of Hitler on the page for evolution, it's precious.

Randy

To the OP, what you're talking about here is Pascal's Wager: Pascal's Wager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Iliftrocks

The CYA theory of religion. I don't think you can make yourself believe, because of IF-THEN arguments. You either believe or you don't. You can act like you believe and do whatever you feel that faith would dictate, but IF God is all knowing, THEN he'd know you were full of shit. Right?

I have beliefs, but I sure can't prove they are correct. And I won't look for scientific proof one way or the other.

I like science by the way.....

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bill hicks - "I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out."