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zer0netgain
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13 Sep 2009, 10:04 pm

Your perspective saddens me.

I can see your point of view in your essay, but it reflects a young person tormented not by God, but by the enemy who wants men to question and doubt to the point that faith is extinguished.

I've suffered a lot of garbage in my life. I was raised Catholic, but I wasn't really practicing it. I was at what I considered to be the "rock bottom" of my life when I answered the call and returned to Christ. Maybe that's why in spite of how my life has not magically transformed into perfection, I count myself richly blessed IN SPITE OF having AS.

No girlfriend or prospect thereof. That's okay, I'm not really interested in getting married and having kids.

I have a job. Work with someone I enjoy being around, but no future in it or great paycheck. Still, my bills get paid and I'm doing well.

My life was a wreck when I started. The more I learn, the more I grow, the more issues I see need to be dealt with.

The Christian walk is not a choice that brings instant change. It is an evolutionary process where you become a better person a little bit at a time, if you walk in faith and purpose yourself to grow.

So what if you have AS? God makes it clear that He gets more glory when someone like you do something than Mr. Perfect you always seem to be competing against.

I can understand you seeing God as cruel and sadistic. There have been times I've felt that way, but truthfully, the real sadistic one is the one that makes empty promises of success and popularity in this life that you can never attain. God wants to do something beautiful in your life, but you have to let Him and have the faith and patience to allow it to happen.



MikeH106
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13 Sep 2009, 10:22 pm

As soon as I let him in, he shouted, "STOP TRYIN', n***a," mugged me in the middle of the night, gave me a nervous breakdown in a dream about my face, and then called me a loser.

I don't think the enemy is the one who encourages us to question and doubt. Even Albert Einstein told us, "The important thing is not to stop questioning." I think the enemy is the one who abuses his dominance to freely torture the less fortunate under the lying promise of heavenly reward.


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Sand
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13 Sep 2009, 11:22 pm

MikeH106 wrote:
As soon as I let him in, he shouted, "STOP TRYIN', n***a," mugged me in the middle of the night, gave me a nervous breakdown in a dream about my face, and then called me a loser.

I don't think the enemy is the one who encourages us to question and doubt. Even Albert Einstein told us, "The important thing is not to stop questioning." I think the enemy is the one who abuses his dominance to freely torture the less fortunate under the lying promise of heavenly reward.


You have a life. That's a great gift. Not from God, but from all those innumerable little cells that struggled out of the sea to become dinosaurs and mice and primates and it is up to you to perceive the world and take your chances and hand on the gift to someone else. Christians are a minor nuisance somewhat less mentally ordered than bedbugs but you are clever enough to deal with them without letting them twist your life into knots. You are young and life is a fantastic experience.



skafather84
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13 Sep 2009, 11:50 pm

MikeH106 wrote:
skafather84 wrote:
MikeH106 wrote:
It's not just as simple as being agnostic. Christians control the entire country.

Wrong.

Be careful about saying, "Wrong." What is my statement? That Christians control the entire country.


Religion is a tool of social control. Ergo, Christians do not control the country, they are controlled.


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zer0netgain
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14 Sep 2009, 7:08 am

MikeH106 wrote:
As soon as I let him in, he shouted, "STOP TRYIN', n***a," mugged me in the middle of the night, gave me a nervous breakdown in a dream about my face, and then called me a loser.

I don't think the enemy is the one who encourages us to question and doubt. Even Albert Einstein told us, "The important thing is not to stop questioning." I think the enemy is the one who abuses his dominance to freely torture the less fortunate under the lying promise of heavenly reward.


Then answer this question. HOW DO YOU KNOW THOSE DREAMS WERE FROM GOD?

I have had many dreams.

A few were (in my opinion) divine in revelation and from God, but they were exceptionally few in occurrence.

A few were (in my opinion) assaults by demonic forces, and I mean physical (rape scenes) that stopped when I invoked the name of Jesus...waking me up. These too are exceptionally rare.

The vast majority of my dreams are reflections of what's going on in my subconscious. God and Satan have nothing to do with them.

If you were choosing to follow God, Satan has every reason to attack your new faith. Next time you have a dream like that, bring yourself to call out to Jesus and see what happens. What you describe sounds like a classic case of demonic assault. God might reveal some painful things to you (painful to face) in a dream, but God would not try to make you feel rejected and unloved.



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14 Sep 2009, 11:57 am

MikeH106 wrote:
I hope the mods will let me talk about this, because I am so mad. It might not be suitable for children to read. I just need to blow off some steam after five years of anguish.

After reading the Gospels of the New Testament and other passages of the Bible, I have built up several personae of the Lord Jesus Christ, and one of them is so obnoxious and sadistic that I just had to write about it.

This possible persona of Jesus, whom I will call 'Evil Jesus,' has the personality of a mischievous, hyperactive middle school bully. He thrives on the torture of lonely virgins, outcasts, and rejects, and even of the sick and disabled. With his hot-headed Sadmaster of a father, he invents a theory that the ugly people he torments are somehow 'guilty' of deliberately bringing suffering into the world. This is a Jesus who 'hates your brown,' commits fallacies every second of the day, and manipulates everyone in the circus freak show that is our 'afterlife.'

He is consistent with everything I've read in the Bible, and has been the target of my aggressive thoughts on numerous occasions. I just wouldn't be able to stand Evil Jesus. In my mind, he would have to be punished. I will move on to his plan for 'Heaven,' but first, I want to say a few words about his father.

If Evil Jesus as I imagine him is real, then this universe was created by the Ultimate Idiot, the Sadmaster. I refuse to call him God at this moment, due to the sheer intensity of his crime against his sick victims. He lives in a world of perfect mathematical objects I call Platonic Heaven. In contrast to other depictions of God as an all-encompassing, infinite, radiating beauty or love, the Sadmaster merely figured out how to be as mean as possible and created a bruise in Platonic Heaven, the worst of all possible worlds, that we know as this universe. His mission: To ensure that certain people "ALWAYS BE SAAAAAD."

The Sadmaster, who needs to have his head sawed off, derives his sick pleasure through a combination of ontological principles including the Anthropic Principle to ensure that his little frogs are tortured forever in a Hell of romantic rejection. Being an idiot, he is completely unable to acknowledge that his agonized victims have feelings until capital punishment is executed upon him.

Phases of Heaven with Evil Jesus

Now, let's move on to Evil Jesus' plan for Heaven. This plan involves three phases and takes place at night, in the wild.

1. The preparation phase.

In this first phase, Evil Jesus gives a hoax description of everything the Sadmaster has created, and explains all of the criminal outcasts of the world to be the ultimate perpetrators of evil, in agreement with modern cultural prejudice. He sets out to explain that "sinning is bad" without even telling us what 'sinning' is. Everyone is overjoyed that the Son of God has come to bring them a happy ending for all eternity to come.

2. The warm-hearted, too-good-to-be-true, so-happy-it-makes-you-want-to-cry phase.

We would witness a lot of sobbing in this phase in which families are reunited and soft carols are sang in praise of our all-loving savior and cuddlebear, Jesus Christ. Heaven becomes what all the kindest Christians on Earth imagine it to be: full of warmth and love. And the ugly, deformed sinners are manipulated, framed, caught in Heaven, and brought to justice by being turned into stooges.

And that brings us to our next phase...

3. The Stinky Sexual SAAAdism phase!

Evil Jesus shrieks, "Look at me! I'm Jeevuf CHRIFT! I get to be haaapy! The stupid people! The stupid people!" In this shocking and psychologically gripping phase of the afterlife, Evil Jesus reverts to his true form: that of a high-pitched middle school bully and master of torture games. Heaven finally becomes what he intended all along: a paradise of sexual sadism against sufferers in Hell. Were we ever truly loving and generous to begin with? "No, you're just a bunch of SAAAdists!" Evil Jesus shrieks with an amused little grin. And everyone's having sex, right and left, feeling more and more pleasure as they fall more resolutely in love, and psychologically frustrated fools are manipulated into behaving stupidly to their torment and humiliation right in the presence of the genetically superior for the rest of eternity.

Excuse me: BRAAAAAOWN!

We Must Do What it Takes to Prevent Evil Jesus from Dominating Us.

If you are of reasonably sensible mind, then you will agree with me that Evil Jesus' plan to torture ugly people is not acceptable. We must therefore do everything in our power, including tie him up to a chair if needed, to prevent him from exercising his aggressive, authoritarian lordship in menacing ways. We need to get it through to Jesus that ugly people have feelings and that psychotic people aren't solely responsible for their actions.

And then, at last, an explosion of wondrous fulfillment should engulf every poor disabled person who ever lived, and with the death of the Sadmaster will come a happy ending as Platonic Heaven is restored to its natural beauty.

Conclusion

I'm really sorry, but this is how I feel about Christianity. I know that a lot of Christians will feel mad at me that I have such endearing compassion for the less fortunate that I would literally stand up to God and Jesus in the most gruesome of ways to defend them, but that's how it is. I don't want any of you to be upset, or to feel offended, and I repeat once again that this is only one possible outcome of a Christian afterlife. Hopefully, we won't experience anything as bad as what I have just described.

P.S.:

Dear God,

Don't ever call me a loser.

Sincerely,
Mike
Hi Mike.

I'm a Christian, and I'm not angry or offended by your post... but I'm confused as to how you arrived at such a characterisation after having read the NT? It's antithetical completely to Jesus in the actual Bible, who stood up for women, and the disabled, and children... How did you come up with this, just out of interest?



Sand
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14 Sep 2009, 12:04 pm

zer0netgain wrote:
MikeH106 wrote:
As soon as I let him in, he shouted, "STOP TRYIN', n***a," mugged me in the middle of the night, gave me a nervous breakdown in a dream about my face, and then called me a loser.

I don't think the enemy is the one who encourages us to question and doubt. Even Albert Einstein told us, "The important thing is not to stop questioning." I think the enemy is the one who abuses his dominance to freely torture the less fortunate under the lying promise of heavenly reward.


Then answer this question. HOW DO YOU KNOW THOSE DREAMS WERE FROM GOD?

I have had many dreams.

A few were (in my opinion) divine in revelation and from God, but they were exceptionally few in occurrence.

A few were (in my opinion) assaults by demonic forces, and I mean physical (rape scenes) that stopped when I invoked the name of Jesus...waking me up. These too are exceptionally rare.

The vast majority of my dreams are reflections of what's going on in my subconscious. God and Satan have nothing to do with them.

If you were choosing to follow God, Satan has every reason to attack your new faith. Next time you have a dream like that, bring yourself to call out to Jesus and see what happens. What you describe sounds like a classic case of demonic assault. God might reveal some painful things to you (painful to face) in a dream, but God would not try to make you feel rejected and unloved.


It sounds like you've been watching too many Spielberg poltergeist films.



MikeH106
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14 Sep 2009, 1:10 pm

zer0netgain wrote:
Then answer this question. HOW DO YOU KNOW THOSE DREAMS WERE FROM GOD?

I'll be fair: the "STOP TRYIN', n***a" coincidence (which was not a dream, but something that happened to me: you can read about it here) might not have been a signal from God. In fact, I don't believe it was. I'd sooner suspect some fallacy-committing imbecile in the government of having planted it for me than an all-powerful deity. My point is that it was immediate negative feedback after embracing religion.

So my statement that God 'did these things to me' wasn't literal. Nevertheless, religion hasn't helped in the five years I've been studying it. And no, I won't torture myself into trusting the creation myth.

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If you were choosing to follow God, Satan has every reason to attack your new faith.

Fair enough, but I don't actually believe in the Judeo-Christian Satan. To me, 'God' has always been a plate of food and 'Satan' a snake. Maybe Christianity is a way to shame people out of having sex.

I feel so tired right now. Thank you for not teaming up on me with bad arguments and childish insults like they do on almost every other forum I've posted to.


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skafather84
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14 Sep 2009, 2:45 pm

Sand wrote:
zer0netgain wrote:
MikeH106 wrote:
As soon as I let him in, he shouted, "STOP TRYIN', n***a," mugged me in the middle of the night, gave me a nervous breakdown in a dream about my face, and then called me a loser.

I don't think the enemy is the one who encourages us to question and doubt. Even Albert Einstein told us, "The important thing is not to stop questioning." I think the enemy is the one who abuses his dominance to freely torture the less fortunate under the lying promise of heavenly reward.


Then answer this question. HOW DO YOU KNOW THOSE DREAMS WERE FROM GOD?

I have had many dreams.

A few were (in my opinion) divine in revelation and from God, but they were exceptionally few in occurrence.

A few were (in my opinion) assaults by demonic forces, and I mean physical (rape scenes) that stopped when I invoked the name of Jesus...waking me up. These too are exceptionally rare.

The vast majority of my dreams are reflections of what's going on in my subconscious. God and Satan have nothing to do with them.

If you were choosing to follow God, Satan has every reason to attack your new faith. Next time you have a dream like that, bring yourself to call out to Jesus and see what happens. What you describe sounds like a classic case of demonic assault. God might reveal some painful things to you (painful to face) in a dream, but God would not try to make you feel rejected and unloved.


It sounds like you've been watching too many Spielberg poltergeist films.


Or just need to be locked up for mental help.

/religion: the only time it's okay to say you hear voices when no one's around. :lol: :? :lol: :roll:


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14 Sep 2009, 8:43 pm

It will take me awhile to finnish your essay Mike, I read very slowly sometimes, when I read something that I don't understand I have to take a break and let my mind process it, and there is a lot in your essay that makes no sense to me. I read enough, however, to make an initial post in this topic.

MikeH106 wrote:
My first real experience with religion began at age 21, when I finally professed belief in God after years of agnosticism.

I'm not sure what that means, it could mean that that was the age when you answered an alter call to say some magic words that would turn you into a Christian. Whatever; that is the age I was when I became an agnostic. I still remember the day that I resigned from the Catholic Church with the words (that I said to my own soul) "if God is what they say he is, I'll go to Hell." Thus began my agnostic phase.

I was a few years older then you are now when I got my first (and last) girlfriend. It only lasted five months, but they were the happiest five months of my life; I was devastated when it ended, the pain was so intense I wanted to die; my signature is the end of a prayer I prayed in those days begging God to take me out of this world. He wouldn't do it.

Bear in mind that in those days I had no clue I was autistic, I hadn't even herd the term Asperger Syndrome until a few months before I joined this forum. I might have taken matters into my own hands; I had taken up skydiving as a hobby and it gave me some joy for jumping out of an airplane is not only the most thrilling thing I have ever done, the word exciting is sufficient now for anything else. It was very comforting to know that if I couldn't take any more, all I had to do was not pull the ripcord. In the end I cut a deal with Jesus; I will not take matters into my own hands but I will do nothing to perserve my own life, and he's cool with that.

This post is long enough, maybe I'll talk to you later when I finnish your essay.


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14 Sep 2009, 9:36 pm

NobelCynic wrote:
there is a lot in your essay that makes no sense to me.

It's not just you, NC. Some things just won't make sense no matter how many times you re-read them and try to figure what they mean.


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zer0netgain
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15 Sep 2009, 7:33 am

MikeH106 wrote:
Nevertheless, religion hasn't helped in the five years I've been studying it.


FWIW....20+ being raised in a "religious" home didn't do squat for me either.

Studying religion brings no answers. You have to live your faith. It's not about knowing the contents of a book or memorizing doctrine. It's about a relationship where what you read helps you to better understand who you are forming a relationship with.

I knew of Christ, and that had an impact on my life, but it wasn't until I started seeking a relationship with Christ that things changed.



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15 Sep 2009, 9:58 am

MikeH106 wrote:

After reading the Gospels of the New Testament and other passages of the Bible, I have built up several personae of the Lord Jesus Christ,..


Ok, this is the problem with judging the historical jesus on the basis of the bible; that book was written by a different group of people with a completely different agenda. Quite possibly those people writing the 1st draft (and thereafter) were the same group of people who killed jesus in the first place!

If theres truth about a historical prophetic man in the bible, you need to read between the lies (to quote slayer) to find it, and only after comparing it to lessons from your own subjective experience. This vid explains it a lot better than i do.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwJP24MzCD0[/youtube]
^ excerpt from propaganda, parable and perception



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15 Sep 2009, 12:32 pm

TL;DR.

Stop being so concerned with theism if you're an Atheist? Too many radical atheists focus too much on attacking religion that it's almost as if they're in denial. Like nitpicking at scriptures is going to make you a better atheist. You need to live like an atheist, rather than a disgruntled theology scholar.


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Sand
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15 Sep 2009, 12:39 pm

Anubis wrote:
TL;DR.

Stop being so concerned with theism if you're an Atheist? Too many radical atheists focus too much on attacking religion that it's almost as if they're in denial. Like nitpicking at scriptures is going to make you a better atheist. You need to live like an atheist, rather than a disgruntled theology scholar.


What does that mean - live like an atheist? Isn't BS worth noticing as what it is?



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15 Sep 2009, 12:44 pm

Sand wrote:
Anubis wrote:
TL;DR.

Stop being so concerned with theism if you're an Atheist? Too many radical atheists focus too much on attacking religion that it's almost as if they're in denial. Like nitpicking at scriptures is going to make you a better atheist. You need to live like an atheist, rather than a disgruntled theology scholar.


What does that mean - live like an atheist? Isn't BS worth noticing as what it is?


Performing a ritual of attacking opposing beliefs in such a manner can be interpreted as being insecure about your own. It's not about debating religion itself... far from it, it's about the dogmatic attitude some people take, and their total hostility to religion... as if it threatens their very existence.

It's also foolish to take religion at atheist face value. To be so unreasonably dismissive is where I realised I was wrong when I briefly identified as an Atheist.


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