Posted on 01/03/2013 6:36:29 PM PST by BenLurkin
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s off-air comments that Russian Presidents are given a secret file about extraterrestrials living among us created much media interest. Most news reports claimed that Medvedev was simply joking. His apparent reference to the Men In Black movie as a source of information on a super secret agency that monitors extraterrestrials on Earth was commonly cited as key evidence that he was in fact joking. The reasoning is that no political leader would refer reporters to a comedy to clarify national policy. It has now emerged that Medvedev was not referring to the Men in Black comedy after all, but to a recent Russian television documentary titled “Men in Black” that reveals many details about an extensive cover up of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth.
However, a more accurate translation of what Medvedev actually said about the Men in Black phenomenon was: “You can receive more detailed information having watched the documentary film of the same name.” So Medvedev was referring to a Russian “documentary film” titled Men in Black, not the Hollywood blockbuster by the same name...
Russian Men In Black (MIB) documentary, a number of prominent UFO cases in Russia and the USA are discussed. The Roswell UFO crash is covered, along with a number of extraterrestrial abduction cases, and UFOs disabling nuclear weapons facilities. The documentary examines testimony that extraterrestrial bases have been established on Earth, and that some are in restricted US military areas with the full knowledge of the Pentagon. The documentary even goes on to seriously discuss President Eisenhower’s alleged meeting with extraterrestrials, where agreements were reached with some of the visitors giving them permission to take some of the Earth’s resources in exchange for advanced technology...
(Excerpt) Read more at exopolitics.org ...
That's not a recommendation, just an observation.
Plus, I still have to insulate my garage for a "man cave" and rotate trim/color schemes downstairs for said offspring. Evie is moving out of our room into Pete's. Pete is moving into Ana's room. Ana is moving into my old man cave. I'm moving out to the garage. The vehicles may get a new garage next year.
We'll see how the economy plays out and if I die from a heart attack and/or government tyranny...
There is as much evidence for the existence of Zeus as there is Jehovah. In fact, same for Shiva, Odin, Thor, the Great Spirit, Vishnu, Enki, and any number of others.
There is far more evidence for the God of Israel than for those others. Apparently you haven't looked very closely at the evidence. I'm not talking about some personal feel-good mush, I'm talking about objective fact. I'm talking about measurable reality.
I have no patience with a faith that's right "for me." There may be issues of practice that can center around me, but theology centers around God. We find Him (or rather, He finds us) as He is, not as we'd like Him to be.
As I theorize, could they all hold "part" of the truth?
I reject the ages-old "blind men and the elephant" story on the grounds that 1) the blind men can show each other why they hold the opinion they do and 2) in this case, the Elephant can speak for Himself. So, while it is possible that all religions have some part of the real God in them, one has the most complete picture and no errors.
Anyone who is serious about God has no problems figuring out which truth claims to accept. You just start with the fact that they claim to be statements of reality and take it from there.
That's why I said I had more than enough intelligence for that exercise, even though I don't have nearly enough to figure God out for myself.
Don't worry, it doesn't matter anyway. ;)
Spoken like a True BelieverTM.
Good for you.
I still think it'd be hilarious to see the look on your face when you end up in the Elysian fields...
It’s been a good life, and I’d miss it, but we’ll see what happens...
There’s a thought! This is an expensive Turkish carpet that I rescued from beside a dumpster several years ago, and vowed to one day show it off in my living room. As soon as the sun moves, I’ll take a photo of the whole thing. The tufts are extremely small and tightly woven. It still has the manufacturer’s tag on the bottom.
(It will feel good under my bare feet!)
Laminate flooring and kids and pets all seem to go together so well...
I'm not worried about that.
Spoken like a True Believer
Oh come on. I suggested there was objective fact, and you didn't ask for even one. I am confident enough in my faith to discuss ritual cannibalism or Leviticus with you. Are you confident enough in your position to address just one objective fact? Are you really forced to turn to ridicule so quickly?
[EDITORIAL NOTE: I have been, now, some four hours at the keyboard wordsmithing this post, and it has grown to quite some length. Should you find yourself not in the possession of ample time, at this moment, I encourage you to bookmark this for later, and get back to it when your schedule permits.]
I LOVE your questions; those are CORE, and we all begin at zero in terms of our ability to answer any of them, and I purpose to give you answers for each of them in due course. I must also say that I greatly value you “keepin’ it real.” I’m often struck with wonder that people think it necessary to be anything other than real, but it happens often enough that I want to affirm those who don’t cave to whatever the urge may be to put up a front.
From my “no info” beginning, I came to find answers that I am not only satisfied with, but am convinced are dead on.
Can I convince you that the answers I embrace are dead on?
No.
I can tell you about them, and I can tell you why I think they are accurate, and I have not shied away from posting such things here (and I thank you that you — and others here — have so often granted me that indulgence), but I can’t really convince you of much beyond giving you a firm grasp of the reality that I, myself, am quite firmly convinced that I’ve found Truth.
You can see that I’m convinced, but — unless you find that my being convinced is compelling — you’ve nothing to grab onto that convinces you.
And, quite frankly, if it were possible for me to argue you into agreement with what I’ve come to believe; it would also be possible for someone else to argue you right back out again five minutes later, so what would be the point?
No, the road to faith is really NOT an argument-based process, although there are certainly debates involved; the best and most important of them being those one has with one’s self.
The practical issue is one of mechanics; the means by which a person comes to the place of acceptance of various answers. And I wouldn’t assert that the order in which various answers are accepted is the same for everyone, nor that the order is important. In building anything, one begins a the bottom, but it matters not whether the first element of the foundation is at the southeast or the northwest corner of the structure.
As I review that process in my own experience, I observe that it went somewhat like this:
Like everyone else, I began with no answers at all, nor even a real grasp of the questions. But I grew up among people who spoke, and lived as if there did exist both important questions, and definite answers. Very early I decided that the truth claims they were making seemed to make sense, and so I decided that I would agree with them, and see where that road might lead.
For several years, it seemed that there was not very much more to it than that, but I continued to watch these people, and my observations continued to affirm that, while often imperfect in execution, they did firmly hold to belief in two principle things: that there do exist crucial questions of very long-term importance, and that they had very specific answers to at least some of the more important among those questions.
I also found other people who agreed as to the existence of important questions, but embraced different answers. I found out that there were many others who embraced many different answers. And I met some who held that the diversity of answers that people embraced was, really, the clearest evidence that there exist no truthful answers; that the questions, therefore, while they make for intriguing thought exercises, really aren’t of much lasting importance, after all. The most intellectually honest among these made an excellent point: the universe is mind-numbingly vast, and we are confined to a locality of a relative size statistically indistinguishable from zero, from which vantage point it is, therefore, utterly absurd of us to definitely assert the non-existence of any sort of a god.
Surveying all of this I was, at first, beset with the thought that I had been better off at the beginning when I had no information. For now all the diversity of conflicting answers, and the differing evaluations about the importance of the questions, left me in no small degree of doubt as to whether I might eventually be able to discover anything certain. Obviously, that I grew up among people of solid faith meant I had definite leanings toward truth claims that I thought were agreeable, but I wasn’t about to reject all other claims if the ones I already thought agreeable could not withstand the fires of doubt.
So, there in that place of doubt, I reasoned that either the people who thought that no faith was really true were right, or there really is a faith — perhaps more than one — that is actually true; maybe the one that I was already most closely associated with. Time would tell. As those who held to no faith honestly allowed that there might exist some god, and since most who hold to some faith do also claim that some god exists, I thought “Majority rules,” and took the position that some god exists as a starting point.
But where did that put me?
Exactly here: either I had to survey all of the views of all the gods, and effect some means of making a reasonable, rational choice as to which god really did exist, and about which view of god was the truth; or whatever god it was that really did exist was going to have to come out from behind a burning bush, and show their self.
Not hoping much for the latter, I began with the former approach, and elected to begin my exploration among Christians, primarily because of my early proximity to them, but later on because of two qualities of that faith that I noted that I hypothesized might be totally unique: first, that I observed that the best among lived lives that appeared to be empowered by more than could be humanly mustered; second, that their truth claims about God were exclusive to the effect that, if the Christian faith were the true faith, no other faith could be true. My sensibilities were initially offended at this exclusionary quality, but then I thought that if true faith existed at all, it should be markedly different from all untrue faith, and so I reasoned that the exclusionary property of the Christian faith might actually make it the best candidate.
Well, now what?
Or — more accurately — now Who?
You see, having gone through all of the above, I came face-to-face with this reality: although I HAD made what I thought was the most rational, and reasonable human choice as to which god I thought most probably might exist, and even though I HAD set my mind to pursue that course of discovery to its very end; nonetheless, this God Whom the Christians claimed, and Whom I agreed most probably did exist, and Whose existence I had decided to personally test; to discover Him, if He were there to be discovered; this same God simply would not submit to being found by a casual seeker such as myself. I had to go all in, or not go at all.
And therein I found lies the heart of ALL of the trouble with Christianity: one simply cannot thoroughly explore whether it’s claims be true or false and remain an outsider. Like the ocean, one simply cannot get to the bottom of it without getting into it. The nature of this faith demands — uniquely — that one actually, really embrace its claims as true without any prior assurance that such is, in fact, the case. This God of the Christians, this Jesus is not generally given to revealing Himself to merely curious outsiders, nor even to more serious, methodical religious detectives. No, the utterly confounding reality is that this YHVH; this Risen Christ; this Incandescent Man from Nazareth — He reveals Himself only AFTER THE FACT to those who choose to believe without prior assurance that what they are about to embrace as truth really is true.
That is the nature of “The leap of faith”; that one abandons the effort to prove something true before embracing it as true, and determines to begin by embracing as truth that which they have no absolute proof is truth on the chance that it WILL prove true afterward.
So my chosen methodology was totally confounded; I had no way to test the veracity of the Christian claims that I thought were agreeable except to accept them as Truth. I couldn’t prove Christianity either true or false except by BECOMING one, first, which I felt rather defeated the whole purpose of my investigation.
IT’S A TRAP!
Except that it proved to be True, and so no trap, after all.
And THAT is why I say that I cannot convince you of the truth of the Christian faith; the evidence that will firmly convince you that the Christian faith is the ONLY true faith — this evidence is inaccessible until AFTER you actually cross over the line, and embrace the belief that it is true.
I can make the assertion that if you do cross the line you will MOST ASSUREDLY NOT be disappointed, but that is all the ammo I’ve got; my enticements are limited to the “Jump in; the water’s warm” testimonial variety.
So, back to your excellent questions:
“Which God?”
YHVH. Jesus Christ. The God of the Bible.
“How do you know you have the right God?”
I didn’t. Not for quite a long time. I took a chance. I made a leap, and the place I landed has proved utterly sound, and I’ve no way to prove that to you unless you make the same leap, and prove it for yourself.
“If you are wrong, He/She/It is going to be rather pissed off at you.”
I had been wrong; dismally so. And, whereas the gods of some religions might have been greatly incensed with me, I found that — by contrast — while YHVH was not approving of much of my behavior, He nevertheless took great delight in me at every moment, much as I do with my own children. They do things that sometimes infuriate me, but even as I am upset at their acts; it does nothing to alter my deep, enduring love for them as my children.
“I don’t think the Gods care any more about what labels we put to them than we care about what labels ants give us.”
The gods of most faiths would agree with you without reservation. Even YHVH of the Bible gives little thought to labeling. What He cares about — what He has stated that He most deeply desires — is that we believe in Him, because His stated goal is relationship.
“Quantifying something as staggeringly, mind-numbingly huge as a Deity with merely human labels it preposterous.”
VERY true. Even in all that YHVH reveals of Himself, it remains a fact that the totality of Who He is remains beyond our capability to comprehend. We know in part. We see in the glass dimly. Our human limits preclude a total appreciation of the Divine.
“Fighting multi-Epoc spanning theological wars over differentiation in Faith also seems to defeat the purpose of using ‘faith’ as a yard stick for your existence as well.”
I agree completely. Since, as I have noted, the matter cannot be one of me convincing you, of what use are arguments, much less wars about it? Coming at it from a different direction: if I have found “the True Faith,” yet have no means by which to convince you of it, then whether or not you agree that I have found “the True Faith” can never be a matter we can settle by either debates, or force of arms. Furthermore, if I have found “the True Faith,” ALL OTHER faiths sound a false tone in that their ONLY recourse is to levy arguments or prosecute wars to bring others into their ranks. Finally, if I have NOT found “the True Faith” its impact and meaning in my life ought never ring true enough to arouse me to either vociferous argument, nor much less to war in its defense; the ground upon which I stand would not be solid enough to support me doing either, although my inward frustrations about the discovered flaws and inadequacies of my false faith might well grow into a rage that might drive me to do both.
“Each of us exists here to experience life. When we die, we take that information into the afterlife with us. A piece of us will always remember being us and will always BE us.”
The Bible describes a greater purpose for our existence than the mere experience of life, but — other than that — it completely supports that the rest of your claim is absolutely true.
“Higher beings, mathematically speaking on an Infinite timescale, exist that are further along in ‘life’ and no longer need to come back here to ‘live’.”
You may be surprised to learn that this claim is also completely supported by the Biblical record. There are other beings than man who exist in the infinite realm, but man, himself, is an eternally existing being.
“These are ‘Gods’. They can go anywhere, do anything, be anything, create, love, destroy...”
You may also be surprised to know that the Bible upholds that some of the other beings that exist in the realm of the infinite have been mistakenly labeled “Gods” at various times, and they have enjoyed a great deal of latitude in their choice of actions. Some of that was curtailed at a point in the past, but these beings remain what they are; not men, eternal, and possessed of great power.
“But what does that matter to us?”
None of it matters to us in the least degree...
...not one whit of it is of any account whatsoever...
...UNLESS I — and others — have, indeed, found “The True Faith.”
In THAT case, ALL of it matters, and on an eternal scale.
Still, there is no convincing that can be done; no debate, no argument, and certainly no war. There are, at the day’s end, only simple truth claims that remain to be accepted, or not:
That God exists.
That Jesus of Nazareth is His Incarnate form.
That in taking upon Himself the punishment due mankind for man’s disobedience to Him, God — incarnate as Christ — forged a sure rescue from that punishment for any and all who would believe that was His purpose, and that it really was Him that was doing it.
And so it is that the only question that REALLY matters is one that Jesus posed to his closest followers:
“Whom do YOU say that I am?”
I would only contend with two points, and these are very minor.
Agreed on both counts.
As to #1, I perhaps should have made clear that my comment was in the limited scope of trying to use arguments to convince an unbelieving person of those things that one only comes to be convinced of AFTER coming to believe; that this limitation on the use of argument didn’t mean that argument is totally useless as a tool for helping people understand other things.
As to #2, I tried to get at that point with my comment about inward frustration over the faults and inadequacies of a false faith.
"Step right up and spin the Afterlife Selection Wheel!"
I don't think pouring beer and washing up in Valhalla would be too bad, although it would be a little too much like my real life.
I have to try them on before I buy. If you’re going to wear a pair of shoes for 20 years, you don’t want them to hurt.
C.S. Lewis believed that your future eternity in Heaven or Hell would reflect backward so that this life would be an extension of it - i.e. you would have been in Heaven or Hell all along here on earth.
All indications are that the eternity will be spent on a new earth, one without all the problems of this one - problems caused by sin. I can't speak to beer. I know Jesus turned water to wine but that's a minefield I won't step into right now. But it will probably be a lot like your life now except without the clouds and pain. EVERYTHING will taste great and be less filling. The colors will be rich and vibrant. The sounds will be divine. Relationships - well, our current shadow versions are so poor in comparison that I don't have words for good ones.
It will be something like the far green country that Gandalf mentioned, only moreso.
LOL... I think you’d look great with a spear propped on one shoulder keeping a hoard drunken Einherjar in line.
I was just making a little syncretistical joke ;-). Now I have to go find my glasses, which I won’t need in Valhalla because of all the smoky torches and anyway you don’t need clear vision to wash beer mugs.
If anyone cares, I’m not overwhelmingly thrilled to death with the new Pope (as I would have been if it were Cdl. Pell from Australia), but solidly pleased with what I’ve read and seen in the last half hour. Not that I ever expected they’d pick a dingbat - we haven’t had a real rotter for several hundred years.
I can't imagine anything more useless than a hoard of drunken Einherjar standing in a line - unless maybe it's the line to the bathroom?
WHAPPP! Knock it off, Wulfgar, or I’ll take you by the ear and poor this beer up your ugly nose!
Pig wrestling line. The pigs are dead and roasted, but the wrestling is lively none the less... /Douglas Adams
I know, but I love opportunities to bring Lewis into the discussion.
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