trish123 Forum Posts (13,724)

RE: God...fact or fiction?

Thats an interesting snippet Alida, did you know that there is a story which questions who the Christian God was speaking to when he said the words 'let there be light' - the answer is reputedly that he was speaking to the Elohim

RE: * 5 truths *

haha - am I idiot number 1

RE: God...fact or fiction?

Thanks Omega, my sadness is because of the destruction wrought in the world by 'ego' and why people continue to hold these same values, century after century - and their only pay off, this close to the destruction of all we know on earth (nuclear etc threats) is to hold the faith

A close friend of mine says "if you always do what you always did, then you'll always get what you always got" makes sense to me

RE: God...fact or fiction?

on a molecular energy level, I see 'ego' as a gross irritant.

Once we start thinking that we are right and everybody else is wrong the chain gets broken - I agree with you that we are all eternal beings - some of the ancient peoples taught about tapping into primeval memories - modern religions and their fear tactics have all but wiped out these skills - but all is not lost

RE: God...fact or fiction?

I think the universe is a constantly expanding entity, all actions have reactions and I am just an inconsequential dot in the middle of my perceptions - for now

RE: God...fact or fiction?

you are quite right - but I am personally just taking a break from writing a 12,500 piece on dyslexia - that is real, very much so

Your reality is your own

RE: celebrity

Agreed !! Hi Chris

RE: God...fact or fiction?

Yes, I have, but have you read anything else?

The way of knowledge is to see things from all sides before making your own standpoint - I find all too often that people who read the Bible get stuck there and become incapable somehow of considering anothers viewpoint

RE: Cheer me up.......I think I have been dumped.

Hit the ground running Karen, and dont look back

RE: ITS RUTH'S BIRTHDAY

Happt Days Ruth, sorry to be late

RE: God...fact or fiction?

I have read the book you mention, I wanted to be a nun even for a year or two - maybe you could read a couple of my choosing now to repay the favour ? Breaking the Spell by Daniel C Dennett is a pretty good one, it explores how various faiths command allegiance.

RE: God...fact or fiction?

TACTIC 5. Intense and frequent attempts are made to undermine a person's confidence in himself and his judgment, creating a sense of powerlessness. The only power that can help is God, or more precisely, the specific church's or Christian group's version of God. The eldership, church leaders, or "advanced" Christians are usually relied upon to understand the bible and for "encouragement" to "have the mind of Christ."

TACTIC 6. Nonphysical punishments are used such as intense humiliation (private and public confession of sin), loss of privilege (suspension or excommunication from the church or Christian group), social isolation (from the world and the "unbelievers" as well as from erring or heretical Christians that doesn't agree with their church or group), social status changes (from being a "respectable" and "stable" Christian to a "weak" or "unstable" Christian), intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other techniques for creating strong aversive emotional arousals, etc.

TACTIC 7. Certain psychological threats (force) are used or are present: That failure to adopt the approved attitude, belief, or consequent behavior will lead to severe punishment or dire consequence, (e.g. physical or mental illness given by God, the reappearance of a prior physical illness, worldliness, personal economic collapse, social failure, divorce, failure to find a mate, etc.). Or a pennance as used in catholicism for many years, these could be severe in cases.

RE: God...fact or fiction?

I think that 'fear of God' is deeply embedded into all religions and is part of the control design.

The various religions were very aware of indoctrination all along. Education remained in the hands of the churches for many centuries until comparatively recently and was designed to keep the masses in their place by the use of coercive persuasion programmes. These have been being refined for many years - an example is below.

The essential strategy used by those operating such programs is to systematically select, sequence and coordinate numerous coercive persuasion tactics over CONTINUOUS PERIODS OF TIME. There are seven main tactic types found in various combinations in the Christian Coercive Persuasion program. A coercive persuasion program can still be quite effective without the presence of ALL seven of these tactic types.

TACTIC 1. The individual is prepared for thought reform through increased suggestibility and/or "softening up," specifically through hypnotic or other suggestibility-increasing techniques such as audio, visual, verbal, or tactile fixation drills (anything that is "moving" to the emotions as well as to the mind, i.e., worship music, dancing, embraces, stirring preaching or instructional teaching from a pulpit) and excessive repetition of routine activities.

TACTIC 2. Using rewards and punishments, efforts are made to establish considerable control over a person's social environment, time, and sources of social support. Social isolation is promoted ("You are not of the world", "Christ can to bring a sword"). Contact with family and friends is abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share church-approved attitudes. Psychological and emotional dependence on the group is fostered.

TACTIC 3. Disconfirming information and nonsupporting opinions are prohibited in church communication. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders. Communication is highly controlled, especially communication from God. God's communication is one-way, via the bible, and nothing is to contradict that communication. An "in-group" language is usually constructed, sometimes called "Christianese."

TACTIC 4. Frequent and intense attempts are made to cause a person to re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control, and defense mechanisms as well as getting them to reinterpret their life's history, and adopt a new version of causality. This is usually called "sanctification" and "working out your salvation with fear and trembling."

RE: God...fact or fiction?

As one looks to earlier and earlier times, one finds that the model Universe is not eternal, but there is no creation event either.

Instead, at times of the order of 10-43 seconds, the approximation of a classical description of space and time breaks down completely, with the whole picture dissolving into quantum ambiguity.

In Hawking's words, the Universe "would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE."

RE: God...fact or fiction?

In 1982, Alexander Vilenkin proposed an extension of Tyron's idea and suggested that the Universe was created by quantum processes starting from "literally nothing", meaning not only the absence of matter, but the absence of space and time as well. Vilenkin took the idea of quantum tunneling and proposed that the Universe started in the totally empty geometry and then made a quantum tunneling transition to a non-empty state (subatomic in size), which through inflation (the Universe expands exponentially fast for a brief period of time which causes its size to increase dramatically) came to its current size.

Another idea is from Stephen Hawking and James Hartle. Hawking proposed a description of the Universe in its entirety, viewed as a self-contained entity, with no reference to anything that might have come before it. The description is timeless, in the sense that one set of equations delineates the Universe for all time. As one looks to earlier and earlier times, one finds that the model Universe is not eternal, but there is no creation event either. Instead, at times of the order of 10-43 seconds, the approximation of a classical description of space and time breaks down completely, with the whole picture dissolving into quantum ambiguity. In Hawking's words, the Universe "would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE."

So, the origin of mass in the Universe and the Universe itself is quite speculative at this point. If you are interested, you can read Alan Guth's book "The Inflationary Universe", page 271-276. You can also read Hawking's "A brief history of time: From the Big Bang to black holes" page 136

RE: God...fact or fiction?

Where did the Universe come from - there are so many theories on this issue that they are coming out of our ears - none of them conclusive either way as physics dissolves close to the point at which things are measurable. Education has only been the right of the masses for less than a hundred years - be patient and we will know what we need to.

below is from a site called 'curious about astronomy' ;

Assuming the Big Bang is a valid theory of the creation of Earth and the Universe, then where did the original mass come from, that formed everything that we see today?

First of all, note that mass and energy are equivalent. So, the total mass of the Universe need not be conserved even though the total energy (taking into account the energy that is equivalent of the mass in the Universe) is conserved. Mass and energy are related by the famous equation E=mc2. Hence if there is enough energy, photons can create matter-antimatter pairs. This is called pair production and is responsible for the mass in the Universe.

As to where everything came from, there is no conclusive opinion. One idea was that the Universe was created from vacuum. This is because according to quantum theory, the apparently quiescent vacuum is not really empty at all. For example, it is possible for an electron and a positron (a matter antimatter pair) to materialize from the vacuum, exist for a brief flash of time and then disappear into nothingness. Such vacuum fluctuations cannot be observed directly as they typically last for only about 10-21 seconds and the separation between the electron and positron is typically no longer than 10-10 cm. However, through indirect measurements, physicists are convinced that these fluctuations are real.

Hence, any object in principle might materialize briefly in the vacuum. The probability for an object to materialize decreases dramatically with the mass and complexity of the object. In 1973, Edward Tyron proposed that the Universe is a result of a vacuum fluctuation. The main difficulty of this proposal is that the probability that a 13.7 billion year old Universe could arise from this mechanism is extremely small. In addition, physicists would question Tyron's starting point: if the Universe was born from empty space, then where did the empty space come from? (Note that from the point of view of general relativity, empty space is unambiguously something, since space is not a passive background, but instead a flexible medium that can bend, twist and flex.)

RE: THE RANDOM THREAD

haha, its almost as if its alive, people leave sadly too but the whole thing keeps on moving along, like a river or something

RE: God...fact or fiction?

As a mother, I have known the unrivalled beauty of giving birth. As a gardener, I embrace a childlike enthusiasm for the buds of spring or indeed, for something which defies the odds and flowers in midwinter - these things hold for me, the magic of life.

Theism however is a completely different issue and in my opinion strives to compell us to believe this, that or the other explanation for all that simply 'is'.

If we all treated each other with just a little of the respect reserved for these unproven deieties, then the whole world would be a better place in which to exist and raise our children - unbiasedly.

RE: THE RANDOM THREAD

Hiya Grizz, good to see you

RE: morning

you too - good morning

RE: the "i love richard pryor " kind of talk / people thread ( no respectable people !...go away )!

Mornin Gilly

I love Richard Pryor too

RE: THE RANDOM THREAD

Morning Hun, how you doing?

nope, have not seen my own piccie there, there must be a very lot of people on this site who dont ever post anything. I often wonder why this is. Sometimes I dont post much for days too, but do look in at what others are saying, sort of keeping track of what friends or potential friends are about - is there a right and wrong way to go about this I wonder

Holy War

why do people have to keep on bringing up the God issue - people who dont believe in scripture are not bad or damned or any of the other negatives which some choose to throw at us - scripture is the most effective weapon ever invented - in my opinion

RE: God...fact or fiction?

Well, here am I, a sinner supposedly - and the words below are from a document called 'The God Idea - Conclusively Disproved'. Even the idea of 'sin' is a human construct designed to keep societies (various) from disagreeing with the ruling classes and running smoothly - for their benefit, not ours.

The God ideologies encourage one to lie back with a comfortable 'faith' - the other alternative isnt easy but, hey, life isnt ever easy whichever way we look at it -


this is the copied bit and refers to just one of the basic suppositions of a God, those being, A god is generally believed to be:



Perfect (complete in every respect; without fault or error)
Omnipotent (has unlimited power and authority)
Omniscient (has unlimited knowledge; knows everything past, present, and future)
Benevolent (is all loving, compassionate, understanding, concerned, accepting, tolerant, etc.)



Benevolent God

This word is probably the most controversial among those used to describe the idea of a god. It implies that a god can only do good, yet almost every religious scripture that I’ve read, virtually dripped with the blood of innocent people, labeled as "unrighteous" by faithful believers.

They are endless excuses to justify these written atrocities. Despite contrary evidence, most religious people believe that their gods are not capable of doing anything bad. Obviously this is not so, since bad things happen all the time in a world that a benevolent, perfect being supposedly created.

The fact that bad things happen at all proves that a god cannot be benevolent. Religious people have attempted to defend this obvious contradiction also by suggesting that humans are far too limited to understand a god’s goodness.

However, this maneuver brings us back to familiar ground with respect to superstitious words - a difference in kind, as apposed to degree. Any fool can conclude that humans only understand goodness from a human perspective.

But, once you say that a god is benevolent, you commit yourself to the position that you “can” determine the goodness of a god. Arguing that humans cannot understand a god's goodness destroys the original premise that it attempts to uphold. If our standards of goodness and evil are invalid when applied to a god, then we cannot discuss the issue intelligently.

RE: I need a man.....

you did think of that but couldnt find the extension lead sounds like one of my searches for lost things, I find what I was searching for about three searches back - sods law at work

RE: I need a man.....

woohoo what was wrong with it?

RE: Friday night and is it a full moon?

I just know its a very cold night tonight and I am so hapy to be home with the heating on full blast - not long now till summer

oh, that and I 'am' singing - wish you could hear me

RE: Bad day?

Hi Mick - Lovely to meet you

RE: i'm thinking of taking up dancing lessons !....... i bet none of you on connectingsingles can dance

I will square dance with you brother

RE: Bad day?

it will be weekend for me when tomorrow morning is here