The bible is a work of fiction. It is no different than any other ancient text such as the Aeneid, The Odyssey, fairy tales, etc. It has been passed down, modified, and bastardized by the judgements of those who wrote it down.
There are many excellent points made in the bible, just as there are many excellent points made in other works of fiction.
Even if everything you say is correct, there is only a 1/4 chance of me going to hell. I like those odds.
What you are doing is a watered down version of Pascal\'s wager. 1/4 chance of being right. Sure. I wouldn\'t want to risk eternity though. Ever really thought about how long eternity is?
As for the Bible being a work of fiction, tell me what other work of fiction contains prophesies written 2000 years before the fact that turn out to be true. The difference between the Bible as literature and the Bible as truth is that you can look at is literature and analyze it like everything else. However, if you look at it as truth, which it sounds like are to sceptical to even do, then, you will recognize the undeniable truth within it.
I seriously hope you don\'t take chances like this in real life. Well, there\'s only a 1/10 possibility I might get hit by a car on the way to the track. I don\'t need my seat belt. Sure, you may outrun the odds for a long time. The difference is that no one outruns death. Where are you going when you die? What you believe about the Bible and Jesus Christ determines that.
Amazing. Doping in T&F turns into a religious argument.
Forget the "morality" of doping. This is not a matter of one group trying to "protect" another. Consider a drug that makes you faster but has adverse long term health consequences. You are an athlete with a dilema: If you don't take it, you will most likely lose. If you take it, you'll die young. Do you want to be that athlete? How can that be good for the sport? Where does it end?
Well put. Athletes have enough pressure on their shoulders. Saying it's okay (legalizing drugs) just puts more stress on the athlete to make a decision like that.
will wrote:
Where are you going when you die? What you believe about the Bible and Jesus Christ determines that.
When I die, I will cease to exist. My physical remains will be burned up and spread on top of Enchanted Rock, in Fredricksburg, TX. Strong winds there will waft my remains into the sky, where I will ride the thermals with turkey vultures.
All that remains of me will be photos, words I have written, posessions to be disposed of, and the memories of those who knew me.
There is no afterlife for me to worry about.
God bless you. I pray that God speaks to your heart.
If you don't worry about the afterlife there's quite a lot to worry about. It's sad to me that you're so convinced of something you know nothing about...you just are acting on faith...the faith that when you die, that's it. Well, if I were acting on faith, I would at least want to put that faith in something worthwhile: life instead of just ceasing to be.
JimFiore wrote:
Amazing. Doping in T&F turns into a religious argument.
I know. I wasn't planning on replying until I saw you bring us back to the topic
Consider a drug that makes you faster but has adverse long term health consequences. You are an athlete with a dilema: If you don't take it, you will most likely lose. If you take it, you'll die young.
Taking EPO does not mean that you will die young. It does it mean you are likely to die young. You certainly can die young if you take too much and don't have a doctor who knows what they are doing. Yet, as I understand it, EPO has not been shown to have adverse long-term health consequences except when abused. Doctors prescribe EPO to non-athletes all the time. For anaemia, true, but they prescribe it all the same.
Abusing almost any substance is bad.
Do you want to be that athlete?
No I don't want to be that athlete. I am uninterested in knowing how fast I can run on drugs. I want to know how fast I can run clean.
I merely want to have the freedom to choose to be that athlete and not have the choice made for me by someone else.
How can that be good for the sport?
I can't see that it would be any worse for the sport than the cat-and-mouse games, drug-testing squabbles and suspicion we have now. People here are pretty much proclaiming running as "dead", in the sense that we can never trust any world record ever again to be drug free. So be it. I don't know if we can either.
I think would be better to have drug use out in the open than to hide it the way we do now. Face it, the whole "social stigma" thing is no barrier at all. Athletes are taking these substances and we can neither stop nor (usually) catch them.
Where does it end?
Where does what end?
If we were to do something else crazy, like say, legalize alcohol, where would that end? Of course, we already did legalize alcohol. And we're still here.
It ends where the individual chooses to end it. The sky is not falling.
Damn. Typo in what I wrote above. This sentence
"It does it mean you are likely to die young."
Should have read like this
"It does not mean you are likely to die young."
Completely changes the meaning
Damn. Typo in what I wrote above. This sentence
"It does it mean you are likely to die young."
Should have read like this
"It does not mean you are likely to die young."
Completely changes the meaning
I'm not talking about EPO specifically. I'm creating a scenario. This scenario is not a positive one. By "where does it end" I mean how far are we willing to go? What if there was a drug that could allow you to flat-out sprint 1500 meters but your heart would explode 5 minutes later? If we allow drugs in sports, at some point you have to either make a rule that this or the other are not allowed due to safety, or simply accept a gladiator-style death sport.
In reality, we end up comparing drug technologies, not athletes. What the heck is that? We get a HS soph who runs 3:00 for 1500 meters because he's on drug XYZ. Even if it doesn't hurt him, what does it mean? There's no continuity. What if it's very expensive and the other HSers can't afford it? Is that a fair and proper athletic contest? Now your just comparing economic circumstances, not athletes.
I want my athletics simple, and that means pure, which means no drugs.
JimFiore wrote:
I'm not talking about EPO specifically. I'm creating a scenario. This scenario is not a positive one. By "where does it end" I mean how far are we willing to go? What if there was a drug that could allow you to flat-out sprint 1500 meters but your heart would explode 5 minutes later?
If a person is stupid enough to take this drug in order to be able to sprint 1500 meters just one time and then DIE, do you honestly think our silly little ban on drugs is going to make them hesitate for even one second to take the drug?
If we allow drugs in sports, at some point you have to either make a rule that this or the other are not allowed due to safety, or simply accept a gladiator-style death sport.
Drugs are already in sports. Football and basketball players are doing steroids. Right now. Our allowing or disallowing drugs does not prevent athletes from taking anything nor will it in the future. Even if we discover your hypothetical drug. The only thing which will prevent it is the athletes themselves.
Educate them as to what it will do that's the best you can do.
Note: First of all I'm talking about adults here, not kids. Second, I don't for second think that merely educating them will stop them from using drugs. My point is that it is the only thing that can stop them from using such drugs. Because you cannot watch people all the time. And you cannot protect adults from themselves. And it's not your job to do so.
I want my athletics simple, and that means pure, which means no drugs.
So do I. We agree on that. But banning and testing does not work anymore than the US Government's "War on Drugs" stops people from using crack and heroin.
Not a Moralist wrote:
AZTrack or whatever,
Drugs (no not the good ones like some kind bud) have been proven to be bad for you. Ask Flojo. Oh yeah, you can't. What about that Kenyan who at 19 held the WR then died at 23. EPO screws with your system. People will find out in good time.
So they croaked. They had their moment in the spotlight.
They may, or may not, have not been fully aware of the risk but probably would have gone for the glory regardless.
In Roman times to be a gladiator was a dead end job so to speak. Yet, free men were lining up for the glory and death. It was not strictly slaves that were in it.
I see little difference.
One difference is that Roman society no longer exists. Do we see a pattern forming?
Not unless you can make a case that the gladiators using rubber swords and shoulder pads would have us speaking Latin today.
will wrote:
God bless you. I pray that God speaks to your heart.
If you don't worry about the afterlife there's quite a lot to worry about. It's sad to me that you're so convinced of something you know nothing about...you just are acting on faith...the faith that when you die, that's it. Well, if I were acting on faith, I would at least want to put that faith in something worthwhile: life instead of just ceasing to be.
Dude, you are so scared of everything that you need to believe in fairy tales to you give your life meaning. That?s sad and sort of scary. Once Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny were taken away from you, God is the last thing between you and the abyss, huh? Well, some people need crutches. And religion would be a fine crutch (better than most in fact), except for the fact so many religious people need to fight violently over their beliefs or inflict harm on those who don?t believe EXACTLY the same BS that they do. Not to mention that religion attracts so many unstable people (because unstable people look for crutches). Look at all the horrible child-raping priests!THESE people were supposed to be God?s messengers and know the Bible better than most! Lot of good it did them. Unbelievable.
?I pray that God speaks to your heart.? Um, nice poetic imagery, but my heart does not have ears the last time I checked. And people who think that God is directly talking to them REALLY scare me WAAAAAY more than people who don?t. You scare me.
You wrote: ?It's sad to me that you're so convinced of something you know nothing about...you JUST are acting on faith..?
R U KIDDING ME??? Your whole belief system is ALL ABOUT FAITH. Even the most hard-core Christians state that they ACT ON FAITH. How can you bad-mouth faith when that is ALL you have?
Look, no one needs people saying God tells me to do this, or God told me to kill that person, etc, etc. Just believe in equality for humans and trying to be a good person. One does not need religion to have morality of course. And maybe there is a universal ?spirit? that flows through us all, or maybe we are all from the ?same source? of life, and that makes us all One in some way?.but why fight and kill over it?? Religious hard-cores are the world?s biggest problem today.
So that makes YOU more part of the problem than the solution, but good-luck in deluding yourself that YOUR religion is the one true source of truth.
Wow, this is turning into something else, and I could argue for or against all the arguments here. Will, you may find Dan Browne's current best sellers quite interesting to complement your studies to further understand the many people that don't see the Bible as being the word of God. A few posts back you asked "What?" when I stated I'd rather listen to "the sweet songs of a river...", and what I was getting at is that natures sounds and smells are the same now as they were 2000 years ago, though the words and meaning of the Bible are not the same as they were 2000 years ago. I'd rather be interpreting something with as little middle-men as possible, and the Bible just has too many since I don't speak Aramaic or Hebrew. Another interesting read, to go along with Dan Browne's pieces, would be "The Bible Code."
Let us cast aside our cheating train of thought for just a second and ask ourselves about the ill-effects of performance enhancing drugs. The reason for banning them is not only to level the playing field but also to protect the atheletes from injecting themselves with 10 times the therapeutic dosages of various drugs. There is, in fact, a reason that many atheletes die from using performance inhancing drugs. EPO, for instance, thickens a user's blood to the point that it has a consistency relative to that of maple syrup. Look beyond your "fairness" mode of thought and consider the danger envolved in taking these drugs.
I consider the danger of ignorance worse. You speak of athletes injecting themselves with 10 times the therapeutic dosage, though that's likely an arbitrary number you've picked, just as others have picked "100 - 1000", and that is exactly the problem with keeping them illegal, people have trouble finding out good information and in cases like these it can be dangerous. By the way, to turn your blood into "maple syrup" is a hell of a lot harder than many people would like you to believe. Getting a hematocrit to 50% is one thing, but hitting 60% is quite a bit more difficult and much more expensive.
Avg_Joe:
You're right; only a fool would take such a drug, but I'm simply illustrating the extreme case. Where along that continuum do we draw the line?
For all of those supporting unlimited drug use, I still don't see a counter argument to the statement that what we'll end up with is not athletic contests, but rather contests of economic power and associated technology.
This reminds me of an old Monty Python skit "Getting Eaten By A Crocodile Competition" where Michael Palin's character complains of other teams cheating with various taste enhancements. He says "It should either be an Olympic standard mayonnaise or unrestricted garnishing."
Jose wrote:
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Dude, you are so scared of everything that you need to believe in fairy tales to you give your life meaning. That?s sad and sort of scary.
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Me being scared. That's one take on it...but not a true one. If I were scared, I probably wouldn't be posting things like this. So much for that theory.
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Once Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny were taken away from you, God is the last thing between you and the abyss, huh?
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The difference is all of those things were manmade myths. God is real, and, yes, I need God between the abyss and my soul. I don't know about you, but, the whole "abyss of nothingness" scares the crap out of me. Have you really considered what that might really be like if it does exist? I assume it does.
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Well, some people need crutches. And religion would be a fine crutch (better than most in fact), except for the fact so many religious people need to fight violently over their beliefs or inflict harm on those who don?t believe EXACTLY the same BS that they do.
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Well, last time I checked, Christians are instructed to "demolish" fine-sounding arguments without substance when it comes to defending their faith. There's a verse that says men will leave the truth and listen to what they want to hear...myths (2 Timothy 4:3-4). So, I believe that faith (not religion) can help people through difficult times...what you call a crutch...but, I believe that being able to believe takes greater courage and faith than it takes to rely on knowledge. It requires admitting that some things are beyond one's control and giving God power of those things.
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Not to mention that religion attracts so many unstable people (because unstable people look for crutches). Look at all the horrible child-raping priests!THESE people were supposed to be God?s messengers and know the Bible better than most! Lot of good it did them. Unbelievable.
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This logic cracks me up, but, saddens me as well. Do you honestly think that what a few people have done characterizes the entirety of Christianity? In that case, all runners are on drugs, all presidents do drugs and sleep with their interns and all lawyers are cheats and thieves. Applying the characteristics and actions of a few to a whole group of people is a pretty bad fallacy.
As for priests...I think that's horrible and yes, wrong. But, I'm not Catholic and I don't think the same way about them as you do. They are religious men. That doesn't necessarily mean they are God's messengers as you say. God appoints who he wants...not necessarily who man approves of. Jesus was not a priest...but, he was the Son of God. Just because some people have done evil things doesn't mean that all Christians are evil.
As for me needing a crutch...perhaps you should look at what I said...I do not agree with religion. I believe in a relationship with God the Father, Jesus Christ the son, and, the Holy Spirit.
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?I pray that God speaks to your heart.? Um, nice poetic imagery, but my heart does not have ears the last time I checked.
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Like I said, perhaps you should check again and ask God to speak to your heart. Remember the phrase hard of heart.
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And people who think that God is directly talking to them REALLY scare me WAAAAAY more than people who don?t. You scare me.
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Good. That's the way it should be...only not as you think of it. People who hear from God can reveal the evil within in you and the supernatural truth about your life whereas those who can't/don't hear from God cannot. I feel scared when prophets are around me cause they can see things men cannot. So, all those little secrets I keep inside aren't really so secret any more.
By the way, did God talk to Moses, Jesus, Elijah, Solomon, David, Saul...etc. The list goes on.
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R U KIDDING ME??? Your whole belief system is ALL ABOUT FAITH. Even the most hard-core Christians state that they ACT ON FAITH. How can you bad-mouth faith when that is ALL you have?
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No bad-mouthing faith here. Don't twist my words. I was pointing out the irony of your situation. You are taking it out of context. Let's put it back in. I wrote:
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If you don't worry about the afterlife there's quite a lot to worry about. It's sad to me that you're so convinced of something you know nothing about...you just are acting on faith...the faith that when you die, that's it. Well, if I were acting on faith, I would at least want to put that faith in something worthwhile: life instead of just ceasing to be.
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I said that you are just acting on the faith that when you die, that's it. I was questioning the object of your faith, not faith itself. Be sure to see the moon, not the hand here. Let go of foolish beliefs and reach out for God. That was my point.
As for faith being all I have, I also deeds, community, relationship, love, hope...no, I've got a lot more of faith, but, love, hope and faith are three things that are keys to my life.
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Look, no one needs people saying God tells me to do this, or God told me to kill that person, etc, etc.
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Actually, everyone does. But, even better than leaders (that's what those people are) is having God tell you Himself. As for the whole God telling people to kill people. There are a lot of people doing horrible things in the name of God. I'm not going to even pretend there aren't. However, God did instruct folks in the Old Testament to kill unbelievers. So, it has been done. But, I talked about that earlier.
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Just believe in equality for humans and trying to be a good person.
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No. I believe in much more. Perhaps you could try it too. It's very rewarding to live with the knowledge that God's acting in your life.
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One does not need religion to have morality of course.
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Morality is not necessarily what God is all about. He laid down his laws a long time ago. Morality, like I said a long way back, is a European concept...not a Hebraic one. Sure, God has specific ways he wants his people to act, but, that's not a religious thing. It's a spiritual one.
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And maybe there is a universal ?spirit? that flows through us all, or maybe we are all from the ?same source? of life, and that makes us all One in some way?.
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There might be...but the whole new age movement approaches existence with a monistic theism that, when you examine it, doens't really carry a lot of weight. We are not all one. No, and, we never will be. That is why you have to choose sides...God or whatever you want to believe (which is really Satan's territory). Believing that we are all one makes you directly related to evil madmen and saints all at the same time. Explain that one to me.
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but why fight and kill over it??
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I never said to. I am saying repent of your sin and accept Jesus Christ as you Lord and savior. I also am saying love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
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Religious hard-cores are the world?s biggest problem today.
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I can think of lots of other, bigger problems.
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So that makes YOU more part of the problem than the solution, but good-luck in deluding yourself that YOUR religion is the one true source of truth.
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Okay, here we go, turning this around to blame and accuse. Nice try, but, think again. You are mistaking someone who is actively involved in addressing the world's problems for part of the problem itself. It may be a problem for you, but, it is saving work for me. As for needing luck in deluding myself. I don't believe in luck and I'm not deluding myself. I'm learning to see the supernatural truth of Jesus Christ more and more clearly.
By the way, name one other religion that says, "I am the way, the truth and the life"? Doesn't get much more clear than that. No other religion or person in all of history makes that claim. So, even if it's false, which it's not, Christianity holds the monopoly on sources of truth. All the other religions just say they contain truth. Jesus Christ says, "I AM TRUTH." BIG difference.