Sam Harris.org Reader Forum

How logic and debates based on logic cannot save a soul, going to hell.

2013-05-21T18:35:41+00:00

A very big deception of the devil is to get you to logically debate God, Christianity and other religions. This is one of the surest ways to ensure, that you will never experience real salvation and eternal life, and all the wonderful things God has predestined for you.

Let us just suppose (for those who do not have faith), that even if you argue and debate, and finally, even if it is a long shot, and you finally are logically convinced (by the way, there are many books,eg by thomas equinas that logically prove the christian faith) that there is a God, and that He is the christian God. Does it mean you are going to heaven, just because you are mentally or intellectually convinced that Jesus is God??????

Not at all. Not unless you have a spiritual experience called being born again.A logical belief in Christianity will prevent you from experiencing the Real Deal, that is a Spiritual Salvation in Christ in the following ways:

The devil was once a mighty archangel, and presently with billions of demons, evil spirits, unclean spirits, etc with a far superior intelligence than humans.Each human being is assigned to tens, if not hundreds of evil spirits and demon hordes, that would love for you to deny their existence. For if you deny their existence, then surely you will deny God’s existence. It is extremely easy, 1,2,3 steps for Satan to deceive humans in more than a thousand ways.

Don’t even think for a moment, that you can compete with satan intellectually. However, he has no control over your heart, and what you choose to believe.And that is the loophole, which God has opened up for you. The faith route is the only way you can bypass Satan,and his cronies who guard the intellectual gates of the human mind.

When you get in to the logic debate about God, few important things to consider in SPIRITUAL WORLD which is what actually matters:

1) You could be tempted to fall into the dungeon of SPIRITUAL PRIDE, as you are tricked into judging Almighty God, which is a fool’s folly.Spiritual pride was the reason, for satan’s downfall. Also for man’s downfall, in garden of eden, as eve sucumbed to the temptation about being as knowledgeable as God.

This could also result in the person who is logically convinced that Jesus is God, as an intellectual knowledge of the truth, will become a STUMBLING BLOCK for a real SPIRITUAL SALVATION experience.

2) It could also lead to DECEPTION as the person, cannot find God in the intellectual domain, but only in the Spiritual domain. God’s thoughts are far higher than yours, mine and the devil’s, so you have to trust Him at His word. As it is written in the bible:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

God is spirit, only a spiritual born again experience can save the person, and the first thing to do is to humble ourselves. Second, we need deliverance from demonic spirits of unbelief that hold people as captives. This can be done if the person humbles himself/herself and receives Jesus Christ into the heart. Deliverance can be done even online, and specific prayers can set the captives free.

I speak from experience. Not here to argue with anyone.

Simple challenge for those who are sincere: Ask God to open your eyes, and to reveal Himself to you.Ask in JESUS name.Simple. Try it. IT WORKS

Historical Interaction with Bible

2013-05-19T14:22:38+00:00

When Scripture was essentially one long word, having no spaces between words, no vowels, and no punctuation; it also had a language the people didn’t speak and was a book to be read aloud (not quietly) making the felt experience of the book as something utterly mysterious, which only the priests could handle. The movement from Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic to Latin reached its height as the vernacular moved from Latin into Italian, Spanish, and French. Only as the work became accessible by printing, by vernacular, by word spaces, vowels, punctuation did we discover the internal contradictions created by copyists. Luther never guessed that his movement would one day culminate in undermining Luther.

Mental Illness and Sam Harris

2013-05-19T14:07:49+00:00

I’ve been thinking. Sam Harris is a very intelligent person - not only because he is very arrogant to the point of being deluded, but because he says things we all agree with in our secular western world.

Since Sam is so bright and wonderfully educated, I wonder how he will deal with the problem of unnatural states of being, although he is not a philosopher.

A state of being causing suffering is not identical to a mental illness. An illness is a bodily disorder - a state of being that ought not be.
However, to say that something physical ought to be different than it already is is to say that it was designed by a mind with intentions of it being a certain way.

(1) Imagine the following scenario: you are programming a computer software that is designed to calculate if two rectangular objects are colliding eachother. The software, after you have compiled it, ceases to function as you have intended of it to be.
In this example, the software is bugged (“ill”), because it has ceased to be as you have intended of it to be with your skills in software engineering.

(2) Now imagine the following scenario: you have a piece of software that was developed by the necessity of the preceding events. There have been no intentions of this software being produced to do anything, but it just so happens to be able to calculate when the two rectangular objects are in collision through simple techniques.

Does the software in the second example ever cease to function as it should? - no, because there is no should in being.
A thing can only be said having to be differently than it already is, if it was designed with another purpose than of that it already is.

Thus, we may conclude as follows:
1. The existence of mental illnesses (not suffering) is incompatible with mere naturalism (“atheism”).
2. Mental illnesses do exist,
3. therefore, naturalism is false.

Keep the following things in mind before evaluating this argument:
1. Psychosis and the like are real things, but if my argument is correct then there cannot be anything wrong with these things.
2. Suffering is real, but an illness is irrelevant to suffering. Many schizophrenics do not suffer as we’d like to think of them, yet our medical professions conclude that they are ‘wrong’ in how they are by our current scientific doctrines.
3. I am not concluding Christianity, and I consider myself a naturalist who denies the existence of any illnesses per the definition I provided, which is also the universal definition that laymen and scholars use.
4. Mental illness is irrelevant to morality. Being psychotic may be morally wrong, but that has no relevance to this topic.
5. I am not arguing against the existence of rationality on atheism, although I do support this sort of reasoning.

Free Will

2013-05-15T02:58:33+00:00

If there is no such thing as free will, why do we punish people for committing crimes? Do we not expect people to use their free will to refrain from criminal activity? Why does Sam write books to change people’s minds if they don’t have the free will to change their
minds? Thanks for your responses.

I am now a Jr Member!

2013-05-12T03:57:12+00:00

I am now a Jr Member and am very happy.

charwiz

Historical Jesus

2013-05-11T02:05:51+00:00

Jesus the Jewish Rabi that lived around the 1st of the century, who was crucified by the romans. Did he historically exist? After doing the research, I was shocked to find out as to not only the limited amount of writings, but how far they turn up after the event. The earliest known writings that can be found, are dated 40 years after Jesus death. To add poison to the wound, the only non-Christian historian that most biblical scholars can agree on is Josephus, a Jewish writer that wrote about the history of the Jews. Josephus mentions Jesus twice in his writings one debated and the other known to be….(I forgot the biblical scholar word for it, not forged but added too or changed). The reason why they know it was tampered with, is because it does not match up to what a Jewish Rabi would say about someone. In other words no Jewish Rabi would ever claim that someone was God, or the messiah. Who ever attempted to change that was a fool, because if he would of left it alone would of done more to prove that Jesus actually existed, and would of went a lot farther for his cause. That’s Karma for you. However, somewhere else Josephus gives reference to James brother Jesus and I believe that somewhere he even makes mention to John the Baptist. There are a lot of other writings that mention Jesus, however biblical scholars destroy them for one reason or another and I DO NOT have time to go through them all. I, in the end, believe that a man named Jesus did exist. But this does nothing to prove Christianity. In fact, I believe if Jesus the Jewish Rabi, were to somehow come back to life, he would be horrified as to how the Christians not only what they did in his name, but they claimed him to be GOD!
A good reference for Biblical scholarship for the Atheist would be Bart Ehrman, I watched a lot of his interviews and debates on YouTube…a must see. And I will be buying his books.

charwiz

Endangered Species

2013-05-10T03:44:04+00:00

Religion without reason is an endangered species. It’s only a matter of time. The more people learn through science, the more educated people become, is directly proportional to the confusion non reasoning people have. So in there confusion and as a last resort, they go to the internet, that place where religions go to die. There final resting place. They go to the internet to search frantically for any info on their Religious beliefs, for any way possible that they can equate their lack of reason with their religious views. There they find the apologist lacking, and their unreasonable views… unbecoming. But hope is on the horison. Because eventualy they finally, open their eyes to Reason.

Charwiz

Could There be a Truely Scientific Religion?

2013-05-08T14:41:40+00:00

Could there be a Religion that was rational and scientific?

I ask because I have given it a lot of thought and kicked this idea around for years elsewhere. Not because I am or would like to be religious, but because I understand that not everyone wants to, can, or gets paid to learn stuff all the time - and if they aren’t learning it or doing it - then, my friends, they are BELIEVING in it.
~*~
I teach my students and encourage my peers not to get peeved when people say they “believe” in evolution. To expect everyone’s understanding to be scientific is to misunderstand the way people work completely. People are MORE efficient than science, because of belief. If you don’t like that word then experiment with the ways it is similar to “trust”. When a person demonstrates themselves to be reliable, rational,... right, dependably, then you trust them - and you believe them.

When someone on the bus asks what I do and then asks, “Oh, so you believe in Evolution?” I say “Yeah, but I’ve held the “stuff” in my hands and work with it every day - so its easy to believe in.” You should see how much a difference that makes on their face compared to “I don’t believe anything”. Which is a horribly prickish and by the way completely dishonest statement. As a scientist, I know some science through a practice of science and i know others by believing in other people’s science. Yes they give me good reason to believe until someone else gives me better reasons to change my beliefs.

There is good reason for the uninformed person to believe in evolution and science. The more we tell them, “You can’t believe, you have to be critical and informed and scientific.” The more people we exclude rather than inform.
~*~
What would a rational scientific Religion look like?

Clergy as trained scientists rituals developed and tested for effectiveness: Does the mantra really help you focus on controlling your emotion? Does the coming of age ceremony really help youngsters to manage the transition to adulthood? Rituals of death, birth and marriage - do these things help people manage their thoughts? Does meditation reveal parts of your mind and body your conscious narrative normally shouts over - can it calm you and refocus you?

Is their power/solace/peace in knowing others believe like you do? And are right there to help if you should need it?
~*~
...Good reason to believe…

Now the fundies are against reason and the enlightenment

2013-05-06T21:38:04+00:00

I recall Sam saying that even religious people would be very unlikely to declare themselves against reason and the enlightenment.
But now that has actually happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFtXvX9Eoe8

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, or something else.
I’ll try laughing hysterically so I won’t have to think about it.

I have to admit I desperately need people like “The Four Horsemen” to try to bring some reason to the world, and fight the retardation of the human race, that religion generally seem to bring.
Otherwise I see myself turning to George Carlin like cynicism, and becoming an entropy fan.

Getting the Message out Theists on the tangible benefits of reading Dr. Harris

2013-05-06T19:29:55+00:00

I’m no Steinbeck and new to this particular forum, but what I have noted in my experience as a non-theist in other forums is that people like me have a hard time connecting with theists. I was a Christian true believer at one time, and I can say from my memories of those times in this present moment, that I understand (not agree with) their fear of us. We challenge the very foundation of their beliefs. Now, unlike them, I was always wired to leave faith. My brain could never fully accept the dogma. I always had questions, but didn’t realize those questions would be answered through atheism until I started to realize I was one. There isn’t any information or action that would have made me endure as true believer. I’m getting a bit off track, but what I am trying to get to is that we need a way to bridge the conversation. They are scared and aren’t going to make the first step. I empathize with them from my past experience when I could not grasp atheism and how anyone without god could lead a moral life or felt the need to.

Now to my point: Dr. Harris is a brilliant man and is able to challenge religious beliefs without a full assault that would scare them away.

I started to write a review of Dr. Harris’s work, that I thought would be helpful in getting the word to theists that, his thoughts are worth listening to.

**Please provide me with criticism on the piece, if you think something like this may be good to get the word out to the Christian Nation, and where I may post a piece like this to initiate a response.

“Dr. Sam Harris is one of the most prophetic and inspirational speakers, writers and debaters that I have ever had the fortune to read and listen to. He masters speaking style, the literary word, and gently disarming distinguished debate opponents with his kind wit, logical perfection and meditative style. It is mildly unfortunate that he is labeled as “one of the four horsemen” of New Atheism. His polarization to atheism is most likely due to his penetrating belief in logic, science and the betterment of this world, which religious disconnectedness seems unable to accomplish. His ideals, morals, and positive outlook on his own life and the progression of the human condition are great lessons for all of mankind. Theist and non-theists all have so much they could learn from him. If we were to forget the titles of his books, and look at the content for its potential impacts to our lives and those we love, we could increase our toolbox to live fulfilling lives tenfold. I highly encourage everyone to listen to his speeches and debates and read his books. Please check out his website at http://www.samharris.org/ where, you can find a lion share of his content. Even if you are a religious true believer, there is more to be gained from his words than any I have found in any other writings from this decade. Please take the time, if only to study opposing viewpoints to read Dr. Harris. Just as I, have learned the lessons of Gandhi, Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth as well as the many of the leaders of New Atheism, I encourage you to approach Dr. Harris’s works with an open mind and take from them only what you need for your personal betterment. I would guarantee reading Mr. Harris will be a life changing experience and even if you don’t match with him on all levels of belief, you will be able to able an immense proportion of each work to your own life.”

Sincerely,
Chris Randall

This is Chris, signing off, and reminding you to stay connected and live in the present, for it is truly what we have.

You can find more about me at: http://www.christopher-randall.com (Father, Husband, Humanist, Veteran, Lover of Science, Reason, Nature, Technology Transcendental Experiences, Meditation and Mankind).