Heathen? Well, I am German on my father's side and I do have a few pagan beliefs (along with some Buddist, a lot of Catholic and some that resist classification). I tell people (half-jokingly) that I am a Zen-Druid. Now leave me alone or I'll get my hammer.

If not, what good is this deity? Why should we worship this deity or any deity if it cannot do us good?

Fine. Then he/she/it can worship himself/herself/itself.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Truth....HE IS GOD!!...and "your not".!!...no brainer..........


HIS..." LOVE"......is "PEOPLE"...just like you and me....Not perfect people...no such thing!!...regular folks!...........It's your choice ....always has been................

Do you love HIM??....or hate HIM??.................

Everything I have see in .."your" ...past posts "referring to God" ...is that "YOU" ....HATE GOD.... and enjoy mocking GOD!...

Do you know what the "HOLY BIBLE" says about that?.............

Galatians 6 :7-8

Be not deceived ; God is not mocked: for whosoever a man soweth, that shall he shall reap..................

For he that soweth his flesh..reap corruption; put he that soweth to the Spirit shall of Spirit reap everlasting life.



Life is about choices....whats yours..........???????????????

__________________
Matt (SD,CA)

1984 300SD.. White/Chrome Bunts..Green

1997 2500 Dodge Ram 5.9 Cummins 12 Valve 36 PSI of Boost = 400+hp & 800+tQ .. ..Greenspeed

2004 Dodge Ram 2500 4x4 Quad Cab Cummins 5.9 H.O "596hp/1225tq" 6 spd. Man. Leather Heated seats/Loaded..Flame Red....GREENSPEED

Global warming...Doing my part, Smokin da hippies..

Fight the good fight!......

Explains a lot.

BTW, attendees at most churches get a free coupon for the Google tool bar spell checker.

__________________
1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Your truth. Not mine. I never claimed to be a deity. Even if he/she/it is a god, that is hardly a good reason. If he/she/it wants worship from me, earn it. Worship, like respect is earned, not given. At least by me.

Sorry. Based on what is going on in the world, I don't feel the love.

Neither. Do I hate or love the rock down the road? Neither. Doesn't do much for me either way, does it?

This god, any god. Same thing. If I don't get much out of any one, what does it deserve? Kinda like paying for a bodyguard that doesn't protect you, isn't it?

Doesn't matter to me any more that what the koran says about the way I feel about allah or what the Torah says about Yahweh, etc, etc

Well, if all it can promise me is everlasting life, that is hardly what I am interested in. I don't want everlasting life. Don't care about it. This life is way more important to me than the next one. Hence the lack of appeal of any religion. Show me a deity that can do something for me in this life consistently and I'll show you my worship.

Find me something worthy of my worship and if I agree, I'll worship it.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Firefox has one built in.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Actually Catholic girls are quite fun.

__________________
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

Sometimes, sometimes not. Either they can't get enough or they have had enough.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Yeah Catholic boys need not apply!

__________________
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

I have a friend, a real lady killer; he told me once that he'd found Christian girls to be quite accommodating.

__________________
1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

aklim,
We are not going to resolve this. You are a free moral agent; you do as you chose.

However, you should realize that God's existence is quite independent of your belief in his existence.
He is there, He is not silent.

"
The fool says in his heart, "there is no God".

__________________
1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Likewise, God's existance, purpose, and essence IS regardless of what clueless holy rollers like Matt think or say about him and her.

__________________
1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

The Ennui of Saint Teresa
On average, religious people are much happier than nonreligious ones.

BY ARTHUR C. BROOKS
Sunday, September 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

For more than a half century, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was revered for her service to the poorest of the poor, and inspired people by the joy she apparently derived from pure faith and charity. But earlier this year, it was revealed that her faith and happiness might not have been all they seemed. In a newly published set of letters written over the course of her adult life, she expresses terrible sorrow about her life, describing it in terms of "dryness," "darkness" and "sadness."

For some commentators, this was evidence that if we scratch the surface of religious conviction--even that of a future saint--we will tend to find unhappiness, echoing H.L. Mencken's claim that "God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable."

Does Mother Teresa's apparent misery truly expose an inconvenient truth about the happiness of religious people? A convincing answer to this question is not to be found in arguments for or against religion by believers or atheists--but rather in the abundant surveys that for years have anonymously asked people about their faith and life satisfaction. What story do the data tell?

Americans can be divided into three groups when it comes to religious practice. Surveys indicate that about 30% attend houses of worship at least once per week (I will call them "religious"), while about 20% are "secular"--never attending. The rest attend sometimes, but irregularly. These population dimensions have changed relatively little over the decades: Since the early 1970s, the religious group has not shrunk by more than two or three percentage points.

How do religious Americans compare to the secular when it comes to happiness? In 2004, the General Social Survey asked a sample of Americans, "Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" Religious people were more than twice as likely as the secular to say they were "very happy" (43% to 21%). Meanwhile, secular people were nearly three times as likely as the religious to say they were not too happy (21% to 8%). In the same survey, religious people were more than a third more likely than the secular to say they were optimistic about the future (34% to 24%).

The happiness gap between religious and secular people is not because of money or other personal characteristics. Imagine two people who are identical in every important way--income, education, age, sex, family status, race and political views. The only difference is that the first person is religious; the second is secular. The religious person will still be 21 percentage points more likely than the secular person to say that he or she is very happy.

Researchers have found similar results in other countries, suggesting that the connection between happiness and faith probably doesn't depend on nationality. Nor does it depend on the particular faith practiced. The 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey shows that practicing Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and people from other religions--even esoteric and New Age faiths--are all far more likely than secularists to say they are happy. Furthermore, it does not matter if we measure faith in ways other than how often people go to their house of worship. For example, people who pray every day are a third likelier to be very happy than those who never pray, whether or not they attend services.

What about the folks in the middle, who identify with a faith but practice inconsistently? They are generally happier than secular people, but not as happy as regular practitioners. There is an interesting twist here, however, when it comes to the fear of death. One recent study on a sample of older Americans finds that, by the time people are in their 70s, religious and secular people are less afraid of the grave than those in the middle, suggesting that people suffer when their religious practice is inconsistent with their faith.

Obviously, not all religious people are happy--millions are not. Researchers in one 2006 study found that what makes some religious people unhappy is an image of God as severe, unloving or distant. The study shows that regular churchgoers who feel "very close to God" are 27% more likely to be very happy than churchgoers who do not feel very close to God. This may have been the trouble for Mother Teresa.

Unhappy religious folks are the exception to the rule, however, and the percentage gaps in happiness identified here still translate into many, many more millions of contented churchgoers than nonbelievers. Based on the current American population, we can roughly estimate that about 67 million American adults are "very happy." About 25 million of these folks are religious--but only eight million are secular.

All in all, there is no good reason to doubt the claim that religion is associated with happiness for most people. Mother Teresa was atypical in her service and charity. But she was also atypical in her sadness, in spite of her religious life.

Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Who Really Cares" (Basic Books, 2006).

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

How is a human to "realize" this, unless there is a cognitive acceptance that the Christian deity is something more than a human construct, unlike all the deities before the Christian version?

Happy or not, at least Mother Teresa had the guts and wisdom to experience doubt. Jesus experienced it, if you believe the gospels. My Zen teacher spoke on the importance of doubt. Took me a while to figure out what he meant but I think it has to do with not convincing yourself that you've SEEN THE LIGHT (HALLELUJAH!!!) and that you are now saved, know it all, etc.

My Zen teacher spoke of zen monks who see a small bit of the truth, enlightenment, whatever, and sit down right there, resolving to make their living off of that.

__________________
1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K