Re: Negativity defines me
 

"Negativity defies me." Feel free to use my pithy quote elsewhere. Royalties will be freely accepted. (What is the current exchange rate for Euros into Milk-Bones?)

Re: Negativity defines me
 

Alberto, don't ever change man, I love your fighting intellectual curiosity, wish some of my fellow Catholics shared that vivacity.

Of course, if you can accept the narrative as true, it was God who provided the gold, by scaring the Egyptians with plagues and darkeness and death, more to the point it says " the Lord gave favour to the people in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them: and they stripped the Egyptians. " And the gold was to play a specific purpose, it was to be used in the tabernacle and in the temple. I don't want to look it up now but there is at least one chapter about how splendid the tabernacle, and the veil and the altar and all the other things that were supposed to be used in sacrifice at the temple and how much gold and other precious things were required. And remember the Gold Calf incident happened about 50 days after they left Egypt. They only end up wandering the desert as punishment but had they been faithful there is no doubt that God would have led them to the Promise land shortly afterward and that gold would have become needed real quick for the tabernacle. As it is it ended being used for the ark of the covenant would be equally resplendent.

The manna, which had to be collected every day, which was always enough for each family, which was supernaturally delicious and filling, and which would rot at the end of each day and would have to be collected again the next day - was meant to teach the Jewish people to rely completely on God, and not meant as parlor trick to show off. And it was a prefigurement for the Eucharist - so not at all the same thing like getting gold.;)

Anyways, that's not the issue - if you can't accept the proposition that God interfered in mankind's history and could imagine what kind of frightening power that must be like then you naturally would have difficulty understanding why the Egyptians acted like they did. If someone points a gun in my face, let me tell you I am prepared to give everything valuable on my person if it means he'll leave me alone, and I get to live. Doesn't sound a posteriori at all to me - sounds actually kind of realistic. But you can't see that if you can't even hypothetically imagine that everything else before that actually happened.

:)

Nobody, I like hearing your opinion, frankly sometimes you make me work to prove mine, and I respect that. My point was just that this is a forum, and even if there are a lot of knowledgeable people on this board I think it is fair to say that we are all of just giving our qualified opinions. No one is insisting upon there view in scholarly way, I think we are all of us just sharing a perspective, and if you don't agree with somebody, you can take their opinion with a grain of salt.

Anyways Alberto, good to hear from you, and glad to see that you are back on these boards. If you give em you up in the future don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail,

Sorry to hear about your bad experience with Christianity, know that I do not hold your negative opinion of Christianity in anyway against you. Whatever your antipathy you are still fair, at least you have been in our discussions.

Re: Negativity defines me
 

Once upon a time, my father accepted to repair the wood carving of a small old clock that was damaged. Not the mechanism, just the wood carving. It was an old clock, with two designs (probably flowers) carved on the sides, being the clock in the middle. The clock wasn't working. According to my aunt, the clock was given to her in its present condition, with this legend. I want to say that she was told, she didn't see what I'm about to tell you "with her own eyes". The clock had stopped at the moment, the owner, a neighbor from old Russia, died. You know, one of those countries in the ex-Soviet Russia that brings so many fantasies to one's mind. When the clock was brought home, certain events happened. I'm not going to describe all of them (very few that I can remember), but I do remember these two. The clock was in a our dining room: 1) my brother said that one night a "strange force" pushed him out of the room when he wanted to sit at the table, located in front of the clock, and 2) my mother said she heard unintelligible voices coming from that dining room at night. These incidents and others would show you how mind works. From a religious viewpoint, it was evidently that my family believed that a ghost was involved in it. From my viewpoint, I call it a scientific viewpoint, there was another explanation. 1) What kind of force? I asked my brother. Did you actually felt pain when you said you were pushed? Or you think that you were pushed? like dreaming. 2) Obviously, always incidents that happened at night. These two incidents are maybe enough to show how these two minds work. I also asked: 3) Why did the owner want to stop the clock when he died? There was nothing better for him to do? Not enough spiritual power to influence other things, like disintegrate his house in front of everyone's eyes? 4) How do we know that those two incidents are related? The clock might have stopped independently of whether the man died or not. We don't know whether the clock would have stopped if the man died 5 minutes after or before. And 5) When did the clock stop? "When he died". But when do we die? "At the last breath". When is it? When someone dies, air is still in the lungs and can be heard minutes after the person is apparently dead. Was this action transmitted instantaneously? The man died, then "immediately" the clock stopped? Or there was a spiritual delay of a few microseconds? My family thought I was a lost cause, an atheist, although they wouldn't say the word at a Christian home. I was around 10. These are two worlds that have no chance of reconciling, when you see it my way, it is obvious that the proposition of the existence of God is false. It's so obvious that God doesn't exist. But if I see it your way, you will never understand my position, you think that my mind is astray or something. There is nothing wrong. There are two different worlds, and history would tell us who was right. Do you really think that religion is going to survive another century? Even if it does, which I doubt, Science (all human knowledge) is going to push it further and further away till the only thing left for religion is superstition, like in my family's case, a haunted clock. That's why most of the religious world fear Science. After Galileo, people should have learned that Science is unstoppable.