Think about what you just said

[chrisber]

I can't force myself into believing.

I tried that and it didn

[bigG]

And also with you.

Again, you're using arguments from the Bible to justify it as truth.

You're also using the faith of certain police as evidence. Faith as evidence is scarier than eyewitness evidence.

I never said my beliefs, or scriptures, should be necessarily truth for you.

maybe God is testing the amazing abilities of logic he instilled in you to see if you'll have faith in him over some scripture that promises things He can't deliver. No one knows, thus we call it faith, not fact.

[chrisber]

BigG

Your statements followed by a response:

Again, you're using arguments from the Bible to justify it as truth.

Where is the word entropy in the Bible? Where is Josephus in the Bible? Where is ShangDi in the Bible? Use your ability to read and reason. You know that this statement is false. 

You're also using the faith of certain police as evidence. Faith as evidence is scarier than eyewitness evidence.

If the term

[bigG]

IMHO God needs no seeking. He is already found in me. I feel He is part of me. I feel He doesn't speak through words/scripture, but through the direction He gives me. When I screw up, it's a lesson. When I don't, it's a blessing. I think He has blessed me with the ability to use logic, pragmatism, etc., even to read. I also appreciate the free will he's given me to explore just who/what I think He is. I have no conclusion and feel it's part of my life to find out just who/what he is; and where He wishes I go and what He wishes me to do. I also try to act as I feel Jesus would in many situations, and conclude that he might not necessarily wish me to follow either testament but to seek him through life's journey and internalize the way he carried himself more than reading scriptures.

"The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God."

You think og God as eternal. Even you say, it starts with nothing. Even before God.


We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use."

It's hard to accept nothing!

"Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things."

I think when we worry about our fears (heaven or heck) we lose some things about ourselves; and we become selfish.

"Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom."

You think you come from a God. I feel that what we call God is little more than nothing. Not saying He is irrelevant, saying that He was necessary function of nothing. Again, hard for people to deal with the disorder that is nothing. Thus, God is born.


"Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?"

No, it's human to rush to answers. Can you wait?

I'll quote more when I have time. I was a relatively staunch Christian (three decades ago), until I read some things beyond the Bible and came to the realization that there was something before God... nothing. I may use the word "God" to give you some sort of perspective; but I do believe that before God, there was nothing. Get lost in the woods an enjoy the nothing out there. Those things which you think were created by God, I enjoy them, too. Reality, to me, is that those things may or may not have been created by God. But what preceded those things being, is non-being. So we justify God as being "everywhere." What we see as evidence is nothing. That which preceded God. Perhaps God made me. He was preceded by nothing, IMO. and it's the way of nature to be thus. Perhaps God made all nature. The being exists because of non-being, in the end.

I always preach that you can't prove a negative. You can't prove God doesn't exist or that Jesus didn't do all those great things. It would be easy to prove, scientifically, that Lao Tze didn't exist. Yet we have some words of profound effect that seem to proven time after time.

Probability proves...nothing. A system of logic doesn't prove nor disprove; just as your logic doesn't prove nor disprove JC, God, nor their supposed miracles. Nothing proves them. Nothing is the only proof.

I like Tao, not as a religious deal, nor a faith, but an impressive insight into the interworking of nature. What's more an introspective into what we have, and have had, before all else.

When I compare all, I love the humanitarian aspect of JC, the genius of Chalam Balam and Archimedes, the simplicity of the Tao, the humanitarianism of Buddhism, and the life-alignment of Hinduism. There are many more things I believe; but I've gone far enough for today.

Peace be with you.

Sorry for picking and choosing. I once thought I knew it all. The more I learn, the less I know.

[chrisber]

Big G since you have quoted from Tao Te Ching 2, Tao Te Ching 11, Tao Te Ching 13 etc. would it be safe to say that you are a Taoist or do you prefer Daoist?
Disregard, I see that after I made this post you modified your initial post apparently adding a few other Gods that you believe in.  Now you state "I love the humanitarian aspect of JC, the genius of Chalam Balam and Archimedes, the simplicity of the Tao, the humanitarianism of Buddhism, and the life-alignment of Hinduism". I suppose that if this were a debate that would be one way to make your case. It appears that this God of BigG is unique and the God of your very own construction.  

Why do they need a book or books (Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, The Heshang Gong and Daozang... add the rest I'm sure you'll say some don't)?

What outside sources have you used to determine that anything within Taoism (add Buddhism and the rest) is valid?

Feel free to list prophecies fulfilled and science stuff.

Lao-tze also stated (I

[bigG]

Big G since you have quoted from Tao Te Ching 2, Tao Te Ching 11, Tao Te Ching 13 etc. would it be safe to say that you are a Taoist or do you prefer Daoist?
Disregard, I see that after I made this post you modified your initial post apparently adding a few other Gods that you believe in.  Now you state "I love the humanitarian aspect of JC, the genius of Chalam Balam and Archimedes, the simplicity of the Tao, the humanitarianism of Buddhism, and the life-alignment of Hinduism". I suppose that if this were a debate that would be one way to make your case. It appears that this God of BigG is unique and the God of your very own construction.  

Why do they need a book or books (Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, The Heshang Gong and Daozang... add the rest I'm sure you'll say some don't)?

What outside sources have you used to determine that anything within Taoism (add Buddhism and the rest) is valid?

Feel free to list prophecies fulfilled and science stuff.

Lao-tze also stated (I

[chrisber]

All seem to have earned/found peace.

I found peace but I didn

[bigG]

Me, too (BigG +1).

[chrisber]

I like to learn more than I like to debate. You have listed several sources, people and writings which you

[bigG]

"I like to learn more than I like to debate."

Me, too. The debate is great. I can , in the end, only promise to keep thumpin' away at texts. Just don't want you t think I discount the Bible (old or new), because I think it's bull. I just can't take it as literal. I don't think the Tao doesn't have translations ( what you read is about fifth on my list; but what I saw as easiest for English speakers.) I'll reiterate that in terms of humanity, I refer to JC,  most of the time, in terms of naturalism, Tao, in terms of justice, the Qu'ran, and in terms of mathematics, my heart goes to the Mayans. I have dedicated much time to understanding and teaching their wonderfully simplistic vigesimal system, though I'm still trying to figure out their logic with regard to exponents and the fluidity of functions. It's obvious there, per the Dresden codex, and the eclipse table. I still have much to learn.

The beauty is that you never run out of genius to admire. Nor can you run out of nothing. 

[chrisber]

You stated

[bigG]

I don't know enough about Glen Beck to know  if our philosophies jibe or not.

Though I've heard of Ramanujan, I didn't know all that about him. Doggone interesting.

I don't really follow anyone in the political world. Dirty stuff, there. All wearing nice suits and ties; but dirty, IMHO. Then again, I don't know much about it.

I have read about Dr. Rawlins. Interesting experience. I'm fine with finding science and parallels with The Book. Did you see the show on discovery that proved the plagues to be entirely possible, scientifically. great stuff. I love things like that. It wasn't all hocus pocus folks trying to prove aliens hung with the Egyptians. Just evidentiary science. I'm not turned off to Christianity. Heck I might go back to believing The Book is the word of God. That would take a slew of doing. My faith in in JC, though not as a the son of God, but as a human who led by supreme example.

Step on in learning about the Mayan vigesimal system is in knowing that fancy word just means "base 20" as cardinal numbers are base 10, right. We go by tens, then add that magic zero(that which gives the mathematical ability involved with place value) at every ten . Try doing computations with Roman numerals, right? The zero that gives place value is everything in making computations by hand. the Mayans only used three symbols to represent numbers: stone (dot), stick(line) and shell (this is the conch shell, simply drawn). First, I should say that I like these choices, because the stone represents a value of 1, the stick-5, the shell-0.

.-1
..-2
...-3
__-5

so

  .
___  is 6

 ..
___ is 7

...
___  8

....
___  9

___
___  10

  .
____
____  11

___
___
___  15


....
____
____
____ 19

Here we go, we've run out of room, and NOW we need the zero (I'll use a cap O to represent the conch shell)

  .

 O   is 20

  .

  .  21

  .

 ..  22
________________________________________


  .

____  is 25 ( you'll notice we go vertically from bottom to top. I always tell kids to tilt their heads to the right so left to right goes from top to bottom (big on top, smaller on bottom). The bigger numbers are always highest up, as they are on the left in our cardinals. I always say "go for a walk?" as my indicator that's what they should do. Then to get the right to left action we have with cardinal numbers. Notice the 20 level is on top, the ones- 19 below.) Now every dot on the 20 level is worth 20, and every stick 100. If I could I'd draw the 20 dot bigger and fatte,r so when I get to twenty five, it doesn't look like 6.

  .

____  25 I won't confuse it for six (below).

  .
____  6

Thus , thirty will look like.

  .

____
____

Forty is next

 ..
 O

Fifty

 ..

___
___

Sixty

  ...
 O

Seventy

...

___
___

Let's go slow now.

71 is

...

 .
___
___

61

...

 .

51

 ..

 .
___
___

41

..

 .


80

....

O

81

....
 .

91

....

 .
___
___

100 (stick is x 5)

___
 O

Let me show you the values
we go 10, 20, 30, etc.

Vigesimal means x 20

Level 5 (8000x20) every dot worth 160,000, every line worth 800,000

Level 4 (400 x20) every dot worth 8,000, every line worth 40,000

Level 3 (20 x20) every dot worth 400 every line worth 2,000

Level 2 (1x20) every dot is 20, every stick is 5x20 or 100

level 1    ones

so I always tell kids to remember this number 168,421, here's how you'd write it. 20   x 20  x20  x 20

  .  160k
  .   8k
  .   400
  .   20
  .    1

Need more space for millions, you make a new level up 160kx20=3,200,000 per dot, 16,000,000 per line. You can see these numbers in action if you'll look up the Dresden Codex and go the eclipse table and you see the formulation for the prediction of eclipse. mind you there are certain transforms and theorems and the like that are represented by bizarre images as well.

I like the stone as one, it exists but shows no life. the stick had life, and the conch shell is only a shell and void of life, thus zero. Why by 20 instead of ten. The Mayans didn't wear shoes.

I hope I explained that okay. I gotta get ready for fondue heaven, bud. I'll check back when I get home or tomorrow morning.

[chrisber]

Wow! Enjoy the fondue and take a day or two off... It may take me that long or longer to get a handle on "the Mayan vigesimal system".

Heck I might go back to believing The Book is the word of God.

BigG + Eternity

[bigG]

The soul is a malleable item. Instead of overthinking it, though, I prefer to let it all happen. That's the Taoist in me. 

[chrisber]