Tat, have you ever taken a class on listening to others? You are still trying to create your strawman biomystic with your half-assed ideas about what my beliefs are so you can blow your strawman to pieces. Well, I suggest you actually learn what my beliefs are before going off on them. For instance, Your division of atheists into "real ones" and ignorant atheists is your own device and has no bearing on my theism. I told you I was an atheist until age 35 when I went through my original religious conversion experience. I considered myself an agnostic actually at the time but through the religious experience I discovered that agnostics are atheists as there is no significant difference between not knowing God and denying God's exist--both do not have God consciousness which is the definition of "a-theism", i.e. "without theos, without God". As soon as the agnostic has authentic spiritual experience he or she becomes a theist but here I want to show you something about your own thinking- you say you were a theist before and now are not and you try to pin my theistic enthusiasm on the reformed drunk syndrome but it looks more like it's you that is performing it. Not being able to wait to actually learn about my beliefs before trying to clobber them with atheist argument you tip your reformed theist/born again atheist hand.

"You know how to throw a lot of the info back at us, such as the history of YHWH and it's evolution and such, but this information is new to you, hence the knee jerk reaction conclusion drawing..."

What? I've been onto Yahweh's pre-Hebrew/Canaanite origins since 1998 when I found Jesus' "Abba", his real spiritual Father in EL Elyon as EL was worshiped by Canaanites--a much different relationship than Yahweh had with Hebrews become Jews. That's 13 years now and here's a bit of Canaanite knowledge you may not have run across which goes to confirm the Yahweh/Yamm identity. Hebrew definitions cannot be trusted for linguistic accuracy because they have politically loaded new meanings in order to cover up Canaanite or Egyptian or other pagan borrowings. "Benjamin" is one such word as it is supposed to mean "son of my right hand" but actually means "Sons of Yamm". This is like "Moses" in Hebrew is supposed to mean "drawn out of water" but in Egyptian it means "Son" as in a son of a god like a pharaoh supposedly was, e.g. Tutmoses III, a "Son of Thoth". This renders "Out of Egypt I called My Son" to be applied to Moses, literally as "Son" taken out of Egypt. I've got 32 years into this stuff so while I am a newbie learning about the mythicist position, I got my own historical research track going.

"Have you brought to the table anything I've never heard before? Of course not."

Oh yeah? Like Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas, "I shall give you what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has never occurred to the human mind."

I don't think we can attach any measuring stick to "how much of an atheist" someone is.

If someone really doesn't believe in a god, then they are atheists. IF they then later re-convert to their old religion, or to some other, then they have jumped ship from atheist to theist again.

It doesn't shed a negative light on the word "atheist", but it might cast into doubt whether that person was a methodological rationalist, or empiricist, or some other name which could be defined by accepting claims based on evidence, rather than subjective dispositions or preference.

It is these terms which suffer for they denote the means of acquisition of knowledge, whereas atheism is simply a yes no answer which could be held no matter what means was used to reach that conclusion. Even if it were a psychich revelation or some wavelength of universal vibration which caused somebody to intuitively know for certain there was no god.

That sounds like nonsense, and you won't find any methodological rationalists on board with that path to atheism, but it doesn't change the state of that binary qualifier.

No, but I'm listening. Take this for instance:

As I was saying, ignorant.

A = not and Theism = God belief. Hence, a theist is "God Belief" while an atheist is "Not God Belief." It's simple, an atheist is simply a person who lacks God belief. They don't have to "deny God's exist." There's nothing to deny when you lack God belief. You just don't have it. And any ignorant bastard can be an atheist simply because they lack God belief, not because they've researched, and studied, and concluded that no such thing as a God or Gods exist. You want to come at me about belief's I have, but I'm not the one promoting belief, you are. The only person between you and I with belief to loose here is you Stephen.

I've pushed you into revealing these beliefs of yours by challenging you. And so far it's worked out just fine. You got pissed and tried to return fire. So now, Gnostic is basically one who is "Knowing", while the bare meaning of Agnostic is basically A = not and Gnostic = knowing, and so an Agnostic is not knowing. So you're telling me that when a "not knowing" person has authentic spiritual experience he or she becomes a theist? I'd say that he or she becomes an idiot when they delude themselves with fantasy theories and psychological head games. At least that's how I see it.

I'm the opposite of you Stephen. My name is Nehpets, and I was born into theistic delusion. I fooled myself into thinking I was having spiritual experiences when it was all in my head the entire time. I eventually woke up and realized that. And then I moved on. I've watched people delude themselves and play off of one another in church circles, such as one idiot claiming to get demon possessed on a mission trip to central America. When arriving back to school in the states and speaking up front about it, several other people in the audience, for attention obviously, suddenly started feeling ill and rolling around acting like this demon was after them too. It's a lot of BS Stephen, all of it. And theism is slowly going the way of the dinosaur...

Well excuse me, you must be a real wiz bang then. It really shows.

Yes, the mystery of mere existence. 'Pick up the stone, I am there...' This is Gnostic mythology addressed to the mystery of existence, which is simply the great unknown. No eye has seen the mystery behind the existence of existence. No ear has heard the mystery underlying mere existence itself. The mystery behind the existence of existence itself has never occurred to the human mind. This text is NOT actually addressed to any literal deity, supreme being, or even any mind of any type, eternal or otherwise. Certainly not a spiritual realm, literally, either. It is addressed to BEYOND all of those things which can be named and conceived with the mind. I am in accord with the first mythological function and you lower level New Age type mystics have no hold on me. You still think that the transcendent is in reference to a literal God, or a literal realm just beyond this one, hence you cling to theism. And it gives your mystical ignorance away...

PS Mods, sorry for this rant. Can someone please split this off topic back and forth to a new thread about theism verses atheism or something?

Tat, you're too full of your own opinions to actually hear
what I'm saying. Your personal definitions of atheism aren't relevant to my theist beliefs because like I told you there is no difference as far as I'm concerned since going through religious awakening between lack of knowledge of God and not believing in God. In both cases, there is no God consciousness, i.e. the dictionary definition of atheism, a-theos, "without God".

I'm sorry your experiences with theism weren't valid for you but when you project your own experiences onto others as if they too would react like you, well, that's where you need to listen better and learn we don't all think the same, thank God, and my theistic experiences were never like yours.

We really should conduct this debate elsewhere Stephen. It's way off topic. In my last post I thought I was responding in the mythicism thread until I posted it and realized we were on Stuarts thread. I just responded to you over there, and maybe they can clean this thread up of our off topic rambling and put it over there.

In this case I think Tat has a good point regarding splitting the thread. Biomystic's first post was sort of relevant, but then he hared off into discussion of belief in the supernatural. It doesn't even relate to Christ in Egypt, so best not in the forum for this book.

I have made a new thread called Belief in the Supernatural. Interbane or Johnson, could you please move biomystic's comments and direct responses to them to that thread?

Thank you guys for moving the trolling elsewhere. Now back to CIE...

I think I see what you're saying. It has always bothered me that Christians can so easily flip-flop between the Old and New Testaments. This seems to me to be an adulteration of both. Example: Psalm 139 ""Oh Lord, shouldn't I hate those who hate you? Shouldn't I despise those who resist you? Yes, I hate them with complete hatred, for your enemies are my enemies." I found this in a little booklet entitled, "The Book of Hope" distributed by a local Christian church.

As to this idea of "Christianity as a stand-alone new Jewish theology", this is a new thought for me and perhaps your right. Why else would the Old Testament play such an important role right down to the overwhelming support of Christians for the State of Israel and the Jewish right to land that was occupied by other folks? That's like the U.N. pronouncing that the State of Wisconsin no longer exist. It is now going to be governed by other folks and current residents have no say in the matter or the government. Or like the U.S. saying to the American Indians, "This land is now the State of Wisconsin and you're going to have to move."