Building a Relationship with God

OK do you ever just kinda grin uncontrollablly and giggle when you think God put something somewhere as an answer to your question?Well i was reading last night and it was about how to build your relationship with God. It was mostly about the keys are praying and then letting him answer you thru the bible.....well this morning during my drive here I prayed like usual, and i prayed about him helping me pray more and helping me live like he wants me to and about how I want him to talk to me about what I need to do.....

well I immediately remembered that last night it said the answers are in the bible, thats how he talks to us.....well....

i thought ok fine, i have a bible app, so how do i know where to look?.......so automatically it popped into my head.....Colossians 4

i was like ok is that me or is that Him telling me what to read? i don't know cause i've never tried.....so i looked it up.....

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+4&version=NIV

HA!!'

A Few Funny Philosophical Questions

A Few Funny Philosophical Questions

1. Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.
2. One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor…..
3. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
4. If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?
5. The main reason santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
6. I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “where’s the self-help section?” she said if she told me it would defeat the purpose.
7. What if there were no hypothetical questions?
8. If a deaf person swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
9. If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?
10. Is there another word for synonym?
11. Where do forest rangers go to “get away from it all?”
12. What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
13. If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
14. Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
15. Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?
16. If a turtle doesn’t have a shell, is he homeless or naked?
17. Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?
18. If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
19. Why do they put braille on the drive-through bank machines?
20. How do they get deer to cross the road only at those yellow road signs?
21. What was the best thing before sliced bread?
22. One nice thing about egotists: they don’t talk about other people.
23. Does the little mermaid wear an algebra?
24. How is it possible to have a civil war?
25. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown too?
26. If you ate both pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?
27. If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
28. Whose cruel idea was it for the word “lisp” to have “s” n it?
29. Why are hemorrhoids called “hemorrhoids” instead of “assteroids”?
30. Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them?
31. Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?
32. If you spin an oriental man in a circle three times does he become disoriented?
33. Can an atheist get insurance against acts of god

“One cannot step twice in the same river.”

“One cannot step twice in the same river.” – Heraclitus (ca. 540 – ca. 480 BCE)
Heraclitus definitely isn’t alone here. His message was that reality is constantly changing it’s an ongoing process rather than a fixed and stable product. Buddhism shares a similar metaphysical view with the idea of annica, the claim that all reality is fleeting and impermanent.
In modern times Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941) described time as a process that is experienced. An hour waiting in line is different from an hour at play. Today contemporary physics lends credence to process philosophy with the realization that even apparently stable objects, like marble statues, are actually buzzing bunches of electrons and other subatomic particles deep down.

“The heart has its reason which reason does not know.”

“Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith – when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith – this [is] subjectivity … at its height.” – Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)
In a memorable scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy deduced that the final step across his treacherous path was a leap of faith. And so it is in Kierkegaard’s [wiki] theory of stages of life.
The final stage, the religious stage, requires passionate, subjective belief rather than objective proof, in the paradoxical and the absurd. So, what’s the absurd? That which Christianity asks us to accept as true, that God became man born of a virgin, suffered, died and was resurrected.
Abraham was the ultimate “knight of faith” according to Kierkegaard. Without doubt there is no faith, and so in a state of “fear and trembling” Abraham was willing to break the universal moral law against murder by agreeing to kill his own son, Isaac. God rewarded Abraham’s faith by providing a ram in place of Isaac for the sacrifice. Faith has its rewards, but it isn’t rational. It’s beyond reason. As Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has its reason which reason does not know.”

Ol' Socrates

“The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates (470-399 BCE)
Socrates’ [wiki] belief that we must reflect upon the life we live was partly inspired by the famous phrase inscribed at the shrine of the oracle at Delphi, “Know thyself.” The key to finding value in the prophecies of the oracle was self-knowledge, not a decoder ring.
Socrates felt so passionately about the value of self-examination that he closely examined not only his own beliefs and values but those of others as well. More precisely, through his relentless questioning, he forced people to examine their own beliefs. He saw the citizens of his beloved Athens sleepwalking through life, living only for money, power, and fame, so he became famous trying to help them.

Descartes Quote

“I think therefore I am” – René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
Descartes [wiki] began his philosophy by doubting everything in order to figure out what he could know with absolute certainty. Although he could be wrong about what he was thinking, that he was thinking was undeniable. Upon the recognition that “I think,” Descartes concluded that “I am.”
On the heels of believing in himself, Descartes asked, What am I? His answer: a thinking thing (res cogitans) as opposed to a physical thing extended in three-dimensional space (res extensa). So, based on this line, Descartes knew he existed, though he wasn’t sure if he had a body. It’s a philosophical cliff-hanger; you’ll have to read Meditations to find out how it ends.

Another Great Quote Explained

“We live in the best of all possible worlds.” – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716)
Voltaire’s famous novel Candide satirizes this optimistic view. And looking around you right now you may wonder how anyone could actually believe it. But Leibniz [wiki] believed that before creation God contemplated every possible way the universe could be and chose to create the one in which we live because it’s the best.
The principle of sufficient reason holds that for everything, there must be sufficient reason why it exists. And according to Leibniz the only sufficient reason for the world we live in is that God created it as the best possible universe. God could have created a universe in which no one ever did wrong, in which there was no human evil, but that would require humans to be deprived of the gift of free wills and thus would not be the best possible world.

One of the Most Important Quotes With an Interesting Explanation

“To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – Bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753)
As an idealist, Berkeley [wiki] believed that nothing is real but minds and their ideas. Ideas do not exist independently of minds. Through a complicated and flawed line of reasoning he concluded that “to be is to be perceived.” Something exists only if someone has the idea of it.
Though he never put the question in the exact words of the famous quotation, Berkeley would say that if a tree fell in the forest and there was no one (not even a squirrel) there to hear it, not only would it not make a sound, but there would be no tree.
The good news is, according to Berkeley, that the mind of God always perceives everything. So the tree will always make a sound, and there’s no need to worry about blipping out of existence if you fall asleep in a room by yourself.

Civilization?

Do you ever think about the fact that we, as in the human race, are advancing faster than we should or in the wrong directions?

I used to be quite addicted to a computer game called Civilization. This was one of the first versions of the game. It starts out with your “character” being the sole person standing where you can only see a tiny portion of the screen. You walk around exploring, learning different “skills” such as writing, harvesting, philosophy, iron work, etc., all the way up to like rocket science. You build cities, gain people, gain territory, and take over other cities. You try to take over the world basically. Well the game always ended with me thinking about the fact that if you grow too fast or in the wrong direction you will basically self-implode your civilization. I always wonder if we, in the real world, are growing too rapidly. Growing in the wrong areas? Focusing on the wrong thing? What if it ends up like a bad futuristic movie where people that are normal are hiding from the POWER trippers? What if Dallas and Tyler grow so large that they run into each other and we have no more “Country”? Anyway, my mind stays in overdrive so I’m quite shocked that it hasn’t imploded.