If the discussion is over, should I stop checking to see if you have answered? LOL

“Guy really should consider manuscripting his podcasts! 72 minutes!”

No. That is one of the reasons I do them, is to forgo the typing! Silly boy…

You said:

“However, my apostasy was a result of seeking God and trying to decipher what you call the “Word of God””

There was your mistake. No “Human” could possibly know the mind of God, hence the reason you let the Holy Spirit “interpret” it for you.

You said:

“to my complete deconversion.”

Hence the reason no “conversion/re-conversion” is needed, now you just need to live your life as you have every day since then, and God will do the rest behind the scenes, just as He is at this very moment!

No need to “believe”, you already do.

No need to “act on” anything, you already are.

Just continue on as an “Atheist”, and God will continue on as God.

“Matt” is still there, you just do not see him. Someday you will, who knows when? But you will continue to carry out “God’s Will”, and not know you are doing so, just like you did when you were a “So-Called Christian”, and never knew it.

You said:

“we apostates require more”

What WE “require” is to be “sustained”, nothing more.

What WE “deserve” is Hell, nothing less.

All any of us “need” from God is His ability to keep our lungs inflating and deflating, our hearts beating, and other “autonomic processes” that He provides. Nothing more. Anything “needed” beyond that is sheer greed.

“If” the rapture should hit while we are both alive, and “*if” we are still both here, e-mail me, I have a plan already set-up for 3 1/2 years of evangelization. LOL

You said:

“YHVH being the malicious tyrant that he was…”

Where in the Bible do you see Him being that? You show me book/chapter/verse.

You said:

“but good job nonetheless on voting for Barr”

It gives me the immense privilege of saying:

“Don’t blame me, I voted for Bob Barr” for the next 4 years! LOL

You said:

“he fails to provide the evidence that I require”

See Above…

Never fear, “Self-Centeredness” is normal for Humans.

You said:

“I have said before that I am open to the existence of God; ”

Once Saved, Always Saved…

You said:

“the Bible is a book full of errors”

Name one.

You said:

“Why should I be forced into this?”

Your not, YOU chose. Like ANY OTHER decision, YOU must live with the results of that choice, good or bad. You don’t get to skate away just because you supposedly don’t like the result! You kill someone, then tell the judge… “Oh no, I don’t want to go to prison, so you have no authority to send me there.!” Ya right, get real…

You said:

“HAHA, as irrelevant as it is, I have been through multiple church splits. That has little to do with this as I have explained previously.”

Says you. As a human, it does affect your “Faith” whether you agree or not, the facts remain the same. Betrayal is the one sin a human does not have the ability to “forget”, ergo “forgiveness” is impossible.

*(Knowing and believing does have quite the thin line between them, best to be prepared ahead of time!)

Happiness is a universal feeling and all people will smile and/or laugh when they are happy; it feels good to be happy. But how one may become happy/feel good or what makes one happy/feel good can be different for different people. So there is not any conflict with interpretation of happiness but there are different degrees of happiness.

I am proposing that God is the highest degree of happiness, infinite or pure happiness; and that the happier one is, the better one feels, and the closer he or she is to God.

Matt, Mike and you can and do experience different degrees of happiness whether any of you believe in God, or that God is infinite happiness, or not. So that is what removes what I’m saying from any interpretation. Feeling good is ‘The One Truth’. Yes there are infinite flavors of feeling good and happiness but pure infinite happiness is absolute and not subject to interpretation; you either experience it or you don’t.

Some scientists are starting to understand the Unified Field or Quantum reality as the responsible “unifying magical truth…” and “…invisible galactic goblin pulling the strings or setting things in motion or sending out waves of love and happiness over everyone.”

Like everything there are lots of YouTube videos on Quantum reality here is one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=couVqpuX9CU

And you’re all seeking ‘The One Truth’ in some form or another?

Whether that’s your happiness version of truth or some other blindly religious person’s version … don’t you see the problem? You’re all interpreting it differently. There can be no truth. And I know someone will think: “aah, but that’s the supreme mystery! One truth that’s lots of conflicting truths and if I say it while waving my fingers about then it all seems spookily plausible” but that’s just a cop out and you’d know that and admit it if you thought about it for one second. You’ve got the simple answer of “there’s an enormously high probability that there’s a rational, physical explanation for everything” and you’ve got the lazy, mentally-deficient, impossible-to-prove and therefore unimaginably unlikely answer of “God’s behind it all … well, one of the Gods … well, hopefully my interpretation of the God I think about when I mention God …”

I’m not having a go at you personally but I’m pointing out that this is a prevalent theme throughout all religions and all religious people. You’ve got Guy in his comments saying to Matt: “it is that very renunciation of your former “religion” that brings you all the closer to Christ” and I guarantee here that Guy’s “Christ” is being interpreted by him differently to everyone on the planet; it may be subtle or it may be wildly removed but it will be different. He can’t help it; it’s the sort of thing brains do.

Many of us may have had imaginary friends when we grew up but we didn’t all have the same one. Those friends were all different and they were all absolutely, 100% guaranteed not real. That’s what imaginary means. The concept of any god is exactly the same; a personal interpretation of a desire for something you don’t have an answer for either because you can’t be bothered to look for it or you’re incapable of looking for it. There’s no unifying magical truth just like there’s no invisible galactic goblin pulling the strings or setting things in motion or sending out waves of love and happiness over everyone. To claim otherwise is to declare to everyone that you are as adult and mature as a child playing soldiers with his make-believe pal.

Thinking of God being non personal instead of a white bearded man upstairs in the sky is different but I have grown to know God as Love. My feeling is also that Christ came to earth not to suffer and die but to have fun and live, which He did even with crucifixion. Jesus was God’s personal (God in human form) demonstration of what human life is about.

I am increasing my happiness daily through meditation, healthy diet & exercise, and relationships. My plan is to start performing miracles when my happiness gets to a high enough level with the first minor miracle being able to set a new marathon record while I have taken 57+ trips around the sun.

I’m gonna purchase a sport training watch that will display a number of different scientific charts on my blog that show how physically close I am to running 13 mph.

So enjoy lol, I’m enjoying what I’m doing too, and we’ll see what happens.