Outlining Six Competing Worldviews

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This lesson examines six competing worldviews including: Monotheism - One God which governs the world Polytheism - Many Gods which govern the world Atheism - No God governing the world Competing Dualism - Two opposing impersonal divine forces govern universe Balancing Dualism - Two complementing impersonal divine forces govern universe Monism - One impersonal divine force governs he universe

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So, again, welcome to our first lesson in our study, which we are saying is a study of comparative religion.
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But I want to begin by saying comparative religion sometimes can be confusing because what comparative religion often means is that people are looking at various religions and trying to find ways in which they're all similar.
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So you can bring all people together in sort of a big ecumenical suit.
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That is not what we're doing.
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We're not trying to say, well, Christianity is just like Islam and Islam is just like Judaism and Judaism is just like Hinduism.
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We're all going to the same God up different roads of the mountain, because, number one, I don't believe that that's true.
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And number two, it's just not true.
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Then it doesn't matter what I believe.
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It's just not true.
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There are distinctives to Christianity, and sometimes the best way to understand the distinctives of our particular faith is to look at them through the lens of other faiths, to look at them.
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Well, what does Islam teach about this or what does Judaism teach about this or what does Hinduism teach about this particular thing? And I want to begin tonight with a story.
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And it's a story of a young man named Oscar.
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Oscar is a fictional character.
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Just to let you know, this is a fictional story.
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But Oscar was a person who was very, very self-confident.
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He believed he was right.
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Nay, he knew that he was right.
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And he didn't need to study.
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He didn't need to examine his position.
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He just knew that all of the other viewpoints were wrong.
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His viewpoint was correct.
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And the group that Oscar was a part of was called the Flat Earth Society.
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This group, called the Flat Earth Society, made sure all of its members knew that all of the positions that opposed it were wrong.
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They developed easy-to-read pamphlets that made their case, and Oscar was convinced of his position.
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Furthermore, there was a charismatic teacher who explained the absurdity of the spherical Earth.
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And because Oscar admired him so much, he was completely sold on the idea.
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He didn't need to study.
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He knew the Earth was flat.
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Beloved, that is not just an analogy.
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Is it fictional? Well, yeah, there is no Oscar that I know of.
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But the Flat Earth Society does exist.
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You can go online and you can look it up.
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There are groups of people that believe, teach and hold to the concept of what is called the flat Earth.
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They believe the Earth is disc-shaped, but that it is flat on one side and all of us are on one side.
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And on the other side, there are stalagmites or stalactites that hang down in the Earth.
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Underneath of the Earth just looks like a giant cave of some sort.
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Now, there are people like Oscar all over the world.
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More importantly, however, Christians are often compared to people like Oscar.
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Why? Because Christians are thought of as people who do not look outside of their own worldview, who do not look outside of the box of their own preconceived ideas, that will not study anything other than what is written by their people and on their side and in their box.
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And as such, we often are seen just like you put the picture in your mind of Oscar.
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Well, people put that picture in their mind of us.
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Again, I can attest to you time and time again that I have listened to Christians try to explain the fates of others.
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Well, I know all about Islam.
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Islam believes X, Y and Z and Islam believes nothing of the kind, or I know all about Hinduism.
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Hinduism believes X, Y and Z and Hinduism believes nothing of the kind or something similar, but not correct.
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And many people who do this are very ignorant of the world around them, particularly they are ignorant of why people believe what they believe.
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And beloved, in our modern world, if we do not understand why people believe the things that they do, we will not be able to engage the field of apologetics.
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And beloved, apologetics is a part of evangelism.
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What is apologetics? Giving a defense of the faith, giving a defense for why we believe what we believe.
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But if you have never examined what you believe in the light of what other people believe, then my question to you is, have you really examined what you believe? If this is all you've ever been taught, if this is all you've ever known, if you've grown up a Christian and you've never seen anything else, heard anything else, know anything else, how do you know that you're not just like Oscar? First Peter 315 commands us against this type of ignorance.
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First Peter 315 says, In your hearts, honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks for a reason of the hope that is in you, yet to do it with gentleness and respect.
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Beloved, that is our command.
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We are commanded to be able to give a defense for what we believe, but beloved, I can tell you the vast majority of people in churches today, their answers are not only not only are they often wrong, but their answers are inconsistent and often just heretical because they haven't thought through what they believe.
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If all we ever heard is one side of an argument, when it comes to worldview and religion, we will be ill prepared if someone comes to challenge us in regard to our faith.
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Remember this, and you may want to write this down.
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Any side seems logical if we only see things from that one point of view.
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Any side seems logical if you only see things from that point of view.
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In fact, there's a Bible verse that sounds very much like that.
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Proverbs chapter 18 and verse 17, quickly becoming one of my favorite verses, Proverbs 18, verse 17, says the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him.
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It's easy to hear one side of the case and say, man, that guy's right, nobody argued with him.
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Again, when we behave that way, we demonstrate that maybe we are a little bit like Oscar.
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Beloved, I have seen this happen to young people time and time again.
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They are brought up without being exposed to various worldviews.
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And when they are challenged about what they believe, they crumble like a house of cards.
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I remember a friend of mine went to college, UNF college, wasn't you? But it was another friend of mine went to UNF and he took a world religions class in the world religions class.
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There was a young girl there, been brought up in church, never been exposed to anything else.
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By the second day, she said she had to transfer out of the class because she couldn't handle all of the things that she was hearing.
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She just wasn't prepared.
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She wasn't prepared to deal with the objections.
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She wasn't prepared to deal with the difficult things.
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Beloved, this is what we do.
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We take our children and we don't train them to be warriors for Christ.
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We train them to be sheep.
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And when they go out into the world, they get slaughtered just like sheep.
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We need to study opposing viewpoints.
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We gain two benefits by studying opposing viewpoints.
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And here they are.
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If you want to write this, we haven't even got to your worksheet yet.
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So if you want to turn this over, if you want to write something, you receive two benefits from studying opposing viewpoints.
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Number one, we can see if we have been or are currently in error and make a change.
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We can see if we have been or are currently in error and make a change.
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This never happens to people who do not look at various viewpoints.
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This never happens to people who stay on without examining their position.
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Part of the reason why I am reformed in my theology is because I was forced to evaluate my position on theology in light of scripture and reason.
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And I found I was inconsistent.
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So I had to change.
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And that's what so frustrates me now when I have people that are not reformed.
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I understand it is God who opens the heart.
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It is God who shows them.
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So I'm not too frustrated with them.
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But it does frustrate me at times when I try to demonstrate the inconsistencies because I used to be there.
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But if you never examine anything, if you just if you close your eyes, you'll never see.
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If perhaps you might be an error on any subject, this doesn't just apply to theology, this applies to all of life.
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The second thing, the second reason, the second benefit is that we can better help others.
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Number one, we can see if we're an error and make a change.
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And number two, we can better help others when we study a viewpoint which is wrong.
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And I'm going to go ahead and tell you, yeah, most of what I'm going to be teaching this summer is stuff that I think is wrong.
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And I'm going to try to demonstrate to you that it's wrong because I believe that it's wrong.
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But you know what? When we study a viewpoint that is wrong, we still learn things from studying it.
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It helps us to understand how to defend our own view and it helps us communicate our view to others.
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I have a quote from Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul that I'd like to read to you.
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And this he talks about heresy, false teaching about God.
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And he says, and I quote, Though heresy in and of itself is a disfigurement and a distortion and a corruption of the truth and leads into perilous error from which we may have eternal consequences.
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And so, therefore, it is a bad thing.
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Yet within the providence of God, God will often use the wickedness of the heretic to call his church to a greater care and scrutiny of the truth.
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It's like iron sharpening iron.
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It's in the context of controversy.
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It's in the context of conflict that positions are forced to be clarified and the church is forced to define her faith with ever greater precision in order to avoid the distortions of the counterfeit.
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End quote.
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You see, Sproul's point is this.
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The reason why the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon and all of the other councils convened in the early church was not just because a bunch of churchmen wanted to get together and make up some rules, but it was because error had risen up.
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And how do you deal with error, but you confront it with the truth? And he's saying that even though heresy in itself is a bad thing, God uses it providentially for the betterment of his church, because in the rebuttal of error, we further clarify truth.
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So that's why we're here.
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We want to clarify the truth and we do so by rebutting that which is in error.
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All right, so now we shall move on to your worksheets, begin with a question, how would you define religion? Somebody want to take a crack at that? If you are, speak loudly because it's no fun for the person listening to the recording if they can't hear you.
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Yes, Miss.
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Now, OK, human system drive to reach God.
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That's balanced definition of religion.
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They may got anything else.
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OK, this is true religion to visit orphans and widows in their affliction that he's quoting, I believe, the Apostle Paul or James James.
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I'm sorry I missed that one.
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But yes, he's quoting scripture.
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That is true religion.
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Thank you.
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True and undefiled religion.
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That's not fair.
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Yes, that is true and undefiled religion.
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But yes, what when we think of the definition of the word religion, what is it? They may also have another idea, the belief in a God or God's.
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OK, anything else? Yes, sir.
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Mr.
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Byron.
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OK, man's attempt to give himself peace of mind with what he believes in man's attempt to reach God.
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OK.
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All right.
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Do you want to say something? You look like you did.
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OK.
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All right.
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Well, I cheated.
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I looked it up in the dictionary, but I wanted to start by asking that question because by and large, we all made a point about God.
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In the dictionary definition, it makes that point, but I want to I want to focus on something.
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This is Random House Dictionary, just one of the random ones that I picked up.
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It's funny.
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OK, it's Random House Dictionary defines religion as a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe.
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Common.
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Especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies.
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Common.
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Usually involving devotion and ritual observances and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
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The first part is the part I want to focus on, because Random House gets it right at this point, I think, because a religion is a set of beliefs that concerns itself with the cause, the nature and the purpose of the universe.
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A religion is a set of beliefs that concern themselves with the cause, the nature and the purpose of the universe.
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To make it short and sweet, this is Keith Foskey's answer.
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This was not I had this before I looked it up in the dictionary because I asked myself the same question I asked y'all.
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Here's the question I came up.
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Here's the answer I came up with.
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Religion is a set of beliefs that attempt to answer life's ultimate questions.
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Religion is a set of beliefs that seeks to answer life's ultimate questions.
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Huh? Yeah.
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Some examples of these are what is ultimate reality? What is the nature of the world? What is the nature of man? What is man's primary problem? What happens after death, if anything? This definition does not necessarily include a belief in God.
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Secularism and humanism are examples of religions because they attempt to answer life's ultimate question without a supreme being.
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You see, that's why I like Random House's definition.
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Random House's definition of a religion was a set of beliefs that seek to find the cause, nature and purpose of the universe, especially in the case of a divine being.
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But they didn't rule out the possibility that a religion can include someone who doesn't believe in a divine being.
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Beloved, atheists are religious fanatics.
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I'll be quoted.
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I want that on my T-shirt.
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Everybody come on religious T-shirts.
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I want a T-shirt that says atheists are religious fanatics because atheists buy billboards just like Christians that, you know, they get radio spots just like Christians.
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They have conferences like Christians.
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There's the American Society of American Atheistic Society.
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There's all these different groups that meet and they have conferences.
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They are a religious organization.
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They would say, no, we're an anti-religious organization.
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No, you have sought in your atheism to find a belief system wherein you believe you have the cause, nature and purpose of the universe.
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But they would say it was caused.
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Oh, well, let's not go to atheism yet.
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We'll get there eventually.
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But what they believe about the cause, nature and purpose of the universe is humanistic, is materialistic.
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But it is still the whole crux of what they believe and teach.
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It's the focus of what they believe and teach.
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Now, on your sheet, you will see the religious worldviews is your first major heading.
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Let's break them down.
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Let's look at them when broken down into categories.
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There are basically six competing worldviews, basically six.
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Now, could you make subcategories for days? Yeah.
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Yes, you could make subcategories that could go on forever.
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However, in our scope, we are going to look at the six major competing religious worldviews.
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The first one, letter A, is monotheism.
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We're going to explain these however far we get today.
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I don't know, but we're going to go through each one of these.
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So I'm not going to try to give a long explanation right now.
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Let's look at letter B, letter B is competing dualism, competing dualism, letter C, polytheism, letter D, balancing dualism, letter E is monism, M-O-N-I-S-M, monism.
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Letter F is atheism, atheism.
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Now, letter three or number three, letter A, each religious group has a unique concept of God or gods.
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That's why I use a little d, little g.
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Each one has a view of humanity.
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Each one has a different view of humanity's problem or problems.
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Each one has a view of what the solutions should be, the solution or the solutions.
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Each one has a view of what happens after death.
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So this is the second part.
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All right.
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Now, I really want to try to get through all of these tonight because I'd really like to jump into Islam next week.
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Can we? We'll see.
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Y'all know I'm real bad about stopping.
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So we'll see.
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We'll see.
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It shouldn't it shouldn't take us too long.
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You guys have got a bunch of blanks, right? Let's let's see about.
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Oh, wait, did I miss one? So far, so good.
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Oh, I just I jumped ahead of myself.
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I'm sorry.
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OK, breaking down the worldviews is where we are breaking down the worldviews.
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The first we're going to look at is monotheism, monotheism, monotheism, concept of God.
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God is the supreme being in the universe.
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You may want to also write on a little subset, one God only.
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That's what monotheism mono, of course, being one theism being from the word theos or theos, which means God.
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So it's one God only monotheism as this God is the supreme being in the universe and monotheistic systems.
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God is not at liberty to do anything.
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He is his own governor.
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I'm sorry, not at liberty, not compelled rather to do it.
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He is at liberty to do all he wants.
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He is not compelled to do anything.
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He is his own governor.
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OK, and that's part of the whole idea of monotheism is that it's not as if there's a pantheon and some type of Supreme Council.
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God is his own counselor.
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We read about that in Scripture.
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All right, number two, view of humanity, man is created being as a created being, different from all other created beings.
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This is something that is shared by all monotheistic systems is that man has a difference in him from all other created beings.
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View of humanity's problems.
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Now we have to start breaking it down, because when you look at the three major monotheistic views, the three major monotheistic views are Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
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Judaism says man's problem is the inability to keep the perfect law of God.
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Islam says it is failure to seek God's guidance.
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And Christianity says man's humanity's major problem is constant rebellion against God.
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Why do we believe man is constantly rebelling against God? Because we believe as part of the fall of man, we inherited a sinful nature.
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And as such, that nature is in constant rebellion against God.
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And the only thing that changes that is when God gives us rebirth, we are born again and then are able to seek after and love God.
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All right.
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What should the solutions be? Judaism live according to God's perfect law.
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These are pretty much the same.
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Islam seek God's guidance.
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Let us see Christianity.
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The solution is faith in God's saving work.
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Are these simplified? Yes, because we're not doing all these religions tonight.
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I'm simply making the point of some of the initial differences.
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Christianity, Judaism and Islam in regard to death all agree that a person continues in existence and either a version of eternal bliss.
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Or a version of eternal torment.
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So that's letter A underneath number five.
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What happens after death? Christianity, Judaism and Islam all believe that humanity either goes to eternal bliss, which we call heaven or eternal torment, which we would call hell.
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There are versions of this in the three major monotheistic religions.
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Now, how many of you already knew what monotheism was? Most of you know what monotheism is.
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OK, how many of you know what competing dualism is? OK, a couple of you.
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All right.
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This one is different.
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Most people know monotheism, polytheism, atheism, those ones, you know, but then you start talking about dualism and things like that.
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And it begins to people say, well, I don't know about this one.
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All right, because I'm going to take a competing dualism, I want to put a big purple star here for one reason.
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I believe my heart of hearts, most people in America are not monotheists.
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I believe a lot of people are competing dualists.
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And they don't even know it, but because of their view of God, I'll tell you why.
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Let's go through it now.
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Explain what I'm talking about.
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I'll explain it.
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I'll explain myself.
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Concept of God or God is that there are two gods that constantly oppose one another view of humanity purpose.
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The purpose of humanity is to join in the battle between good and evil and fight for good view of humanity's problems, choosing evil over good.
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What the solution should be simply to choose to do good over evil.
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And finally, what happens after death, competing dualism shares the monotheistic view of the afterlife, which is continuing existence in either heaven or hell.
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The difference is good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell, whereas in Christian theology, it has.
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We see what the idea that there is none good, no, not one, and the only one who is righteous is the one who has been made righteous by God.
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There's a much different view of good and evil.
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The thing about competing dualism is this.
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Often people think they are monotheists, but they are actually competing dualists.
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They do this by seeing God and the devil as equal partners, equal not partners, rather equal powers struggling against one another in the grand scheme for power.
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Remember, this is how most people see the devil.
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In fact, I've had conversations with people.
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Well, well, the devil is is God's competitor.
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The devil is God's is God's opposite.
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You've got good God, bad devil.
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You know, the Bible never, ever paints the devil as God's competitor.
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The Bible always paints the God or paints the devil as God's subject, never as his competitor.
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He's our competitor, but we're not God.
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He's in opposition to the church and what we're doing.
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But the Bible says before he could lay a hand on Job, he had to go to God and get permission.
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That demonstrates that it's not as if the devil's got his power and God's got his power and they're constantly sort of trying to one up the other.
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But that is the view that most people have of God and the devil.
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That God is doing his thing, the devil's doing his thing, and they're constantly at war.
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Well, I would say that the devil is constantly rebelling against God, but only as far as God allows.
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Because God is still in control, go back to monotheism, what does monotheism teach? There is but one supreme being in the universe and the concept that the devil has some sort of power outside of what God allows is foolishness.
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And unbiblical.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And even further, you're right, because so many people don't believe in the sovereignty of God.
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They'll say, well, God's got a plan or God's in control and they'll put it on their bumper sticker.
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But the real belief that God is actually sovereign is few and far between.
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It truly is.
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And as I said, so many people are competing dualists, they don't even realize.
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So many churches that I've been in, where all they ever talk about is the power of the devil.
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I mean, I don't know if you've ever been to churches like that, but that's all they can ever talk about is how powerful the devil is, how powerful the devil is.
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That's a form of competing dualism, because I remember there was a song one time, popular Christian artists wrote a song about the battle between God and the devil.
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D.L.
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Moody wrote a track, said God voted against you, the devil or God voted for you, the devil voted against you and you break the tie.
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Hodgepodge.
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And Moody wasn't that bad a guy, but he was wrong on that one.
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The idea that God and the devil are somewhat equal partners in this thing we call the universe is foolishness indeed.
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But again, that is the viewpoint.
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That's why I put it right after monotheism rather than going right from monotheism to polytheism, because this was the one that so many people here defaulted.
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All right.
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Polytheism.
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There are many gods.
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View of humanity.
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Each group of polytheists have unique purposes for man.
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It's it would be impossible to say all polytheists believe X, Y or Z.
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It's too much.
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The view of humanity's problems is often attributed to angering the gods, the solution, trying to appease the gods.
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What happens after death and polytheism? Often the person has the possibility of advancing to some level in the spirit world.
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Yes, I'm sorry.
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There are many gods.
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Each group of polytheists have a unique purpose for man.
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And the next one was the view of humanity from angering the gods, what the solution should be, trying to appease the gods.
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What happens after death person has the possibility of advancing to some level in the spirit world.
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This is becoming more and more popular.
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Spiritualists will say, well, this God, this or this God, that, like I mentioned last week about the girl I met in Kmart, was it this week, was it Sunday school or last Wednesday? Sunday school girl I met in Kmart who told me about her goddess.
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It's always something.
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It's the creation of God's many gods, gods that can be appeased or discuss things with.
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Huh? Yeah.
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All right, balancing dualism, similar to competing dualism, obviously, but a much different view of how the universe works, balancing dualism is that there are two opposing.
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But interacting and balancing forces in the universe, I say it again.
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There are two opposing but interacting and balancing forces in the universe, the view of humanity, and that's a big word.
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Man is simply a microcosm, M-I-C-R-O-C-O-S-M, a microcosm of the two interacting forces.
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Definition, a microcosm is a small representative system having analogies to a larger system in constitution, configuration or development.
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The auto industry is a microcosm of the United States itself.
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That's an example of what a microcosm is.
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So when you think about balancing dualism, man is just a small part of the whole.
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And for instance, I know you've all seen this.
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What do we call this? The Yin Yang.
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What is it? This is the symbol of balancing dualism.
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Well, it's usually black and white.
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Mine's purple.
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Huh? Well, thank you.
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I did my best.
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Hard drawing, standing up.
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The Yin Yang.
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In Eastern philosophy, Yin is feminine and negative.
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I didn't think about that until I just wrote it.
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So it is.
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Yin, the Yan is masculine and positive.
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Give Yin Yan or Yin Yang, people call it Yin Yang.
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The negative energy, the Yan is positive energy.
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Masculine, feminine.
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And the whole key to the idea of balancing dualism is that, and this is number three, perfection is lost when balance is interrupted.
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The whole idea of this picture is this is supposed to be a picture of perfect balance.
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You've got two equal yet interrelating sides.
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And at the heart of each side is part of the other.
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You see that in the Yin Yang? Because this color would be here, if this were black, this would have a little black space here, if this were white.
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And it would say that there are two interrelating forces, two interrelating balancing forces, and that at the heart of each one is part of the other.
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So you see the Yin Yang and how it works.
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What the solution should be.
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The Taoist, and that's not Taoist, it's pronounced with a D sound, the Taoist.
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Use the Yin Yang, that's what I write up here for you, concept to explain the universe, which basically says there is a constant balance of good and evil.
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The idea is if you're sick, if you're hurt, if your life isn't going the way it's supposed to go, if your house isn't going the way it's supposed to go, it is because your energy has gotten out of balance and it needs to be rebalanced.
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You've heard the concept of Feng Shui.
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Feng Shui, what is it? It is a way to design your furniture in your home, to set and place your furniture in your home, so that the best possible energy flow can go through your home.
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And it's all about finding balance.
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OK, everybody have this? Anybody writes it? I'd be awful funny if somebody came in.
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What's that on your board? What's that? Yeah, yeah.
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The balancing dualism is all about finding the balance, the happy medium, finding that place, that spiritual balance.
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What happens after death? A higher spiritual plane can be advanced to in the afterlife, higher spiritual plane.
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All right, now we're moving on to monism.
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Monism is interesting because monism is this.
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The concept of God is not as a supreme being, but as a personal oneness to be achieved by all.
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Personal oneness to be achieved by all.
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The view of humanity is that we are caught in the illusion of separateness, separateness.
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We are separated.
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We're caught in that illusion.
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And the problem with humanity is that we're ignorant of our own divinity.
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That's that's our problem.
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We're ignorant of our own divinity.
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What was it? And I could be wrong, but there was an actress.
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I want to name her because I could be wrong about this.
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There was an actress who was on film.
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It was back in the 70s.
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She was standing on a beach and she was going, I am God, I am God, I am God.
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And I watched the video and I just go, no, you're not.
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No, you're not.
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No, you're not.
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It might have been, was it Shirley MacLaine? Again, the problem is we have not realized our own divinity.
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We are all one with the divine.
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That's where monism, the idea of mon, again, remember, go back to monotheism.
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Mon is one.
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We are all one with the divine.
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Yeah.
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View of humanity's problems, ignorance of their own divinity.
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What the solution should be, realizing our essence is the same as the oneness which is considered their enlightenment.
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We just have to realize that we are divine, that we are one with the divine force.
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Now, here's the thing about that.
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Here's the thing.
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These people, you have to be careful because if you ever talk to them about the fact that Jesus was divine, I've had this conversation with a person who believes something similar to this.
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And I'll tell you what, I was talking about Jesus's divinity and they said, well, yeah, we're all gods.
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And I thought to myself, I just he went there.
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I mean, in my mind, I just really just for a second, I had like a full body shiver because I didn't realize somebody would really go there to say, yeah, we're all divine, man.
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What's your deal? Yeah, Jesus was God.
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I'm God.
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You're God.
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Everybody's got.
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OK, that's not it.
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Well, Mormonism, Mormonism is polytheism.
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OK, Mormonism believes that there's many gods and you can become one.
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Monism believes there's one divine force that we are all tapping into, that we're part of the divine.
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There's one divine force.
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That's where mon comes from.
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Yes, you're part of the force.
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What did I say? That's a force.
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I'm sorry.
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Hey, let me tell you, let me tell you, let me tell you about Star Wars.
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George Lucas, I'm not going to I'm not going to I'm not going to say anything bad about Star Wars is the movie because it's fanciful and it's fun or whatnot.
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But I will say this, George Lucas is fascinated with Eastern philosophy and religion.
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If you look at the Jedi Knight, all the Jedi Knight is in the film is a reproduction, a modernistic production of what the samurai were in the classical feudal Japan.
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The samurai had the job of protecting and they were honorable, noble.
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They carried swords.
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They were unbeatable on the battlefield.
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And you translate that to the Jedi and that's what they are.
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And the religion of the force and the dark side, all it is is yin yang.
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There's a good and there's a bad and there's this balancing dualism, you see.
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So anyhow, as I said, it's you know, it's fanciful.
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It's a movie.
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I like Superman.
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He was from Krypton.
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You know, I mean, movies are movies.
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They're they're they're sort of in a lot of ways can be innocuous in and of themselves when we make them.
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There are people who live by the Jedi religion.
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You think you think I'm lying? You know where it became an official religion.
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It became official religion in Australia.
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They started a Jedi force worshiping movement and official religion.
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Jedi.
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Wow.
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But you see, though, if you translate what is taught in the ideas of the movies and you and you just simply translate that over to Daoism, there's not a big change.
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You translate that over to a lot of these philosophies.
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There's no big change because the view of balancing dualism, the view of energy and forces and there being this this you just like here where it says it says they're going to a higher spiritual plane.
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If you ever remember, Master Yoda said, you know, do not.
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He said, don't mourn when somebody dies because they're just becoming part of the force.
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Well, that's the view here.
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They're just they're reaching another spiritual plane.
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Don't worry about it.
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That's what I'm saying.
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There's some overlap here.
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I was talking particularly about monism in that regard.
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What happens after death? Either reincarnation or a merge into the personal, impersonal oneness, the goal is merging into the impersonal oneness.
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But you may have to go through a few trips of reincarnation before you get there.
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Here's my problem with reincarnation.
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And obviously, my major problem is that it's a biblical.
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But there's another problem that I have from a simply practical standpoint.
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If reincarnation is true, I don't remember anything I did in my past life, which means I'm not going to remember in my next life what I did in this life, which means this life didn't really matter.
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Yeah, if it's a learning experience, I should remember what I had, what happened last time.
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I don't.
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And if I'm going to move on to the next one and not remember what happened this time, this one's purposeless, too.
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So there's a there's a philosophical problem with the idea that we reincarnate until we get better if we don't learn anything every trip.
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So so that's again, we'll talk about all this more at length.
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But that's just a little nugget of information.
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All right.
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Finally, we will end tonight with atheism.
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The concept of God is there is no God or gods.
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Yes, I've met people who would say there is no God.
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Now, now, if you press an atheist hard enough, most of them, most of them will say that really they don't know.
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But they don't believe, you know, either.
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They don't believe anybody knows and they are really agnostics.
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But I will say this.
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There are some people who are just hard core materialists, atheists and say there is no God can't be was never could never be.
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I didn't think they existed until I met some and they're even if you press them to the point of you don't know, you cannot know to say there is no God in the universe.
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It's like saying there's no gold in China.
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The only way for you to know that there's no gold in China is to go to China to visit every corner of China to be inside every rock, every tree, every mountain, every stream, every mouth of every Chinese person to make sure there's no gold fillings.
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The only way for you to know is for you to be omniscient.
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That's the only way you can know there is no gold in China.
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That's the only way you can know there's no God.
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And most thinking atheists, which I know is sort of an oxymoron, but most thinking atheists will say that they don't know for sure because they know they're not omniscient.
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If somebody says they don't know for sure, give me an analogy.
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I just gave you.
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You don't know for sure.
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That's what I'm doing is atheism is a religion.
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No, no, no, no.
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But you're right.
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Atheism is a religion, just like anything else.
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They have to say there is no God.
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I believe the same way we say there is a God.
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I believe or I believe there's a God.
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I believe there is not a God.
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They have to take it on faith because either way you go that you there's there's no way to prove either outside of, you know, you examine the evidence and see what the evidence leads you to.
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But it's not a matter of proving.
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I've never been I've never said anyone I can prove that God exists because God's not going to come to stand right next to me, even if I ask him to and introduce himself.
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It's not going to happen.
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So I'm I'll concede to that.
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But at the same time, the atheist cannot prove God does not exist.
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So either side comes down to an issue of faith concept of God.
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There is no God.
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If you want to put agnostics, believe that there's not likely a God.
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You can put that view of humanity.
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Man is simply a complex form of matter.
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View of humanity's problems and hear this, beloved, this is so important.
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This is the view of humanity's problems from the atheist, his superstitious and irrational thinking, his superstitious and irrational thinking.
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If you believe in God, the atheist sees you as being superstitious and irrational.
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You put ignorant.
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Yeah.
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What should the solution be? What does the atheist tell us? The solution is the problem.
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You just need to apply rational thinking to your problems.
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That's what needs to happen.
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You need to think rationally.
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What happens after death? Ceases to exist at death matter.
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As I said earlier, this was simply an introduction.
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To demonstrate when we talk about how different religions view the world, when we talk about Islam.
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I would say straight up, the world view of Islam is different than the world view of Christianity by far.
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But there are many things that we hold in common, which we don't have to start there.
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We don't have to start with God existing with an Islamic person.
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We don't have to start with God being just with an Islamic person.
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We don't have to start with God having sovereignty with an Islamic person.
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These are all things that are accepted in the monotheistic worldview.
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So in that we share a worldview on those things.
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So next week we talk about Islam and however many weeks that takes.
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That's what we're going to see.
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But when we move to Mormonism, beloved, we are going to move into an entirely different worldview because Mormonism is inherently polytheistic.
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It is.
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Because not only do they believe in many gods, but they believe that we all have the capacity to become God.
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Furthermore, when we move on into Eastern religions, the whole idea of there being a sovereign, universal God, it's not even there.
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So how do you discuss your faith with these people? That is part of what this is about.
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How do you define your faith to someone who has such a radically different worldview? When you talk about God and somebody says, which one? Most of us just.
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We've never even been confronted with that.
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So that's what this is about.
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Hopefully tonight has been a good primer for you just to get your mind thinking, get your mind looking as we move on.
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We're going to be digging deeper into each one, particularly the ones we're going to focus on are the ones that I think are most likely to be the ones that we deal with in our daily tasks, such as Islam is on the rise.
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It's it's huge.
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Atheism is huge.
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Mormonism is huge.
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Why all the commercials and everything? Why do you think the Mormon commercials are so prevalent now as they are? Because there is a push within the Mormon church to try to establish themselves as mainstream.
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And I believe it is for one purpose.
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I believe it is for the purpose of establishing political clout because they have so many politicians that are Mormons and people are saying, well, what do we really want to vote for a Mormon? People say, well, hey, they're just like all the other Christians.
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There is a there's a purpose to everything.
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It's going to depend on time.
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I have right now the only one that I fully stretched out to the end of what I'm going to do is Islam, because that's the one we're going to do first.
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At the towards the end, we're going to watch a debate.
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So that one's probably going to take all of this month.
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Now, after that, breaking down the other ones, we're going to have to look at how much time and what we're going to do.
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Mormonism is probably going to be second.
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I'm not going to spend much time with Jehovah's Witnesses because even though it's important, it's not it's not as it's not as fervent as it used to be.
56:24
It's not I don't give it my house as much, but I think my house is marked.
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I want once they come and they deal with you that one time and you you respond back, they'll put they'll write your address down.
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They won't come back behind.
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Yes.
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And it is it is I will have to look more into.
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I don't want to answer.
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And right off the top of my head, I want to say that it is Eastern.
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Now, as I said, I'm as we're going through, I'm looking at what's the next thing I want to address.
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I'll look at that.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to be together, to be in your house, to study.
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We pray that as we move on, as we move on into this study, that you would simply glorify yourself by our growth in understanding the world in which we live and our desire to grow as believers, being able to identify truth and and opposition to error, to be able to identify what is the actual teaching of Christianity and what has been so perverted in so many other movements and to be able to stand against error and stand for our faith.
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And we ask all this for his.
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Amen.