All Comments (29)

what is the difference between faith and religion? Most of the "new faith movement" propagate, that Religion is man made whereas faith is a spiritual concept. Therefore they said Religion is evil concept.

Habteab.tekie@gmx.de

Great site!b29462f860f19cfb9a3d53cae3fda6c8

An observer that takes science seriously must have a very difficult time reconciling conventional concepts of a personal God/creator
and the whole mythology of religion (and in particular the Abrahamic faiths)with scientific discoveries that are only just beginning to explain the fundamentals of our material reality, and yet are doing a far better job ....

On the other hand, science is not always used in a morally constuctive manner. The development (and use) of atomic/conventional weaponry comes to mind, along with bioligical and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

Religion is a profound force for social cohesion and potentially a source of encouragement & reinforcement for many constructive behaviors on both a personal and societal scale -it's a double-edged sword however.

In my estimation the Dalai Lama is speaking authoritatively on how to use the sword most effectivley for social good - in utter contrast, religious and political fanaticism as kindred spirits are both unkind and destructive in the extreme. That, unfortunately is all too often the path that 'true believers' choose to follow.

Those are the ones that employ the fruits of science and religion for their own ideological and evil purposes.

For good reviews of Big Bang physics, etc., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang and http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html

A point of interest -

Proponents of the Big Bang theory hypothesize the size of the 'primal' atom from which the entire cosmos emerged to be very small. Exactly 10/43rd (10 followed by 43 zeros) smaller than a hydrogen atom (is that really a trillion trillion?).

In case anyone was wondering where all this stuff comes from..... and where it's bound.

Actually, we are being recycled. The Big Bang and the expanding Universe will someday reverse with the "Gib Gnab" thereby condensing all in a small ball which will eventually go Bang again.

Well, Henry I'm afraid the fake priest did for me. Not just a fake priest but a *fake Irish name*! Father O'Marlowe indeed.

Anyway, I'm in the midst of my monthly sabbatical, every seven months or so (should be less!) I take a break...

It's rational, 'enry.

And really not much to say. Either there is a creator of the universe or their isn't. If there isn't then it just appeared perfectly out of nowhere, perfectly set up for us to (eventually) arrive in it. If there is a created universe, then God revealed himself or he didn't. If he didn't, then Judaism and Christianity, Hinduism and Islam are all false. If he did, then only Islam is false.

Back in a month or so.

Best,

Mary C.

PS I quite liked the quote in this Weigel piece. But it has to be read in the light of the Catholic definition of faith.

Mary Cunningham, London:

I wonder if what you said, "However I would refer you to the correct definition of faith which is "assent to divinely revealed Truth". God reveals Himself to us and faith is our response" has any logical foundation.

How do you know it's God that revealed Himself to you and neither a hallucination nor, horrors, it's Devil claiming to be God? You are aware that the fallen angel Lucifer attempted to take over heaven, boot God out and must have declared Himself to be God somewhere along that treasonous path.

http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul is a word to the wise about faith.

To verify it was God and not Lucifer or some other Devil that revealed Himself one begins by listing the distinguishing characteristics of God. Have you done that yet? Surely you're not taking someone else's word about something as potentially damaging as worshiping Devil calling Him God.

BGONE -

I couldn't agree more regarding entertainment value. Without it, why get up in the morning?

But, you've extrapolated considerably more from my meager post than mere words could ever tell!
My point was simply that people with 'spiritual'
interests will inevitably cross paths with the Dalai Lama and his works, philosophy, origins, and so forth - because he's pretty well represented in bookstores and on bookshelves from coast to coast.

Of course as a individual he is no more sacrosanct than the next person, august persona though he may be - but he is an authority in his field, which is Buddhism, and Tantric Buddhism in particular. So, the spiritually inclined person will eventually stumble across Buddhism and it's esoteric/meditative side - eg. Tantric Buddhism or perhaps Zen (always and forever my favorite) - notice I never mentioned the bible or anything remotely related.

But since you asked, Christianity does have it's mystical traditions as well and another very well informed poster noted correctly that all religions have their own mystical traditions - that will inevitably include practices that are purported to lead to deeper knowledge of the 'spiritual' kind....experience-based, but purely intuitive and not verifiable unless you've been there and done that.

Interested posters can review 'The Perennial Philosophy' by Aldous Huxley and 'Varieties of Religious Experience' by William James to get the broad strokes of the mystical tradition in various religions.

Truthfully, I know relatively little about the bible - always liked the Sermon on the Mount and thought that said everything there was to say about Christianity....but that's another story.
A famous Zen monk, after hearing the Sermon, remarked - 'that person is clearly a great Bodhisattva and very close to Buddhahood'.

I've studied religion for 40 years so it has great entertainment value for me -

I guess that's all I meant to say.....

all the best -

MC:

PS: I am a firm believer that we are part of a greater thing because I have a "gut-feeling" about it. However I would never be so preposterous as to say that I know it and therefore have faith.

MC:

"However I would refer you to the correct definition of faith which is "assent to divinely revealed Truth". God reveals Himself to us and faith is our response."

Can you please explain that? How exactly did God reveal himself to you? So you believe because you know?

You don't need to have faith in something when you know something. That doesn't make any sense.

Here is how I see it. You either know you have dirty hands (because you can see that they are dirty), or you believe you have dirty hands (you can't see they are dirty, but you touched all kinds of materials that could be contaminated).

You go and wash your hands. If you knew that they were dirty, then you now have evidence that they are clean, if you beliefed they were dirty there is no evidence and all you can do is have faith that they are clean.

Now of course scientists tell us after washing our hands are clean. But, are they really??? The Bible tells us God exists. But does he really??? In both cases we belief something that someone else states, but we really do not know it.

Believing is not knowing.

Ah, MC,
I missed you.
Did you miss me.

A most poetic post from thou.
Almost a koan. I say wow.

HJ

This definition of faith--an assent to God's revelation--informs Brague's sentence, "The divine shows itself, or rather give itself, before asking anything of us and instead of asking."

Faith is our response. (Note that we do not have to respond 'yes'. Someone like Bertrand Russell said 'no'.) Only after the "yes" response will anything be asked.

But what,if anything, is asked is another story, and beyond the remit of the No Faith--or at least not much--blog.

Best to all
MC

Irving Krakow

You write "Believers have faith, but faith is not knowledge."

You are using the wrong definition of 'faith'--belief without knowledge--an irrational definition, which thus makes belief in God also irrational.

However I would refer you to the correct definition of faith which is "assent to divinely revealed Truth". God reveals Himself to us and faith is our response. (The etymological origin of the word faith is "trust", as in "I put my faith in you", or "I trust in you".)

Thus the true religious person believes because God reveals Himself to that person and so he believes *because* he has knowledge. If you hold this definition(you can find it in the official teaching of the Catholic Church "The Catechism", chapter "I believe" section 150 on the Vatican website) belief in God is entirely rational.

Mary Cunningham
London

Terry:

Should I have an interest in spiritual pursuits? Whatever is a spiritual pursuit anyhow, chasing ghosts? Halloween cometh.

My interest here is in my personal entertainment, what the press is, (should at least be) all about. If one can be entertained and grow mentally at the same time then wonderful. I've learned a lot here and am still learning. Know anything I should know?

I've posed the very simple question to this forum, (not totally alone but mostly): Is the Bible really the word of God? And, it follows, what does that mean to world religions if it is not the word of God? Is that presentation at http://www.hoax-buster.org so? If it is then there is little doubt the Bible is more bogus than astrological charts or Ouija.

Does religion have a foundation other than sacred scriptures? If so then what is it, love, compassion and forgiveness?

Notice that the Bible being a hoax does not say there is no God. To the contrary it opens the "slammed shut by holy books" door to God. I just smile when people try to tag me atheist. There is no word for one who believes in God but does not cower to the holy book thumping ministry. I strongly suspect there's a lot of us.

These are very troubled times. Is religion the cure, the cause or both? When people fly airplanes into tall buildings on purpose faithing that God wants them to and that threat has no end then one must wonder about the benefits of religion. All religions have done the equivalent in the past. Are they like land mines waiting to be stepped on to explode again.

Does anyone know what God wants? Where did they get the information, the "spirit" of the message? Don't you think we should validate their sources?

""In the Bible and in Christianity...the presence of the divine does not comport an immediate demand for obedience. A space opens up in which God manifests Himself, thus offering Himself to a gaze that might risk something like a description. The divine shows itself, or rather givs itself, before asking anything of us and instead of asking. Not only is it true that 'God owes us nothing' (Leszek Kolakowski), but he does not ask anything of us. Although God does indeed expect something of hi creatures (that we develop according to our own logic), He does not, in fact, demand anything, or rather, He asks nothing more than His gift already asks, thanks to the simple fact that it is given: to be received. In the case of man, that reception does not require anything but humanity.""

I'm not sure where Brague gets this idea. The Christian God I grew up with most certainly demanded obedience and worship, or he would punish you with eternal damnation.
And if a gift is offered, in order to truly be a gift, it must be offered with no strings attached, no penalty if the intended recipient says "Thanks but no thanks." or even "I appreciate the thought,but it just isn't my style." The Christian God's so-called gift comes with enough strings attached to weave a blanket. That's not a gift. It's more like a demand by the Mafia for protection money.

More flaws in Christianity and Buddhism:

From Professor JD Crossan, an On-Faith panelist:

"When I look a Buddhist friend in the face, I cannot say with integrity, "Our story about Jesus' virginal birth is true and factual. Your story that when the Buddha came out of his
mother's womb, he was walking, talking, teaching and preaching (which I must admit is even better than our story)---that's a myth. We have
the truth; you have a lie.

I don't think that can be said any longer, for our insistence that our faith is a fact and that others' faith is a lie is, I think, a cancer that eats at the heart of Christianity."

From: Will the Real Jesus Stand Up?
A Debate Between William Lane Craig
and John Dominic Crossan

Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1998, 179 pages

Drivel.

I could write a book on the immoralities in Mr Weigel's brief column. Let me point out Two Main Points.

1. Catholicism purports to be the ONLY way to true salvation. It thus implies that because it has the "correct" view of the nature of God and His proscribed sacraments, only faithful Catholics can achieve authentic salvation. Poppycock.

The Dalai Lama means us to understand that the ONLY important aspects of ANY religion are Love, Compassion, Forgiveness.

Beyond that, it is just Hocus Pocus. Who Knows what happens when we die, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin????

Second: Weigel says God the Father owes his children NOTHING> what would we say about an earthly father who has children and then disowns any obligation to them? we would say he is a grossly immoral Father. If there IS a God the father (which there isn't) He is a grossly immoral father too. May he strike me dead.

Begone - if you're a person who happens to be interested in spiritual pursuits, you will have run across th Dalai Lama and the philosophy that he represents - on the other hand, if you're not interested in anything other than what the material world presents as common-sense truth, you would be more likely to evince the attitude that we see here - and of course no one has any kind of dispensation from critical scrutiny. The truth is not in a person, but in your own discoveries. The progress of the search all depends on where you choose to stop.

There are substantial differences in the moral views of different religions, whatever the similarities.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have never dealt with the fundamental fact that there is no rational reason to believe a supernatural deity authored the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Qur'an. Believers have faith, but faith is not knowledge. The fact is they believe without having the slightest rational reason to believe.

There are substantial differences in the moral views of different religions, whatever the similarities.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have never dealt with the fundamental fact that there is no rational reason to believe a supernatural deity authored the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Qur'an. Believers have faith, but faith is not knowledge. The fact is they believe without having the slightest rational reason to believe.

There are substantial differences in the moral views of different religions, whatever the similarities.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have never dealt with the fundamental fact that there is no rational reason to believe a supernatural deity authored the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Qur'an. Believers have faith, but faith is not knowledge. The fact is they believe without having the slightest rational reason to believe.

The Dalai Lama says 'All major religious traditions carry basically the same message: That is love, compassion and forgiveness.' Do you agree?

Yes!!!

But as noted previously these traditions must be cleansed of their flaws in order for the message to ring true. Again a synopsis of said flaws:

1. Abraham founder/father of three major religions was probably a mythical character. If he was real, he was at best a combination of at least three men. 1.5 million Conservative Jews and their rabbis have relegated Abraham to the myth pile along with most if not all the OT. http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/ConservativeTorah.htm

2. Jesus, the illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter possibly suffering from hallucinations, has been characterized anywhere from the Messiah from Nazareth to a mythical character from mythical Nazareth to a mamzer (Professor Bruce Chilton in his book, Rabbi Jesus. Analyses of his life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists)via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects.

The 30% of the NT that is "authentic Jesus" like everything in life was borrowed/plagiarized and/or improved from those who came before. In Jesus' case, it was the ways and sayings of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, OT, John the Baptizer and possibly the ways and sayings of traveling Greek Cynics.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

3. Mohammed, an illiterate, hallucinating, womanizing Arab, also had embellishing/hallucinating/plagiarizing scribal biographers who not only added "angels" and flying chariots to the koran but also a militaristic agenda to support the plundering and looting of the lands of non-believers.

This agenda continues as shown by the conduct of the seven Muslim doctors in the UK, the 9/11 terrorists, the 24/7 Sunni suicide/roadside/market/mosque bombers, the 24/7 Shiite suicide/roadside/market/mosque bombers, the Islamic train bombers in the UK and Spain, the Bali crazies, the Kenya crazies, the Pakistani koranics, the Palestine suicide bombers/rocketeers, the Lebanese nutcases and the Filipino koranics.

And who funds these acts of terror? The Islamic terror theocracy of Iran, the Third Axis of Evil and also the "Wannabees" of Saudi Arabia.

4. Luther, Calvin, Smith, Henry VIII, Wesley et al, founders of Christian-based religions, also suffered from the belief in/hallucinations of "pretty wingy talking flying fictional thingie" visits and "prophecies" for profits analogous to the myths of Catholicism (resurrections, apparitions, ascensions and immaculate conceptions).

5. Hinduism (from an on-line Hindu site)

"Hinduism cannot be described as an organized religion. It is not founded by any individual. Hinduism is God centered and therefore one can call Hinduism as founded by God, because the answer to the question ‘Who is behind the eternal principles and who makes them work?’ will have to be ‘Cosmic power, Divine power, God’".

The caste/laborer system and cow worship are problems when saying a fair and rational God founded Hinduism."

6. Buddhism- "Buddhism began in India about 500 years before the birth of Christ. The people living at that time had become disillusioned with certain beliefs of Hinduism including the caste system, which had grown extremely complex. The number of outcasts (those who did not belong to any particular caste) was continuing to grow."

"However, in Buddhism, like so many other religions, fanciful stories arose concerning events in the life of the founder, Siddhartha Gautama (fifth century B.C.):"

Archaeological discoveries have proved, beyond a doubt, his historical character, but apart from the legends we know very little about the circumstances of his life.

Bottom line: There are many good ways of living but first cleanse these traditions of their flaws especially the hallucinations/embellishments and myths surrounding the founders of said rules of life.

Remi Brague wrote, "In the Bible and in Christianity...the presence of the divine does not comport an immediate demand for obedience" and some more. He could have stopped here.

More evidence that the being in the burning bush was not God but rather it was Devil, ( http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul ) We can expect Devil to not make, "an immediate demand for obedience." That He was pleasantly surprised by obedience at any time to His demands.

The first step is to make sure it's God before one goes about the business of deciding and propagating what God demands, immediately or later. No religion does that. All ASSUME the being in the identically same kind of fire that hell is made of is God without stopping to wonder if God, like Devil lives in fire.

That there is a contradiction, what religion says it is and the reality of religion is very understandable once one realizes Moses made a deal with Devil. Like the preacher said, "tell me what you believe and we'll call that God" only to be told that he already does just that, calls Devil God.

All the evidence says Devil in the burning bush. Perhaps the panelist has some evidence to the contrary? Faith is not evidence but it is the key ingredient in the successful con.

The Dalai Lama has a dispensation of some kind? If Dalai Lama says it then it's absolutely so, like being type written, (Jedro Clampet of the "Beverley Hillbillies")?

The Dalai Lama is always right

with one edit

"All relgions *should* carry basically the same message: That is love, compassion and forgiveness."

Not all due.

Some Hate infidels.
Some believe in a God who damns you to hell for all time for fairly minor transgressions (and for believing the wrong way).

Some really only believe in compassion for other members of their own church.

If every person would follow the Dalai and the Buddha, who surely taught love compassion and foregiveness

we would approach a Unitarian paradise more closely.

He asks nothing more than the acceptance of his gift? The rejection of this gift leads to???? hmmm...
acceptance of the gift leads to humanity so rejection of this so-called gift leads one to be Non-Human? Is that what you're saying?
I cannot believe in such a giver of gifts.

How on earth can anyone read the Bible and come away thinking that the God of that Bible doesn't ask or demand anything of/from humanity.
Not only does this so-called god demand or ask, he/she/it violently punishes anyone who refuses to obey. Hmmm.....

The Dalai Lama says 'All major religious traditions carry basically the same message: That is love, compassion and forgiveness.' Do you agree?

Yes!!!

But all major religious traditions suffer from analogous flaws in the founders and foundations of said traditions.

"the presence of the divine does not comport an immediate demand for obedience." No, these demands come from the egotistical mortals who rule the religions. Rudy Guliani, for example, is threatened with de facto excommunication (he can't participate in communion) because of his Archbishop's politics.

The Archbishop says abortion is killing but killing for capital punishment or pre-emptive war is "too complicated" How convenient. The Archbishop, like Dobson, Robertson, Haggard, Vitter, Craig et. al cherry pick scriptures for their sectarian political agendas.

The Pope and his Cardinals look the other way when their priests molest little boys, sometimes even hiding them as in the case of Cardinal Mahoney of LA and Cardinal Rivera of Mexico hiding "Father" Aguilar in Puebla. The Catholic Church, like the evangelical Christian extremists in the US have hijacked Christianity for their own sectarian agendas and control of their sheep and their leaders certainly demand complete obedience with the accompanied threat of eternal damnation>