All Comments (45)

Hi E Favorite

I've no doubt that atheists cop unwarranted prejudice, motivated oftentimes by secret envy - the number of "believers" I've known who equate "God" with "morality" and "atheism" with "immorality" is depressingly many. All the Satanists I've known make the same equation, and they are in actuality just atheists with a sense of humour, fond of goading Xians. They, of course, have their own morality as do more mainstream atheists - no surprise really, since morality is as instinctual in humans as it is most other social animals.

But the need for a spiritual super-structure to the world seems as instinctual and I don't think that's an accident. There is Someone on the Other Side. I've studied the history of religious ideas and concepts to know that the human mind has a fondness for anthropomorphic explanations for physical, biological and intra-psychic phenomena. At the same time the emergence of sentience, mind and self-consciousness seem very strange if they're merely epiphenomena. There's a deep congruence between computation, physics and minds, and personally I think any ultimate explanation has to include the subjective, an Ultimate Subject.

Perceptual bias might be why I see that, but it may well be why you don't.

Adam - there's not much to explain about atheism - it means absence of belief in god. It's not a set of beliefs itself and doesn't associate itself with any government. Communism was bad, but it wasn't about atheism any more than the US democracy is about Christianity (although some people would like to think it is). However, Christianity has, at one time or another, been built in to the governments of, for instance, Spain, England, France -and of course the Holy Roman Empire. In those regimes many evil things were done in the name of religion.

I think that the fact that atheists are simply speaking up seems like prodding and provoking to believers, because they're not used to having to share the stage with this group. I believe we're in a period of consciousness raising, just as we've been in with other movements - civil rights, women's and handicapped rights, gay rights, anti-smoking. As already existing but formerly quiet or hidden groups start coming out, it's new and uncomfortable for the established group.

Hi e favorite

There's speaking openly and there's obsessively haunting discussion boards to snipe at believers, who disagree enough amongst themselves. Most of the regular atheists here seem more inclined to prod and provoke rather than explain their PoV.

I can understand the temptation to atheism - religion's practice vexes most reasonable people - but the less-than-perfect practice of fallible humans is a strange way to judge a metaphysical concept like God. The current crop of atheists like to distance themselves from atheism's less glorious manifestations in history - eg. Communism - but such failures of atheism indicate that human cussedness undermines even the most well-intentioned of ideologies.

I think religion has a lot to learn from anthropology and sociobiology about the human species. And atheism too.

Hi e favorite

There's speaking openly and there's obsessively haunting discussion boards to snipe at believers, who disagree enough amongst themselves. Most of the regular atheists here seem more inclined to prod and provoke rather than explain their PoV.

I can understand the temptation to atheism - religion's practice vexes most reasonable people - but the less-than-perfect practice of fallible humans is a strange way to judge a metaphysical concept like God. The current crop of atheists like to distance themselves from atheism's less glorious manifestations in history - eg. Communism - but such indicate that human cussedness undermines even the most well-intentioned of ideologies.

Still I think religion has a lot to learn from anthropology and sociobiology about the human species too.

Adam - My quick answer on how to improve the world situation: use reason, logic and evidence in decision making and eschew anything related to the supernatural.

Regarding your first sentence about atheists, I'd change it to this: Atheists who spend time on open, public, religion-related discussion boards think it’s important to start speaking openly about their points of views, to address the false notions people have about atheism.

Atheists who haunt religion discussion boards seem kind of pathetically trying to confirm their own disbelief by sniping at belief in all its forms. To be honest I don't think theists have any decent answers to the causes of problems of this world beyond what's obvious - human beings are large territorial mammals who play dominance games with large and deadly weapons.

But we theists have a more than a few suggestions on how to improve the situation - unfortunately they need up-dating. The Hebrew Bible was written in a country of a few hundred thousand, with a capital city smaller than a suburb. No technology more complicated than a chariot or a single mast sailing ship, and literacy of maybe 10%. Life expectancy of maybe 30, but that's an average driven down by an appalling infant mortality rate.

Things had improved slightly by the time of the Christian addition, thanks largely to those cosmopolitan Imperialists, the Romans. But the fundamentalists of the day took exception to the forcible appropriation of their ancestral lands by sophisticated foreigners (sound familiar?) and started a general war with an expectation of divine intervention because it was "the Last Days".

So how to up-date the solution?

GaryD - thanks for filling me in more on you life before returning to active Christianity.

I do want to say, that while drinking and taking drugs are certainly known ways of feeling good, it sounds like your consumption served to mask bad feelings.

I just ask you to consider that the way you felt when you disregarded christianity is not necessarily indicative of the way all atheists feel. My (moderate)drinking pattern hasn't changed at all since my beliefs changed. My relationships are the same - enhanced in some cases because I'm being more open and people are responding in kind, and I'm overall more content with life, now that I have a greater understanding of it.

Au contraire sir I felt just fine. To be sure there was an emptiness but I walled it off and usually ignored it after brief flirtations with sex booze and drugs as potential fillers. I quit drinking before I ever became a Christian. The two chief reasons were that I wasn't masochist enough to appreciate the morning after the night before especially given that often I couldn't remember much of the night before and the other was that frankly I've never found an alcoholic beverage that I liked well enough to make a habit.

The drugs I did, chiefly Mary Jane, I did because the crowd I ran with did them never bought any, never had to. Interestingly enough one of the truisms I discovered during those days was that no one likes to be alone in their sin whatever that sin is. The notion that Marijuana makes anyone smarter is laughably absurd, and frankly I can enjoy life just fine without any of them.

My problem sir is that I long ago learned to strip away my illusions about myself and human beings in general. We are what we are for better or worse and largely that is self centered to the extent we feel we can get away with and that largely isn't consciously determined.

GaryD, I think I understand when you say "I became a Chrstian not because I wished to but because God wished it of me and changed my heart."

That's a little different than determining that there was no god, then later deciding that there was.

The point I'm trying to make is that you seem to assume that atheism is what caused you to feel the way you did during the times you weren't going to church and that the way you felt (which wasn't very good)is how all atheists feel.

I want you to know that that's not the case. Perhaps some feel the way that you mentioned earlier: "the world is all about my want's and needs and how I wish to satisfy them." But I'm sure many don't - because none of the athiests I know feel that way at all.

Weird first it wasn't there so I redid it and sudenly it was.

I quit sir because I had other things I'd rather do with the time. I quit because I had come to believe that if there was a God the chances that he actually cared about you me or anyone else was vanishingly small. I quit because to continue believing as I did and what I did would have been to be a hypocrite. I quit because frankly I wasn't a Christian then. I quit sir because I believed at that time that the Bible held no truths I cared to hear if it held any at all.

One last thing sitting in a church pew isn't what makes you a Christian. God makes you a Christian.

I became a Chrstian not because I wished to but because God wished it of me and changed my heart. Now there is no alternative worth considering.

I quit sir because I had other things I'd rather do with the time. I quit because I had come to believe that if their was a God the chances that he actually gave a tinker's dam about you me or anyone else was vanishingly small. I quit because to continue believing as I did and what I did would have been to be a hypocrite. I quit because frankly I wasn't a Christian then. I quit sir because I believed at that time that the bible held no truths I cared to hear if it held any at all.

One last thing sitting in a church pew isn't what makes you a Christian. God makes you a Christian.

I became a Chrstian not because I wished to but because God wished it of me and changed my heart. Now there is no alternative worth considering.

I quit because I thought it a waste of time I'd rather spend in other ways. I quit because I'd come to believe that if their was a God the likelyhood that he gave a tinker's dam about you me or anyone else was essentially nil therefore why should I care for Him assuming of course he really existed at all for I found scant evidence of it in my life. I quit as much as anything else because I felt that not quiting would make me more of a hypocrite than quitting believing as I did. I quit in no small part because the Bible held no answers for me that I cared to hear.

garyD - thanks. It sound like you just decided to stop going to church and then started going again because of your wife - and found something really good there. I'm glad for you.

You didn't explain why you stopped going. Just that you did. I didn't get any sense that you stopped believing in God - just that you didn't want to go to church and got in involved in drugs, etc. Is that right?

YOu also didn't address my question about what you call the atheist view that, "the world is all about my want's and needs and how I wish to satisfy them."

Here's what I wonder -- is that how you thought during the years when you weren't going to church? Do you assume that's the way all atheists feel?

I'd like you to consider this - maybe you weren't an atheist all those years - but a disenchanted Christian. Maybe how you felt doesn't apply to all or even most non-believers. I can tell you, it doesn't apply to me.

Shortly after my 13th birthday I decided that Christianity was not for me. Mom and dad were likely upset but I had found a rather nonconfrontational way to get out of it. I simply stonewalled delayed and procrastinated till they got frustrated and left without me. From that day till my thirty-second year my presence in church was tied to personal whim and nothing more. NOt belief in God, not desire to find God or anything beyond an invitaion from a pretty girl or a close friend.

I partied with the best of them got involved in drugs, sex and the Usual and found myself a slave to needs and desires and an uncompromising emptiness that nothing could fill. Not even my marriage which has now lasted with the help of God nearly 34 years. It was my wife that brought me back to the God I'd fled she was no more a Christian than I when first we'd married but women I think are often more in touch with the spiritual side of things than are men. We men in Western society are raised to be islands of self sufficiency and yet we don't grow well as islands or rocks in the stream.

One day my wife came home from work and said she wanted to talk. This by the way is one thing no man wants to hear from his wife becuase he knows something is wrong and that there is every likelyhood that he will only manage to bumble his way into even more trouble than he is already in and that ladies and gentlemen is never a comforting thought but refusing only makes things worse and so I battened down the hatches and prepared for the worst. I said, "Sure what's up?"

She said, "Somthing is missing."

I took a quick inventory. We had a nice house a good sex life two cars, a kid, a garden. What could be missing? So I asked, What?

And she began telling me about one of her co-workers a lady who was my wifes boss at that time and remains one of her best friends and is the God mother of both my kids. She finsihed up saying she wished to try going to church. I being very much in love -still am for that matter and I thank God for it for God is indeed the source of all real love - said sure. I thought that we go for a while she'd get bored and we move on.

We tried the church my mom and dad had compelled me to attend for my first twelve years of this life but it was empty and hollow.

So we tried the Lutheran Church across the street
I'd not much more than entered when my heart was taken from me given life and restored far better than it had ever been before. I was no longer a slave to my wants and desires.

Please understand that this is not to say that I now consider myself perfect far from it in fact. No real Christian believes himself to be perfect What I am is freed from is guilt from worrying about what I am going to do how I will do it and what I shall get from it.

Life needs life. It really is that simple. Are you familiar with Mazlo's hierarchy of need? Did you know that Mazlo missed one? That one is the need to be thought well of at least by ourselves.

Are you familiar with role play? Did you know that we are all to some extent roleplayers, twenty-four carat fakes that do what we do because we have on some level convinced ourselves that our chosen actions are the best way to get what we want out of life.

"Eeeee Haaaa Ize gots da Gooooosssyyyy Gooosy Bumparinos & More!"

Me too, my ECLATi-ON Brother!

GaryD,

Don't you find it a bit suspect that I would show concern for the state of world and extol the preciousness of life and, at the exact same time, only be concerned about myself and my needs?

GaryD - I'd be interested to hear about your experience as an atheist. Also, would like more background on the idea that for atheists, "the world is all about my want's and needs and how I wish to satisfy them."

I'd never heard that. In fact, it sounds more like the viewpoint of believers who think that they personally communicate directly with god and that god answers their personal prayers and gives them special privileges over non-believers.

Me, I was changed by the power of the Holy Spirit and came to reject the fairy tale that is the self based atheistic view that the world is all about my wants and needs and how I wish to satisfy them.

IN doing so I became freer than I ever was as an atheist.

Amy wrote: "After shedding my belief in fairy tales, I found myself needing to accept the reality of death in a more direct way. Now that I've gotten used to it, I don't fear death and I don't wish for my loved ones to endure the eternal boredom of the Christian Heaven. Life means more to me because it's all there is to my existence."

Very nicely said Amy. My experience is similar. It's my personal belief that many of our world's ills would simply go away if people had the courage to dispense with their fairy tales, stand up straight, and treat their lives like the precious things that they are.

God's in charge here, not me, not George W. Bush, not Osama bin Laden, nor any other human being. How ever bad things look in the here and now I know beyond all doubt that there is a glorious hereafter.

We got in this mess not becuase of God but rather because we have chosen to try to usurp the power that is God's and God's alone.

We got in this mess because we have continued that all to human trait of learning precisely the wrong lessons from history. We do this because we wish the wrong things to be correct not because they are correct.

Embracing the certainty of death is the one great human task that sets us apart from the other animals. While they fear death too, they don't contemplate it.

After shedding my belief in fairy tales, I found myself needing to accept the reality of death in a more direct way. Now that I've gotten used to it, I don't fear death and I don't wish for my loved ones to endure the eternal boredom of the Christian Heaven. Life means more to me because it's all there is to my existence. Perhaps that's why I find it reprehensible that so-called Christians would question my atheism but not the pseudo-religious jingoism of the current administration.

People *should* lose their faith during wartime if it's their idiotic ideas about the supernatural that got us into war in the first place.

Maha - You sound very sure of what your said, but I'm doubtful about your assertions. Can you provide a list of the tremendous horrors and scares of life and the light that always came at the end of the tunnel?

I totally agree with you that fear is the worst enemy of mankind. Once it gets you, nothing that you say or do can ever be right. However, the way that leads to God is the only way to derive this haunting fear. Life is full of tremendous amount of horrors and scares but then the light always comes at the end of the tunnel. You just have to believe. Just believe in everything that is good in you and in the world.

Yep, comments are about what I expected: wannabee teachers, themselves inevitably as humanly false as I, some complaining about false teachings. It is as if some were reading the words but not the poetry of themes and faith soaring above a background of historical atrocities, as God through man and his Universe newly reveals truth. It is observational truth that most of each generation must learn some lessons themselves.
Faith's a choice, made within our neurochemical limitations. Why there is faith diversity is speculation. Faith has been studied neurologically somewhat, but evidently not the absence. If faith within religion or atheism (not the absence of faith reflecting absent conceptual awareness) is inferred in a single duck through some technique, some will claim evidence it is purely biological selection. After a day or so, I'd say it's God again with a chuckle, immune to precise human definition and giving us a lesson on created creative systems for a purpose left me to ponder.

Exodus 20:13

The pastor's approach to the question is very "Buddhist," in case anyone has not noticed, more so than Christian--in its emphasis on accepting, staying with, and riding out the negative as opposed to fight or flight.

Oh all the clamor re the query - How does one keep faith during times of war?

The panelists and the pandoras box of comments that follow leave one to wonder if it's really acceptable for a panelist to have a cogent (or just a disengenuous) point of view on this matter.

Sectarian sentries mock every time a panelist offers his or her view of how faith continues unabated even in times of conflict, horror, disease, death and war.

And faith followers are seemingly all over the map in terms of endorsing, dismissing or claiming as irrelevant the views of a panelist they do or don't quite agree with.

Anderson has a definite point of view that is seemingly anchored to the most basic connection we humans can have; a strong link to and utmost concern for family - his wife, his son. And he offers a heartfelt rendering for associates and friends likewise.

Does it matter that Andeson is for or against the current debacle in Iraq? Is it relevant to the issue of whether one can or cannot have a sense of faith even in time of war ? I think it matters little or not at all.

What matters is the story telling, the literary cadence and the thoughtful offering this author lends. His specific faith line up may not match mine, but what does that matter, for the author provides a most reasonable and responsible reminder re the worth of a soul and that in spite of angst and fear, we press on.
Free thinkers and secularists should press on too (?) and faith followers press on also (offering daily prayers asking for comfort and guidance).

The horror of war (Iraqi citizens shot and dismembered), shocking disease and American sons and daughters that return from war, in body bags. Does faith slip or continue unabated in spite of the events of our lives? Life at times sunny and other times dark and full of chaotic mystery.

In the face of a heady challenge will humanity's faith fade and falter, or is faith tethered to something tangible such that life's heavy weather will not daily blow ones faith away?

Oh all the clamor re the query - How does one keep faith during times of war?

The panelists and the pandoras box of comments that follow leave one to wonder if it's really acceptable for a panelist to have a cogent (or just a disengenuous) point of view on this matter.

Sectarian sentries mock every time a panelist offers his or her view of how faith continues unabated even in times of conflict, horror, disease, death and war.

And faith followers are seemingly all over the map in terms of endorsing, dismissing or claiming as irrelevant the views of a panelist they do or don't quite agree with.

Anderson has a definite point of view that is seemingly anchored to the most basic connection we humans can have; a strong link to and utmost concern for family - his wife, his son. And he offers a heartfelt rendering for associates and friends likewise.

Does it matter that Andeson is for or against the current debacle in Iraq? Is it relevant to the issue of whether one can or cannot have a sense of faith even in time of war ? I think it matters little or not at all.

What matters is the story telling, the literary cadence and the thoughtful offering this author lends. His specific faith line up may not match mine, but what does that matter, for the author provides a most reasonable and responsible reminder re the worth of a soul and that in spite of angst and fear, we press on.
Free thinkers and secularists should press on too (?) and faith followers press on also (offering daily prayers asking for comfort and guidance).

The horror of war (Iraqi citizens shot and dismembered), shocking disease and American sons and daughters that return from war, in body bags. Does faith slip or continue unabated in spite of the events of our lives? Life at times sunny and other times dark and full of chaotic mystery.

In the face of a heady challenge will humanity's faith fade and falter, or is faith tethered to something tangible such that life's heavy weather will not daily blow ones faith away?

Rev. Andersons's words--answer to the quesstion--are like a deep HEAVY snow and I must climb onto my roof immediately to shovel off the snow lest my roof cave in during the night when I am sleeping. My gut say cut back, lighten up, let go, find a better balance!

Amen, Bob. Ever notice how God never fixes anything that might not get better on its own? Pray for God to regrow the severed limbs that a soldier lost in Iraq and see how much good it does.

I am at least doing a little something. I am working daily for a presidential candidate who would bring the troups back immediately, and would stay out of foreign wars unless absolutely necessary.

Fear propels us to accept the Bible for fact, scriptures for reality, to give ourselves over to a God of our own creation in the hope He will save us.

"Fear propels us to accept fiction for fact, illusions for reality, to give ourselves over to idols of our own creation in the hope they will save us."

Mr. Anderson, this remark puts you in strong contention for the 2007 Unintended Irony Award.

Interesting comment:

"I prayerfully watch the end of the NewsHour as the pictures are shown of the men and women newly killed in war."

so what did you do actually (as opposed to prayerfully) to end the war in Iraq today?

Nothing else you said means as much as what you do about it. Ms. Sheenhan is giving up hope for peace. What can you do to help her regain hope in peace? If nothing, why should anyone pay any attention to you?

Thank you!

Bob

" “O what was that bird,” said horror to hearer,
“Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.”

The emotional force of Auden’s poetry reminds us of the enormity of the fear that floods over us when these terrible things happen. "

Personally, I'm more concerned with the emotional force of the *fear* that may prevent us from *being there* when someone's getting their guts cut open on our doorstep.

"Anxiety and fear breed idolatry."

What if they *do?*

Better to take an 'idol' in hand than to bomb blocks 'cause they were idolators'

I say that includes taking *words* for your idols while bombing the crap out of someone cause of your definition of 'idolatry,' all the while being blind to what you yourself do.

Frankly, I think the religion of *words* has turned into its own cargo cult.

People who scream about the symbolism of what I call Lady Justice being 'Pagan worship' in our courthouses... (even if meant as abstract symbolism to rationaliss) try to put up copies of their words for public adoration and obedience, and, failing that, haul them around the country for indignant adoration in the 'spiritual war' they constructed.

Anyway, Bgone, I think that it's just possible that a lot of American Christians who have decided they need to believe in an 'antichrist' in order to 'sin and repent' might just have, after the 'Great Disappointment' of the *last* would-be-Apocalypse...

Decided that they better do it themselves.

Not too unlike Akhenaten and his invention of a 'Jealous God' that it's possible but impolite to say might have had something to do with the foundation of the 'Book Religions' even if Moses was redoing the whole Isis and Osiris thing in order to resist a God-King....

Or anything like that.

Wouldn't want no idolatry or nothing would we?

Gods forbid anything, including *looking at the mangled bodies* should get in the way of a
'righteous war.'

Phhhbbbt.

The Rev. Anderson is either snake bit or out looking for the dark side. We get a hint when he states "I try to read the many stories in the newspapers and magazines that so often vividly portray the horrors of this war." I wonder if he ever searches out for any positive stories about this war or anything else? Even his picture above is of a tortured man. Hey Rev., lighten up a little bit. In the whole scheme of things, the war, all your personal problems, and all of your friends problems, do not amount to a drop of spit in the ocean of time. Mercy, mercy, mercy.

Could the problem be that the thing you are calling God is actually Devil? That's 100% if your God comes from the Bible, God so weak couldn't even get the Israelites to Canan without trickery and murder. They still haven't made it to Canan, only as far as Judah. Why do they have three names, Israelites, Hebrews and Jews?

http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul is the proper interpretation of scriptures. So don't blame God for your problems, thank Moses for making a deal with the biggest Devil of them all, Lucifer.

Harry: No one is happier about freedom of religion than Devil. God gets everything God wants by simply willing it while Devil needs people to do His dirty work, lead the multitudes to Him in the kingdom of hell. Heaven is democracy is heaven.

Gary Masters.

I think you have capsulized the faith of most Americans.

I have my GOD, you have your GOD, some have no GOD.

I thank my GOD every night for my freedom of the religion I have choosen and our way of life as Americans that allows that me that freedom with out fear.

Live and let live.

My faith is my way to acknowledge the universe beyond my ego and what it knows. As such, it keeps me happy. It is the faith of my family and works well with the faith of my church. It does not lead me to think that I know the future, but only that I will deal with the future as best I can

That is enough.

Amen:

My faith is my way to acknowledge the universe beyond my ego and what it knows. As such, it keeps me happy. It is the faith of my family and works well with the faith of my church. It does not lead me to think that I know the future, but only that I will deal with the future as best I can

That is enough.

Gary Masters

God needs no mediators between himself and the creatures he has created. After all, millions of innocent human beings were tortured and massacred in the name of our current religions.
The false teachings of the promised land has caused the malicious creation of a non existent country, Israel, on the ruins of another country,Palestine.
One needs to visist one of the tens of Plestinian refugee camps in the Middle East to realize the misery that false religious teachings could lead to in our world.

"Where I found some help was in the Psalms."

Maybe if Christians (whatever that means) would be more critical of the Bible (a bunch of papyrus written scrolls by men who were not inspired by God) then maybe we could all come to a consensus.

Jesus, the man, existed historically, was he the son of God? Hardly! He was another Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson, or David Koresh.

GOD did not fashion man after himself, men fashioned GOD after THEMSELVES. It is sad that so many people, including supposed scholars believe in this archaic book, full of parables, but no real answers.

I am firmly convinced that people are so afraid of dying and the possibility of living in "hell" eternally, that they put all their "faith" in the bible or quran.

Look at a brighter sight. There is a God, IT is called "I am Who I am"! IT created the Universe and everyting in it. We are part of IT and will reunite with it when our flesh dies. NO need to worship, pray, IT knows us. IT will welcome us back to the fold (trying to speak biblical here). We are not sinners, nor sheep, we are part of the undying spirit, who spawned the Universe. With IT we are not Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Bhuddist, etc., we just are!

Rev Anderson, here's my advice: given the many dificult real-world issues you have to deal with, don't worry about "how to justify the ways of God." The least the ruler of the universe could do, if he exists, is clue you in on his motives himself.

On another subject, I admire your ability to sit through the portraits of the fallen. I can't bear it.