Beware the Faith-Based Funding Trap

Hello timmy,

I am sorry, but a couple of posts that I put up and apparently took this morning in fact did not. I will have to try to come back to it. Shows once again that it serves to keep a record of scribblings.

Justilthen,

YOU "We do tend to put much greater weight on rationality and logic over intuition and creativity, particularly when trying to mine causality of the cosmos, and of humanity as one part of it"

This is nonsense. Scientists use their creativity and intuition constantly in their work. This is such a common misconception that people who do not believe in the supernatural are void of emotion, intuition and creativity. It is this concept that you seem to share with the religious that logic and reason can be a barrier to truth somehow. This idea that not only do we need to use our intuition and creativity, but that we actually need to turn off our reason and logic while using our intuition and creativity. This is nonsense. Creativity and intuition work hand in hand with logic and reason. And don't you let any carnival huckster tell you otherwise.

YOU: "There is no question that christianity was a movement that was initiated by someone, and that someone was a charismatic leader called Jesus by his followers"

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. I think it is greatly in question.
And if there was such a movement? It wasn't called Christianity. It didn't get called Christianity until someone decided that he was God. So calling yourself a Christian today, if you don't believe that Jesus was God, is ludicrous.

Why do you not call yourself a Christian Justilthen? Got something against Jesus?
You keep dodging this question.

timmy,

"You are saying you call into great question much of what is written in the Gospels. You are accusing them of making stuff up. A lot of stuff. Important stuff."

Yes. I believe that you are too. That or you believe that it was all fabrication.

"But you still believe them that the character they are talking about is real, even though you've just called into question their credibility..."

I believe that the charismatic teacher that we know by the name Jesus of Nazareth was real as the initiator of the teachings of christianity. I do not know that the stories told of him in the NT chapters are valid and true. But something that he did was pretty powerful enough to get a movement started.

"Even though there isn't a scrap of evidence that Jesus existed, from an era when there would be evidence of such a person if he was truly crucified under the circumstances described in the texts, and even though you yourself are convinced that the writers of the gospels were telling some pretty tall tales, you not only think that he existed, but that you can assess that he was a real man great enough to be worthy of being a deity of someone today, but not a real god?"

There is no question that christianity was a movement that was initiated by someone, and that someone was a charismatic leader called Jesus by his followers. Whatever writing was done, during or after the events, it was either a valid or invalid description of a movement that was already strong and growing. That did not start because some separated political force decided to 'affect history' and start a religion. Christianity, or what was to evolve into the path of that name, EXISTED.

You: "Calling yourself a Christian supports the belief in his divinity and all of the baggage and horror that comes with the Christian church."

Me: "In the same way that calling yourself an American supports the belief in arrogant expansionism and pre-emptive warfare? Or might it also support a concept of democratic governance, too?

You: "No. Because the word "America" does not mean "arrogant expansionism and pre-emptive warfare". But the word "Christ" means that Jesus was a God. Calling yourself a Jesus lover does not support the idea of his divinity. But calling yourself a Christian does.

Your reasoning is faulty. The parallels can easily be seen. The words are labels. They have associations attached to them, and multiple ones at that. There are many descriptors of America or American, and there are many that are applied to the word christian.

You are going fundamentalist on me again. You believe that the word christian is only applicable under certain conditions. I disagree. Completely. But you, like a fundamentalist, seek to negate alternative readings of what 'christian' may mean.

And by the way, for many around the world I think that "America" DOES mean arrogant expansionism and pre-emptive warfare... Unfortunate, perhaps, but not without cause.

timmy,

"As for "we are all brainwashed" I really had to laugh. I suppose we are, but some of us are brainwashed on a much deeper level."

"Justilthen, I don't know why you would want to downplay the roll of childhood brainwashing in the perpetuation of a myth that brought George Bush to power..."

We are all 'brainwashed' from early on, I believe. It is called conditioning. We are conditioned into our societies and cultures, religions and philosophies and cultural conventions. We are trained to trust in those, what is known and communally shared and common in life, as we are trained to be less trusting of what is 'foreign'. We are taught to judge and to justify. We are conditioned, much like being programmed. We are 'brainwashed'.

Brainwashing suggests some kind of cleansing of a programming that was already 'installed' in our system, like an erasing, while recording over the old something new... So one may say, (pardon me!) RE conditioning.

But we are all programmed and conditioned. That is one of the challenges and potential hypocracies of judging another system as flawed or inferior and going about 'changing' it. We are judging, invariably, as a preconditioned mind making the judgement. We, in a sense, cannot KNOW that another system is indeed inferior to our own because we are already judging from a conditioned bias...
"I am however out to slay deluded thinking and dangerous ideas. I see people, who literally believe in a personal deity, not as perpetrators of a crime against society, but as victims of brainwashing whether it be parental or societal."

timmy,

This quote was from persiflage to me:
"We can then perhaps assume that the real truth at any given moment is fundamentally non-logical in nature."

You:"Truth about what?
What truth?"

Universal Truth, What Is, Causality, the Reasons for our Existance, the Meaning of Life...

Take your pick. I did not initiate this statement, persiflage did, but I think you could insert any of these into it. Or perhaps Truth as Origin, Causality of interactions, What is Real...

His dialogue was interesting. He started here, a few posts back:
"And this leads to another curious idea - I was recently reading something by a well-known physicist that was making the case for employing mythos as opposed to logos, when trying to understand and explain reality (including the language of mathematics, quantum mechanics and quantum logic)."

We do tend to put much greater weight on rationality and logic over intuition and creativity, particularly when trying to mine causality of the cosmos, and of humanity as one part of it.

Justilthen,

"No insult intended. Don't take one..."

None taken for sure. I'm fine with playfully mocking each others position with humor, in fact I'm quite good at it, but some on these threads don't take it so well so I've learned to curtail it myself. I'm personally cool with it if you are. Next time I won't complain I'll just fire back, all in good fun.

The word "crusader" however does have a strong attachment to some pretty horrific pogroms and it's kind of like calling someone a nazi. You yourself have recently experienced being labeled an antisemite. You can jokingly call me a crusader if you like, but in this context, I think it's the same as jokingly calling someone a Nazi. But use whatever weapons you feel you need, oh defender of the irrational, and slayer of reason. ;)

Justilthen,

Quickly,

"I believe that you find comfort, and sense, in logic and reason, and the world needs to fit into that compartment"

I have no idea what this sentence means.

"Find comfort and sense"??

"the world needs to fit into that compartment"??

You seem to believe that logic and reason are hinderances to finding some kind of truth and I don't know what truth you are talking about?

timmy,

I never thought that you were against myths. I believe that you find comfort, and sense, in logic and reason, and the world needs to fit into that compartment. You have not seemed to be actively dialoguing the mythological or 'symbolic', metaphoric or 'etherial'. You support spirituality.

timmy,

YOU: "I'm just exercising free speech with the earnest intent on improving our society. Not out to slay anyone. I am however out to slay deluded thinking and dangerous ideas. I see people, who literally believe in a personal deity, not as perpetrators of a crime against society, but as victims of brainwashing whether it be parental or societal."

ME: "I think that we are all victims of brainwashing, O Crusader against Delusion and Dangerous Ideas!"

Do be a little less serious, timmy. ( ! ) Your response was what it was, but I was not insulting "real victims of the crusades". Your distaste for religion is well known on these boards, and it is a bit like a crusade for you, as you maid plain in your post. "out to slay deluded thinking." I am making light fun of it. Nothing more than that.

Your response: "Exclamation point? "Crusader"?
Chill dude, I'm just a guy expressing his opinions just like you. No one is crusading here, that's demagoguery and an insult to the real victims of the crusades... I have no problem with you countering me with argument, but calling me a crusader and using exclamation points is not an argument."

No insult intended. Don't take one...

Justilthen,

"We can then perhaps assume that the real truth at any given moment is fundamentally non-logical in nature."

Truth about what?
What truth?

"Pure science, as mathematics for example, may be able in the end to define and give a form to real Truth, but I do believe that truth in the end is not 'rational' as we understand that"

Truth about what?
What truth?

The misperception might be that I am against myth. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love myths and find them quite useful.

I am against the primitive practice of believing myths to be literally "true", or trying to convince others that they are literally "true".

JUSTILLTHEN - Dzogchen....yes.

another time, another thread -

persiflage,

It has been quite awhile since I thought much on Allister Crowley and his ilk... Much has passed. I did not have quite the take on him that you described here, though this perception of him was common and I am sure true. My teacher at the time loved Crowley, but he was Crowleyesque himself, with similar criticisms surrounding him. Their beliefs were in some alignment, allowing wide moral latitude to choices and actions taken in the pursuit of knowledge and power.

Curiously, I think that the same is true for the characters of Don Juan and Don Genero. I am a believer in the veracity of the Castaneda stories as well as the descriptions of the Dons, and I have my own good reasons for that belief. As well this version of sorcery, (or better sourcery), and magical involvement in the world makes a far more organic and congruent sense to me than Crowleys way, or the western magickal approach altogether. Native and earth based peoples are by 'nature' more connected to the natural forces that the sourcerer seeks to understand, manipulate and 'control'. The western approaches tend to me far more mind centered, and so in some way already buffered from the natural forces it seeks to align with.

Per your post on mythos and logos, I tend to go with the mythos side far more often. Can't have one without the other in this realm, but I have my preferences.

"Mythos creates inner conditions whereby actual (unspoken) reality can be experienced directly by individuals - religion typically takes it's followers very far away from this possibility by insisting on the possession of 'real' truths vis a vis logos.

Isn't that related to logic? We can then perhaps assume that the real truth at any given moment is fundamentally non-logical in nature."

I agree. Pure science, as mathematics for example, may be able in the end to define and give a form to real Truth, but I do believe that truth in the end is not 'rational' as we understand that.

You have a love of Zen. Alles gut. My tendencies over the last years have been Buddhist, mostly Himalayan forms but Japanese as well. Some bit of kashmiri shivism.

santihom, persiflage.

Justilthen,

Part two.

YOU: "Yet, you do not know that Jesus cannot be a personal deity for some fool, and who is to know? Cain't prove nothin' nohow, one way or t'other"

I'm not sure what you are suggesting here. Are you suggesting that Jesus may have been the actual son of the creator of the universe? That I do not know for sure that that is not true?

YOU: I believe that the concept of his divinity, ie that he was the Lamb, the Son of God, Son of Man, One Trine in the Triune, etc., were later elaborations and not necessarily declared by Jesus himself"

I just do not understand this kind of thinking. Do you not see what you are doing? You are saying you call into great question much of what is written in the Gospels. You are accusing them of making stuff up. A lot of stuff. Important stuff. But you still believe them that the character they are talking about is real, even though you've just called into question their credibility, but not only do you believe that the character (that they most likely made-up like everything else they made-up) exists, but you also think that you can use their fantastical texts to get a better understanding of who real person (that they probably made up) was. Even though there isn't a scrap of evidence that Jesus existed, from an era when there would be evidence of such a person if he was truly crucified under the circumstances described in the texts, and even though you yourself are convinced that the writers of the gospels were telling some pretty tall tales, you not only think that he existed, but that you can assess that he was a real man great enough to be worthy of being a deity of someone today, but not a real god?

It's all just such a ridiculous stretch.

YOU: "In the same way that calling yourself an American supports the belief in arrogant expansionism and pre-emptive warfare?"

No. Because the word "America" does not mean "arrogant expansionism and pre-emptive warfare". But the word "Christ" means that Jesus was a God. Calling yourself a Jesus lover does not support the idea of his divinity. But calling yourself a Christian does.

YOU: I call you a fundamentalist because you are a supporter of a delusional and erroneous belief that there is only one true way, to be christian in this case"

No I don't. I point out the the Christian Bible says that.
You are correct though. That belief is delusional.

Justilthen.

"I think that we are all victims of brainwashing, O Crusader against Delusion and Dangerous Ideas!"

Exclamation point? "Crusader"?
Chill dude, I'm just a guy expressing his opinions just like you. No one is crusading here, that's demagoguery and an insult to the real victims of the crusades. This is a blog for exchanging ideas about controversial issues. I've not called for the infringement of anyone's right to believe what they choose to believe, I'm not calling for any rounding up, or persecution. I'm just expressing my opinion. I have no problem with you countering me with argument, but calling me a crusader and using exclamation points is not an argument.

YOU SAID: "That makes your quest mighty big. Best of luck with it"

What quest?

As for "we are all brainwashed" I really had to laugh. I suppose we are, but some of us are brainwashed on a much deeper level. What you just said is the equivalent of me saying that heroin users are victims of an exceptionally powerful addiction, and you piping in with "Oh but aren't we all addicts Timmy? I mean I know people who are addicted to chocolate, and I have one friend who absolutely has to have pepperoni pizza on Tuesday nights, So aren't we all addicted, just like heroin addicts Timmy?"

Justilthen, I don't know why you would want to downplay the roll of childhood brainwashing in the perpetuation of a myth that brought George Bush to power, and almost gave us a vice president this year (potential president) who thinks that global warming is just God huggin us closer. Sarah Palin believes that because she was brainwashed to believe it. George Bush thought he answered to a higher power that the American people because he was brainwashed. But yes, Justilthen, by all means defend that form of brainwashing by telling me that we are all brainwashed in some way. Good job. It's a good thing that 80% of the American children born everyday will be indoctrinated into the Christian religion by the time they are 4 years old. God believers at 4. Don't come down on this practice Justilthen, defend it by telling those who criticize it that we are all brainwashed in a way.

YOU: I know that you have convinced yourself that all believers in religions are deluded and brainwashed and wrong.

I did not have to convince myself. I just had to observe and educate myself. And again, I do not attack believers, I see them as victims, I attack the the religion that brainwashes them, It would be all to easy for you to argue against me if I were attacking the believers themselves, because that would be wrong, but you have you hands full if you have to argue against my criticisms of the religions themselves because I only argue against the bad parts.

JUSTILLTHEN - when one says the following, what does one mean?

.......as above, so below......
......emptiness is form, and form is emptiness...
......the one is many and the many are one.....

All are mythic declarations without meaning in themselves, but each is a finger pointing at the moon. And I agree - solitude is essential... 'when turning lead into gold'.

The meaning behind the Greek concept of Christos is well-known - and is surely a metaphor for the essential, timeless and transcendent part of each person. How this mythic idea was transformed into one particular quasi-historical, flesh and blood individual apart from all others, remains something of a mystery e.g. 'and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us'.

Thus do we see the essential difference between mythos and logos......

Sayonara -

JUSTILLTHEN

You wrote or at least I think you wrote, "The title Christ denoted Realization, Awareness of Self as God, (or an aspect of the One, so part of 'God'). Enlightened Masters, Buddahs, (another term that designates spiritual enlightenment, not just a man Siddhartha/Gautama Buddah), could all be called Christ."

Christ is a title but it is Greek, in Hebrew it is Messiah. It does not mean what you say it means in the above statement. I may not have the Hebrew spelling correct but that is what it means.

Even tho plenty of people were expecting a Messiah (Hebrew), Anointed One, or Christ (Greek), same meaning, most, if not all, were expecting a political Messiah. If one reads in the Gospels about the Apostles, it is very clear that they, at least some of them, were looking for a political Messiah even up to the time of Jesus's death.

Some may have distorted the meaning of "Christ" thru the ages but it's original meaning is Messiah not what you have written.

No one expected God to become One of us, Christ does not mean God but Jesus is God-Incarnate.

In the Old Testament, Cyrus was referred to as an Anointed One, Cyrus was not God and he was not even a Jew.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

persiflage,

I look forward to getting back to you. I am at the tail end of finishing a project and must needs to get to it. I quite like what you have written.

There is something to solitude when seeking to address and commune with the natural world, no?

Si.

timmy2,

I think that we are all victims of brainwashing, O Crusader against Delusion and Dangerous Ideas! That makes your quest mighty big. Best of luck with it.

I know that you have convinced yourself that all believers in religions are deluded and brainwashed and wrong. Yet, you do not know that Jesus cannot be a personal deity for some fool, and who is to know? Cain't prove nothin' nohow, one way or t'other.

Again, I have just a short time.

YOU: "What IS the absolute Rules of True Christianity that you say my friends watered down?"

"Jesus was the son of God. A deity.

Do you think that the early Christians you speak of, practicing Christianity long before the council of Niceea, did not hold the fundamental belief that Jesus was truly the son of God, the one true creator of all, lord of humanity who sent Jesus down to die for our sins?"

Yes, I question that. I believe that the concept of his divinity, ie that he was the Lamb, the Son of God, Son of Man, One Trine in the Triune, etc., were later elaborations and not necessarily declared by Jesus himself. (Evolutions of religion, timmy, or just developments?) The Redemption as well was an addition, in my view. I do not believe that Jesus taught that his death and presumed resurrection was preordained part of a necessary plan to Purify Humanity. It was convenient to Church Hierarchy as a way to solidify power, (religious, social, and political), and control the early christian movement. They may have believed that Jesus was 'Messiah', which aided the process.

The title Christ denoted Realization, Awareness of Self as God, (or an aspect of the One, so part of 'God'). Enlightened Masters, Buddahs, (another term that designates spiritual enlightenment, not just a man Siddhartha/Gautama Buddah), could all be called Christ.

"Calling yourself a Christian supports the belief in his divinity and all of the baggage and horror that comes with the Christian church."

In the same way that calling yourself an American supports the belief in arrogant expansionism and pre-emptive warfare? Or might it also support a concept of democratic governance, too?

I call you a fundamentalist because you are a supporter of a delusional and erroneous belief that there is only one true way, to be christian in this case. Yet the fundamental "rules" that you say MUST apply, (like a born again insisting what I must do for salvation), are not in my view, (I ain't the only one!), either original or essential to following the path lit by Jesus.

Wish I had more time. I will come back later. I love the juicy stuff.

Shalom

Justilthen,

You seem to revere the teachings of Jesus as an integral contribution to the morality of our society, why do you not call yourself a christian? Or do you?

Hi Justilthen,

One more thing with regards to your repeated accusation that I am a fundamentalist.

Are you a fundamentalist?

Let's take racism for example. Are you a fundamentalist, with an absolutist point of view on this, or are you of the opinion that racism is good for some and not good for others.

Are you an anti-racism fundamentalist?
Or is some racism valid.

While the KKK is not for you, do you accept that it might be right for others, as is your stance with Christianity?
Or are you a fundamentalist?

to continue -

And this leads to another curious idea - I was recently reading something by a well-known physicist that was making the case for employing mythos as opposed to logos, when trying to understand and explain reality (including the language of mathematics, quantum mechanics and quantum logic).

His observation was that logos employs symbols and symbolic systems that attempt to define one to one corrolations, but can never directly represent the reality that they are supposed to be referring to - and are therefore always mis-leading, to a greater or lesser degree.

For example, both particle physics and quantum physics reach a conclusion that everything is only approximately real, but without a truly substantial foundation beyond relationships between fields, forces, and energy systems. Our Newtonian world is never what it appears to be .........and again, sounding faintly Buddhistic.

Mythos creates inner conditions whereby actual (unspoken) reality can be experienced directly by individuals - religion typically takes it's followers very far away from this possibility by insisting on the possession of 'real' truths vis a vis logos.

Isn't that related to logic? We can then perhaps assume that the real truth at any given moment is fundamentally non-logical in nature.

Zen in all it's simplicity is still where it's at for me, if I need mythos.

best regards -

JUSTIllTHEN - What we see so often in modernized esoteric traditions is an almost inevitable abuse of power and/or eventual spiral into a corruption of character that is well typified by Aleister Crowley - a monstrously egocentric individual with antisocial tendencies that was a deluded heroin addict for much of his life - although a talented mountain climber, he was a more successful mountebank.

Crowley frequently and bitterly proclaimed that W.B. Yeats had unfairly been awarded his rightful position as poet laureate of the era, among other fundamentally wrong-headed and unfounded notions. His poetry was pretty insipid, at best.

While Crowley seemed blessed with the 'active imagination' that English writer Colin Wilson deems necessary for true magical practice - Crowley's dictums of 'love under will is the whole of the law' and secret ritualistic methods of 'achieving conversations with one's holy guardian angel' seem less than convincing when one realizes what an over-inflated, heartless con man & trickster he really was, under his cloak of self-proclaimed faux-magister accomplishments.

He was denied elevation to higher magical grades by the Golden Dawn membership and departed in a huff....

He and many of his fellow magicians and masters of the meditative arts were and are frequently flawed by grandiose self-importance and over-active egos, and people still continue to pay good money for a shot at transcendence!

The same fate befell George Gurdjeiff, thought by some to be the greatest natural magician of the modern age - in the end, he alientated many of his early followers (P.D. Ouspensky, et al) and finally met his end due to a decades long over-consumption of wine, women, food and generally wasted and profligate use of personal power.

The shamanic figure of Don Juan was the polar opposite - reclusive, solitary, and reluctant to mingle with other than fellow practitioners of the shamanic arts....and being an indian, was relatively invisible in the white man's world anyway.

The figure that was Don Genaro was quite interesting - I recall him describing reality as an invisible web of inter-connected events that one could learn to negotiate with long training and the necessary skills - and requisite fearlessness. Sounds faintly Buddhistic....

Whether fact or fiction, there was much of value in the Castaneda series. Mythos?

Justilthen,

YOU: "What IS the absolute Rules of True Christianity that you say my friends watered down?"

Jesus was the son of God. A deity.

Do you think that the early Christians you speak of, practicing Christianity long before the council of Niceea, did not hold the fundamental belief that Jesus was truly the son of God, the one true creator of all, lord of humanity who sent Jesus down to die for our sins?

YOU: "But they love and follow what they glean from the teachings of the man, (real or no!) called the Christ. So christians.

Actually his name was Jesus not "Christ".
"Christ" was the title he was given that refers to his divinity. That's why I call myself a Jesus freak and not a Christian.
Calling yourself a Christian supports the belief in his divinity and all of the baggage and horror that comes with the Christian church.

If any your friends do not believe that he was literally the son of God, then they would be going against the most fundamental belief of Christianity since the very beginning. Your friends have changed the most fundamental belief of THE RELIGION to suit their own beliefs and lifestyles. Like I said, they are welcome to call themselves Christians, they just look every bit as ridiculous as a fur coat wearing PETA member. They are every bit at odds with the core beliefs of that religion as a KKK member who throws dinner parties for his black neighbors.

YOU: "Slay em if you think they are wrong"

Nah, that's a religious ideal.
I just point it out to them with words, and criticize delusion and systematic deception, with dialogue and reasoned argument.

I'm just exercising free speech with the earnest intent on improving our society. Not out to slay anyone. I am however out to slay deluded thinking and dangerous ideas. I see people, who literally believe in a personal deity, not as perpetrators of a crime against society, but as victims of brainwashing whether it be parental or societal.

Hello timmy,

"I am not the fundie. The people who wrote the bible and invented Christianity were fundies. And your 'christian' friends are practicing a watered down version of a fundie religion."

You continue to suppport as valid only those that "wrote the bible and invented Christianity". Well, WHO wrote the bible? Or whose? :-) There is no one source, so there in no one definition, (or even redefinition!). We could say that the NT was compiled from various (origins for these?), sources, edited, and put together as sacrosanct. Does THIS define the only pure and valid essence of "christianity"? Are these 'editors' your inventors of christianity? Do you not think that for the generation or three, or the one to three hundred years that it took to fine tune the New Testament, ( RCC version), that christianity was not yet 'invented' and being practiced? Of course it was!

I know that you do not believe that Jesus was a real man. I liked you post to persiflage below. But we do not know that he did not exist, just as you do not know that 'religion', (perhaps we need to better define it for use here, you are quite reactive to the word), did not exist for the 150,000 years of human development.

But it does seem clear the the christian movement was a force and power that was well established before the Council of Niscea, and so could not have been "invented" by the NT 'editors'. The 'editors' sought to manipulate and control a movement that was homegrown and growing. Like all humans, manipulation in natural, as is change and evolution.

What IS the absolute Rules of True Christianity that you say my friends watered down? Whose Rules? RCC, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism?

You to persiflage:
"It did not become religion, until powerful MEN, intelligent enough to know that no such gods actually exist..."

"I call my self an atheist and a Jesus freak. I am. I dig Jesus."

"So I am optimistic on humanity, because I know that all of the very best things about the fictional character "Jesus" are in all of us. That ultimate altruism inspirational message from Jesus is achievable for us because he was not a God. That beautiful morality was dreamed up by us!"

For some of these very sentiments my 'christian' friends consider themselves 'christian'. They actually do believe in God, or diety of some form, though not in the literal specifics of the Bible. But they love and follow what they glean from the teachings of the man, (real or no!) called the Christ. So christians.

Slay em if you think they are wrong. What is a christian good for anyway? What happened to the good old days when establishment pantheists could persecute some upstart monotheists? It is a Shame. World has gone to hell.

Hello onofrio,

"... perhaps my thinking is incorrigibly zesta."

:-) Words can be a wonderful thing...

"I'm bothered and intrigued as to why people still own the name *Christian*, since it has become virtually a cipher - all things to all men - worn with like fervour by..."

I think because christianity and Jesus are the preeminent Symbol for Spiritual Fulfillment and, more to the point, Immortality... No more accepted metaphor, if not Path, to immortality than through this Jesus, so purchase westerners. Yet all symbols get employed in any number of different ways by the various choremasters. Being each individual and belief system.

It is not the actual Jesus, (assuming there is One), that is bent to alignment with the beliefs of the rightwing warlords and pacifist little buddas alike. It is the universally accepted symbol of spiritual correctness and truth that is employed by these groups to strengthen their position and claim to fame. Helps give credibility. A flotation device.

Leastwise that is my take on it. Christ has gotten so diluted and bent and twisted to Kingdom Come that it is easy enough to use Jesus as mascot to virtually any endevour.

persiflage,

Thank you for that last post. You have considerable knowledge of the subject of shamanism and related pantheistic religions. I like that.

I've had not a small amount of experience in some of these as well, and in these realms I am more comfortable and at home. Far more than in the endless debates of who has the real monotheistic Big Daddy. Not to get me wrong, I have a love for one of the obvious deductions of a monotheism, that we are all one. One to the many and many back to the one and such thought.

I spent years with a native american shaman following a ceremonial path whose roots were very similar to Carlos Castanedas' path, with results likewise very similar. My experience was not nearly as 'high flying' as Castanedas but there were many parallels.

Prior to that I had some experience in western magickal tradition, OTO and OGD ceremonial experiences, Rosicrucian.

I agree with much of what you write regarding shamanism and the shaman, but my experiences were a bit less focused on the singularity of the shaman and his/her gifts to the community and more about the individual finding those 'abilities' that are inate in themselves. I am thankful for that, as it is easy for the 'shaman', (preacher, priest, imam, guru...), to use a position of power for self aggrandizement, yet at the expense of the assorted supplicants...

persiflage,

continued:

It is natural for all to seek betterment, and in the case of reaching for 'power', to seek more power. No problem there. Moral questions arise when one gains power at the expense of others, at least without the knowledge or conscious participation of the 'support' upon whose backs the sage climbs the stairs of Babel.

You can see some of these issues addressed more directly in the writings of Crowley and Castaneda, (the second in his descriptions of Don Juan and Don Genaro). Crowley was often considered a practitioner of black arts, in part because he did not follow the same commonly held moralities that much of society did. It was fine to gain power with the willing, or not quite willing, help of others. For all were seeking power, and willing themselves therefore to it. The neophyte was looking to him and his experience, and he was seeking the neophyte. Love Was All was the Law.

Magic, (the practice of a valid spiritual ceremonial path), should be about personal transformation at the core of the thing, in my view. This is the area of the wounding done by the dey velopment of aspects of christian doctrine, in particular, to humanity, and islam along with it.

By enshrining the doctrine of the Resurrection as a Cleansing of Original Sin, established religion effectively takes the responsibility for spiritual seeking, purification and fulfillment out of the hands of the individual, and so away from humanity at large as the religions grow. The spirituality of humanity is by this means dis-empowered. All one has to do for spiritual fulfillment is pledge loyalty to "_____" and then sit back and vegetate while awaiting your entry into Paradise.

JUSTILLTHEN - pantheistic shamanism as found in 'primitive' cultures (both ancient and contemporary) is defined by a particular individual being called to play this singular social role through some kind of psychological crisis.

Shamans may have any number of peculiar attributes, but their abilities must include travel to spirit realms in order to gain information and exert influence over outcomes here in the 'natural' world.

In the archetypal world of the shaman are found beings of intelligences, as well as elemental forces. One must know how to control both, at least temporarily. The writings of Carlos Castanedes and the adventures of Don Juan captured this world quite well.

The imitative or sympathetic magic exhibited in tribal shamanism is an attempt to control supernatural forces of various kinds, whether they be beneficial or malevolent. Among shamans found in the Amazon River basin for example, there can be found specialists of both the white and black arts, as well as individuals capable in both the right and left hand paths.

The magical system attributed to the Egyptian adept known as Hermes Trismogistes and recorded in the Emerald Tablets takes magic to another level altogether. Here you begin to see magic as a method of personal transformation. Onofrio has much more expertise here than I might have....

The Magic of Hermes/Thoth (both the god and the man) gave rise to a modern magical system developed by such individual practitioners as McGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, Dion Fortune and various other early members of the Order of the Golden Dawn (here include the poet mystics William Butler Yeats and George AE Russell).

You will also find here both the Theosophical influences of Madame Blavatsky and the use of the Jewish/Gnostic Kaballah as a magical/mystical blueprint for the structure and functions of the 10 levels and 22 paths describing cosmic reality.

Primitive shamanism and modern magick have certainly diverged considerably, but both still remain estoteric systems of knowledge that purport to allow adepts of these systems/methods considerable control over the spiritual and material fate of both individuals and groups.

Overcoming chaos and the unpredictability of life and Mother Nature, have always been one of the major functions of religion and religious behavior, wherever found......

Onofrio,

Watch the first 25 minutes of the movie Zeitgeist for the best ever powerpoint presentation on Jesus the son = Jesus the sun.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

persiflage'

"Shamanism is a rather broad topic with a vast history, in it's own right."

Broad? Like big? Like important? Like "original"?

I love shamanism. Shamanism rocks. Spirituality merged with the natural world in an organic and real way.

As above, so below, is a Western Magickal extension of shamanistic referencing of the natural/spiritual world... Simple and acessable.

Persiflage,

re Russell

Substitute Memphis for Babylon, Parramatta for Eire, and you've quoted this demicelt's chronic mind's eyeful.

Ah me...

Many thanks for that, and for the other links!

Timmy,

You to Persiflage:

"(By the way Jesus the son is actually Jesus the sun)."

Thereby hangs many tales.

I have studied (in the original language) Egyptian funerary texts that precede the Gospels by many centuries, designed to effect the resurrection of a dead, divine king - laid in a rock cut tomb - by ritual fusion with the sun. The same culture saw this divine king, while reigning, as the beloved (mry) bodily son of the creator god manifest in the sun: literally the son of god/son of the sun. All has a familiar ring, certes.

I think Constantine's Christianity was largely an adaptation of his devotion to Sol Invictus/Helios-Mithras, which he shared with much of the Roman military. Constantine's "new" faith was based not on a "conversion" per se but a personal epiphany in which he realised the syncretism of his own solar god with that of the Christians: Dies Solis meets Easter morning; Constantine has his cake, eats it too, and goes back for more.

Testimony of the persistence of the Christ-Sun syncretism: that our "Christian" culture still celebrates the birth of Christ at the end of the Winter Solstice on 25 December - the birthday of Sol Invictus/Helios-Mithras, as officially instituted in AD 275 by the emperor Aurelian.

Unto us a sun is born.

I've taken to wishing folk a Mithras Christmas during the festive season, particularly in response to those who would "Put Christ back into Christmas".

Justillthen,

Thanks for your detailed reply to my floral arrangement. I was venturing along a path suggested earlier by DITLD of airing internal dialectic. Acidity not intended, but perhaps my thinking is incorrigibly zesta.

I'm bothered and intrigued as to why people still own the name *Christian*, since it has become virtually a cipher - all things to all men - worn with like fervour by apocalyptic gun-nuts, quiescent monastics, social reformers, establishment ultra-conservatives, idealistic activists, bigots both elitist and lowbrow, kindly grandmas, gentle visionaries, deluded zealots, et alii.

There is something of Jesus in all of them. He has become the necessary mascot of any claim to ultimate value, a sort of certification that the high moral ground is in sight. Even atheists like Timmy find it difficult not to give Jesus a nod-of-sorts.

Given this Christic ubiquity, I suppose it's no longer a question of *Will the real Jesus please stand up?* but *May the best Jesus win.*

Timmy and Justillthen - here is additional evidence that may place what could be considered
very early religious behavior, based on burial patterns/evidence, much further back historically.

I think it all depends on where you want to draw a (speculative) line on what can be construed as religious behavior - but then, that's not always so easy to do so very, very long after the fact!

The highly organized monotheism/polytheism found in complex post-agricultural societies is indeed relatively new within the last 5000 years.

Tribal shamans and shamanic rites and rituals have been central to primitive societies for an exceedingly long time however - and surely represent the very first hierophants or religious specialists to be found in early social groups/societies.

Shamanism is a rather broad topic with a vast history, in it's own right. Mircea Eliade and others have written extensively on this primitive and still extant religious tradition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_burial

Hi Thomas,

YOU: Is "our society" the so-called first world?

Thomas if you read my posts, you would know by now that "our society" to me, means "human society". Believing that Jesus and Hell are real is not good for human civilization anywhere. IMO

YOU: What about the rest of humanity?

I just answered you, snippy.

YOU: "How would you know that it is "better" for our society or is this just your opinion?"

It is my opinion, but not "just" my opinion. It is also the opinion of hundreds of millions people across the globe, and 73% of the national academy of sciences, and the authors of 6 books from the best sellers lists over the last five years, but you would still be right to call us a minority, although I'm not sure how much longer that's going to be true.

YOU: "Not only is Jesus real but so is hell but you don't have a clue what hell is, by the way spiritual death is also real"

We'll just have to agree to disagree here.

Thomas, have you ever seen the movie Zeitgeist?

Continuing...

As for cosmology, the monotheisms are obviously right out to lunch there. Buddhism and Vedanta have something to be proud of since Einstein, and now quantum theory, But I'll stick with my science based explorations of monism for now, but I'm keeping my eye on you vedanta.

I define spirituality and religion as two separate things. Spirituality is honest exploration of the unknown, and religion is pretending to know the unknown. Religion (as I define it) is deceptive manipulation of spirituality.

Religion is groupthink, spirituality is a personal exploration.

I'll stop now. You guys know where I'm coming from, or at least you should. When I talk about religion I am not talking about spirituality. I do not throw out the Jesus baby with the dirty doctrinal bathwater. But the dirty doctrinal bath water is not just my enemy, it is the enemy of all of us.

Thanks Persiflage,

I gather from that article that modern man was absent of culture, never mind religion, for at least the first 3/4 of our existence to date. Then there would slowly develop a primitive sort of worship for the sun and the rain, and all of the life sustaining gifts of nature. (By the way Jesus the son is actually Jesus the sun)

When I say that religion has not been with us from the beginning, we now know that it definitely was not with us for the first 150,000 years, and I do not consider the next 30 to 40,000 years of sun and thunder worship to be religion, it was perfectly natural. It did not become religion, until powerful MEN, intelligent enough to know that no such gods actually exist, used god worship and the ignorant masses, who they kept ignorant, to create doctrines designed to give them ultimate power both politically and morally, and control people by manipulating their deepest fears and emotions. This has only been with us for the last ten percent of our existence at best.

Today's monotheisms have been with us no longer than 5000 years and the only two still causing significant trouble have only been with us for 2000 and 1300 years respectively. They both come from a diabolical plan to subjugate and gain political power by fear, and ultimate authority over morality.

Why oh why would anyone want to use one of these diabolical plans as a base for a modern spiritual endeavor?

I call my self an atheist and a Jesus freak. I am. I dig Jesus. Or at least I dig many of the moral philosophies attributed to the fictional character Jesus and I let the teachings of Jesus in the mythological book called "The Bible" inspire my life, but with the full knowledge, and PRIDE, that those words were not from a higher power but from the mind of my species. That's what gives me hope. If those words were divine and could only come from a higher power, that depresses me. But I know that's not true. So I am optimistic on humanity, because I know that all of the very best things about the fictional character "Jesus" are in all of us. That ultimate altruism inspirational message from Jesus is achievable for us because he was not a God. That beautiful morality was dreamed up by us! I'm so flippin proud and inspired and optimistic about that I can't tell you.

TIMMY2

You wrote, "Believing that Jesus and Hell are metaphorical is better for our society than believing Jesus and Hell to be real, but it is not correct Christianity."

Interesting statement.

Is "our society" the so-called first world?

What about the rest of humanity?

How would you know that it is "better" for our society or is this just your opinion?

Not only is Jesus real but so is hell but you don't have a clue what hell is, by the way spiritual death is also real.

Unless Jesus really existed and rose from the dead then there is no Christianity, it is that simple, I think that this is what you meant in your statement, is it?

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

The age of religion? Check out the evidence here.
A little research goes a long way.......

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/uou-toh021105.php

Hi Justilthen,

YOU said: "Christians practiced following this guy called Jesus because he had a huge influence on them and presented, for the day, a fully new way to live life and honor it"

The problem here is that Jesus didn't actually exist. They are not following a great man. They are following thousands of years of human wisdom and compassion gathered and mythologized into a fictional hero character. The words they are following are not the words of a man called Jesus Christ, they are the words of wisdom from all of our common ancestors. So why call yourself a "Christian" if you don't believe the fundamental core beliefs of the Christian bible, which is that Jesus was real, and literally God?

YOU: "Religions, and spiritual seeking all the more, is a vital beast. Hard to put that one down to rest..."

They are not the same thing at all. Spirituality is a vital beast. Religion is not. Religion is codified spirituality brainwashed into people via a tribal paradigm.

YOU: "You are a fundie, timmy! I knew it. I thought it only applied to logic and reason on your altar, but you apply it to religions. Rich!

I am not the fundie. The people who wrote the bible and invented Christianity were fundies. And your 'christian' friends are practicing a watered down version of a fundie religion. It's like being a member of PETA and wearing a fur coat, and then when someone says "hey you can't be a member of PETA and wear fur" and the fur wearing PETA member says "what are you a fundie? I've evolved what it means to be a PETA member to suit my lifestyle. Don't you tell me I'm not a true PETA member. I can call myself whatever I want"

So yes, Justilthen, your friends can call themselves Christians, but they don't have Christianity right any more than a fur wearing PETA member has PETA right.

If someone decides to call themselves a member of the Arian Nation but loves Jews and Black people, that person may have morality more correct than the Arian Nation dudes, but he does not have "Arian Nation" more correct. He has it wrong. Hating Jews and Blacks is correct for the Arian Nation. It is wrong for our society, but correct for the Arian Nation. Believing that Jesus and Hell are metaphorical is better for our society than believing Jesus and Hell to be real, but it is not correct Christianity.

timmy,

I am just trying to follow up on a couple of things I did not get to RE-addressing, (if re-addressing an issue is possible for you! :-) )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations

Look it up. Shows fundamentalist christian roots. Though I have read on fundamentalist christian root of the KKK I do not find reference, so it will have to stand for the moment as simply a hate group.

"Really? It is news to me that organized religions have been around for 200,000 years."

I did not say organized religions, but I would guess that some form of organization of spiritual concepts would occur along with social and cultural organization. Recorded history is short, so anything earlier is harder to substantiate. I feel clear that humans have had some form of spiritual-into-religious cognition since we were far hairier.

"Are you suggesting that monotheism will always be with us? Are you suggesting that it should be?"

No, as I do not know, though in some forms it would not surprise. And I don't have a should in the second case.

"Spirituality will be around as long as the origin of the universe and "life" are a mystery."

I agree, and beyond as well I believe. I do not consider spirituality to be determined by the unknown, or mystery, of life. I think it deeper than that we do not yet have THAT answer.

timmy,

"But religion has not been with is since the beginning..."

You make an assumption here that cannot be proven out in the moment.

"Not possible. They may have morality "more correct" for the times, but they do not have the religion more correct."

Again here you take the fundamentalist approach. Does quantum physics grow and evolve as further knowledge is realized? Does the english language sound the same and the original developers made it, or the first to write it wrote it? That stories of Christ were written by unknown authors a generation or more ACE, and picked and chosen by church heirarchy to form the 'canon' of the NT, does not by it's act demarcate the boundaries of christianity or corner the market on Truth.

Christians practiced following this guy called Jesus because he had a huge influence on them and presented, for the day, a fully new way to live life and honor it. This is obviously a loose interpretation of what he did and would be blasphemeous to some, but be valid for others. Such is the way of these things.

Religion is not immutable, but maleable, like most anything. Given time, everything changes. Whatever you may say that it changes into, and whether you find it valid or not, it goes on till it dies. Religions, and spiritual seeking all the more, is a vital beast. Hard to put that one down to rest...

"Only the original author has the correct interpretation."

You are a fundie, timmy! I knew it. I thought it only applied to logic and reason on your altar, but you apply it to religions. Rich!

Hello onofrio,

My my, a bit of acidity, my well versed friend, laced inside the floral bouquet of your delightful inquiry to my 'christian' friends'. I shall call them 'christian' as their faith is suspect, not being followers of some Unchanging Dogma of the True Faith.

Firstly, "literal belief in the Bible" is absurd, if one of a thinking mind wonders at a world, no, say Universe formed in six days...but I do not want to go too far off topic so quickly.

Yet... do we not all employ an "essentialising lens - or reductionist set of blinkers -" in our lives, to varying degrees? That is, unless we are the supple sheep, acquiescent cow, just another unquestioning brick in the Wall? That conditioned beast aside, we humans, we all "seive the grains", choosing what to take on faith, what to question, what not to even bother with.
Speaking more specifically to the question, I have 'christian' friends that do believe in the Resurrection of the "dead-man-walking, but do not believe that by the act they are cleansed of 'sin' in a stroke.

Others that don't buy that Christ was a phoenix literally, but figuratively he rose as we all may rise to eternal life, (they as spirit/soul continuing, not as the physical form).

Others are reductionists, you may say onofrio, and believe that Jesus was god as man, as they believe that they are as well, and that the miracles were real and possible because Jesus was Realized god as man, ie Enlightened, and so could Act as God and Man.

I personally like this model. They are christians, in their own view, in a more pure and basic form. They love and follow and are devoted and pray to Jesus. The Christ.

They tend to have a less respectful approach to the various christian churches and denominations, and do not tend to be literalists but view the Bible in metaphor.

"Do they prefer Jesus' ascension to Elijah's fiery chariot?"

No, my 'christians' are not your, or more specifically Farnaz's, anti-semites.

"If the dead-man did not get up and walk about, what remains of his paradigm to be worked out "better and more honestly"?"

Are you like timmy, believing that unless it follows exact rules it is invalid? What made it valid to start with? And from there, does any change in the thing, in form or perception, therefore invalidate it?

"It's OK, I know you're busy and ill-disposed to this ghola".

I actually like you, onofrio. I like your mind and the way that you write. A bit over the top sometimes, but that is good. I was sideswiped by you and Farnaz on the anti-seminism rants. Something sensitive there, no doubt. But I am not one that thinks of you as a ghola. Farnaz is her own peculiar entity, and I do not mix your identity with hers.

Peace.

And for all that love classical guitar and
baroque music in particular - unparalleled!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Bream

For the Celt in all of us:

BABYLON

THE BLUE dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my mind,
It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run
Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.
On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays 5
Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days.
The tower of heaven turns darker blue, a starry sparkle now begins;
The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins
Come back to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers;
Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers. 10
The waters lull me and the scent of many gardens, and I hear
Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear.
Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid:
The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid,
One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide, 15
Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side.
Oh light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings,
While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.

George AE Russell -

Persiflage,

Yep, of that dyad Ginsberg gets the guernsey.

As for Kerouac, I am of the throng of little knowledge re his Buddhist tome. As I am re Madagascar's guitar sonics - seem very alluring indeed. Thanks for the heads-up for both.

I'm sitar-ignoramic, but I know what you're saying re the ukelele - much underrated, has the charm of a mandolin.

Couchwise - I'll take a Tallis motet, duduk, or oud, with an Islay single malt.

Onofrio - this thread may or may not have more life in it, but it's good to have you back in the mix. Your stylistic talents with the well-turned verse are always a pleasure. More John Donne please!

catch you later -

Onofrio - exactly right. Less Robert Frost and more Allen Ginsberg. I'm stuck in the American primitive mode - which probably suits my aging self. As Mississippi Fred McDowell said, 'I don't play no rock and roll'.......

Kerouac I can relate to.....he wrote a rather profound but little known book on Buddhism - did you know?

The guitar music of Madagascar is quite lyrical and highly recommended - and has an island sibilance reminiscent of Hawaiian slack key guitar.

Always was fond of the sitar, but a well-played ukulele is nothing to be ashamed of ....

Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev with Courvoisier on the couch - for more thoughtful moments.

Persiflage, mindful strummer,

I've heard of and heard Tommy god-with-us, certes. A wizard at his craft. Zesta!

Onofrio plays the fool only, which involves a minor tin whistle capability. Can clap with one hand also - actually.

Of solo instruments, I am much moved by the duduk and the oud.

Persiflage,

You:

"I departed for greener pastures,

celebrating the end of holiness, once and for all."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wholly, wholly, wholly,

Lord Gone, all righty.

May unsheep sanely graze

in pastures greener,

past all schemes of things.

Onofrio - I was picking my guitar tonight and wondering if you were a fan of steel-string guitar - thought you might even be a picker.

You have one of the greatest down your way in Tommy Emmanuel - have you heard him? Pretty close to a religious experience....

Justillthen,

YOU to Timmy:

Everyone has their own derivative of cat. There is no absolute. Even if being purely rational.

"No they are the rules that the book clearly states must apply to be Christian."

Those rules do not apply to many christian friends that I know, by their own choice, yet they still consider themselves christian. In fact they feel that they are more honest and truthful to the 'essential' wisdom of the Bible while not believing in it literally. Literal belief in the bible is absurd, they feel, and I agree.

They, (sorry), "redefine" the paradigm of 'christianity' to work better and more honestly for themselves.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding your Christian friends, for whom "literal belief in the Bible" is so absurd: what marks their *Christianity* apart from, say, aesthetic appreciation, or consensus ethics? Why do they still own/contend for the name *Christian*?

What is the essentialising lens - or reductionist set of blinkers - that allows your Christian friends to seive the grains of true biblic gold from the absurd plains of biblic sand? The Jesus pesher?

Do they then include the gospels' dead-man-walking resurrection among the literal absurdities? Or that the trinitarian godhead - in whose image gendered humanity is supposedly made - is expressed in entirely male terms?

Or do they restrict their estimates of absurdity only to "OT" talking serpents, deluges, and Red Sea crossings?

Do they prefer Jesus' ascension to Elijah's fiery chariot?

If the dead-man did not get up and walk about, what remains of his paradigm to be worked out "better and more honestly"?

It's OK, I know you're busy and ill-disposed to this ghola. I'm content for the queries to remain rhetorical.

Small lives, concerned with their

place in the scheme of things

find evidence of their significance in the

entrails of dead animals and bowls of fetid water.

Looking with eyes of importance taints every result

and renders glorious truths cloaked in sacred abstraction

Man’s place in the firmament is proven time and again in dreams

genuine revelations of devils, saints, and assorted holy modalities

I found the source of dreaming, but was confused by

a surging disappointment at the end of things

and I departed for greener pastures,

celebrating the end of holiness, once and for all.

In measure with a nebula, the spark

in our limbs, woven in curling specks of code,

is Atlantic to a wren’s egg, yet

in the mindful stew we fancy

puddling dew looms god-wide.

Why we mites are torn titanic,

stars and dreams and infinite lists

will ever hint, and wink awry,

as wingbeats fight from our guts

to shield our salted eyes.

Justilthen,

Are you religious?

Timmy,
I have a couple more minutes waiting for those from heaven to email me...

"Yes, define, not RE-define"
Huge difference.
Define the word "Cat"
Now re-define the word "Cat"

Feline mammal.

Snitty, often arrogant and self-focused feline mammal.

Sometimes loving, often snitty and egotistical feline mammal.

Lunch, in China.

A prostitute.

Everyone has their own derivative of cat. There is no absolute. Even if being purely rational.

"No they are the rules that the book clearly states must apply to be Christian."

Those rules do not apply to many christian friends that I know, by their own choice, yet they still consider themselves christian. In fact they feel that they are more honest and truthful to the 'essential' wisdom of the Bible while not believing in it literally. Literal belief in the bible is absurd, they feel, and I agree.

They, (sorry), "redefine" the paradigm of 'christianity' to work better and more honestly for themselves.

Likewise there are different shades of Nazism.

persiflage, Thank you for your post, I read it this morning. I will respond when the devil is off my back. Hopefully that will be before the End Days.
Peace.

Timmy,

I hope to further address your last post, but honestly I could not even finish it. A day from hell, figuratively of course, as hell cannot exist as religions are fictions! :-)

ev·o·lu·tion (ěv'ə-lōō'shən, ē'və-) Pronunciation Key
n.

1. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.
2.
1. The process of developing.
2. Gradual development.
3. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
4. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
3. Biology
1. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
2. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.

CCNL

You wrote, "Thomas "The Hallucinator" Baum,

During your next visit with god, please ask him and his threesome buddies just what then did Darwin discover".

Timmy2 wrote that, ""We should have dispensed with it over a hundred years ago when Darwin discovered that Bible God was a bald faced lie"."

I wrote that Timmy2's statement about Darwin was not true, considering that I met the God of the Bible, even tho I have only met Jesus in the Catholic Eucharist.

I am a messenger and I am here to tell the world that God's Plan is for ALL OF HUMANITY. That there is a reason for "what is". How exactly "what is" came into being is really not my concern. I guess I was always more interested in the why rather than the how.

To put it mildly, it came as quite a shock to find out that I am a messenger. God chose me before creation, of course I didn't know it until I knew it.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Justilthen,

YOU: "You really need to be more honest and willing to recognize valid points in debate"

I am being honest. We just disagree on something. I don't have to find you points valid to be honest.

YOU: "I suggest that religion evolves. Regardless of your judgement that it is lunacy that it may, it does.

It changes over time. But those changes are not made by a process of evolution. This is my opinion. I can not find a definition of "evolution" that works in the case of religion.

YOU: "Fundamentalism is not the original form of that religion, however hard the adherants try to make it so"

I dropped the word fundamentalist for you and changed my statement to be the original author's intended meaning.

YOU: it is practiced by billions and they evolve it.

No they don't. Of the billions you are referring to you are obviously including muslims. Well Islam hasn't change one word or meaning since the beginning. It has not evolved or even changed one iota. As for Catholicism, the Pope decides what changes and when. The flock have no say. As for all of the modern Christian sects they simply make up their own version of a religion loosely based on the teachings of Jesus. This REINVENTION in no way resembles evolution.

YOU: "Moderates MAY have it right, perhaps more right than the ones that "wrote the book"

As I said, not possible. They may have morality more right, but they can not have someone else's religion that they created more right. It's just not possible.

Justilthen, if you were to write a story about a non fictional character, and you wrote this story to have a very specific meaning, and you described in great detail the attributes of this non fictional character, while others may find a different interpretation of your story, their interpretation can not be more correct than yours. You were not writing a story about a fictional character. You were writing about a real person (entity) who actually exists and who actually has the attributes that you described. Someone can come along and change your story, and reinterpret it to mean something else to them, but they can not possibly be more right than you.

YOU: "To interpret IS to define"

"Yes, define, not RE-define"
Huge difference.
Define the word "Cat"
Now re-define the word "Cat"

See the difference?

YOU: "Interpretation is what everyone does to understand the meaning of a thing"

Yes, to UNDERSTAND the meaning. Not to give NEW meaning to.

YOU: "These may be rules that you think must apply to be valid and christian. Fundamentalists certainly do. I do not believe that. Never have"

No they are the rules that the book clearly states must apply to be Christian.

It's like joining the Nazi party and then saying "Okay my version of Naziism loves Jews". And then when someone says well you're not a real Nazi then, you say "Who are you to tell me the definition of a Nazi?" "I am a Nazi and my Naziism is humble and Jew loving". "I have evolved Naziism".

It's insanity.

JUSTTILTHEN - Thanks for the friendly comment. You are correct that religion has been around for quite some time, and burial evidence indicates that early homo sapiens (cro-magnon) probably followed some kind of shamanic burial ritual, which would be indicative of beliefs in the existence of a spirit world and possible afterlife.

The animism of certain contemporary primitive peoples mirror these beliefs. Some paleontologists speculate that these beliefs were also held by Neanderthal - although physical evidence is less distinct. Unfortunately fossil evidence for early man, apart from skeletal fragments, is extremely limited.

An old religion professor of mine developed a theory that religion and religious behavior was a cognitive imperative (innate/immanent in the same sense that science and mathematics are part of our cognitive/evolutionary destiny) - see works by E. Thomas Lawson. Here I might be tending toward the teleological - ascribing cognitive features 'after the fact'.

Cave art from the paleolithic era can be found around the world, and is hypothesized by some to indicate a sense of immanent and deep spiritual connectedness with other life forms (that were also sacred prey, so to speak). Some 30,000 years ago shamanism was probably quite a well-developed attribute/artifact of early homo sapiens culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_paintings

Hello timmy,

You really need to be more honest and willing to recognize valid points in debate. It gets boring to dialogue with you when all you seek to do is justify your own viewing point.

I do not have the time to go back over this, what should already be obvious to a bright mind as yours.

I am not defending religion here. You think that I am and you are wrong. Fabricated by whoever, you certainly judge to be a psycopathic lunatic, I do not know. And... which religion?

I suggest that religion evolves. Regardless of your judgement that it is lunacy that it may, it does. Fundamentalism is not the original form of that religion, however hard the adherants try to make it so. It evolves. Everything evolves. Even if you believe that it is based on lies, and so is somehow 'invalid', it is practiced by billions and they evolve it. Moderates MAY have it right, perhaps more right than the ones that "wrote the book".

Why is it so hard for you to acknowledge this possibility? It is obvious that religions have evolved, doctrine has adapted, changed, gotten bloated with edicts and judgements, those have been recinded..... Religions have evolved. Theological beliefs are different now than the centuries ago when said religions were born.

To interpret IS to define. You get a dictionary, I did. Play semantics with "re-define" if you want, the meaning is clear, as it is with elucidate, part of the definition of interpretation.

Interpretation is what everyone does to understand the meaning of a thing.

Here, again, you speak as if you were the fundamentalist:

"1) The Bible was not meant to be a work of art open for interpretation as a work of art. It was meant to be the word and laws of the creator and master of the universe."

"2) The Bible clearly states which words in it are the words of God. The Bible clearly states with no ambiguity, that the word of God is eternal and unchanging."

These may be rules that you think must apply to be valid and christian. Fundamentalists certainly do. I do not believe that. Never have.

Justilthen,

Continued...

YOU: "You are giving credence to the authors of what you have always said are rabid lies...."

Credence? You mean by saying that only they knew the true nature of their lies? My whole point is the absurdity of taking lies that were created to empower the liars, and trying to form a religion around a reinterpretation of them.

YOU: "Here you suggest the only decent disciples are those that follow the letter of the law, ie 'delusion'. You are here supporting fundamentalism. Else ye lose yer way..."

No I am not supporting fundamentalism. I am pointing out the stupidity of trying to unfundamentalize and fundamental religion. Let's turn a lie about a literal God into a truth about a metaphorical God. It's ridiculous. The people who invented God meant for him to be literal. We know now that they were lying. So why on earth would we want to base a religion on the texts of liars caught lying? It is utter insanity.

YOU: "AN and KKK ARE disturbing digressions of fundamentalist versions of christianity, timmy. Come on.

No they are not. Come on.

YOU: "It is all about interpretation, boy. AR followers and KKK followers are church going believers in versions of christian thought.

Yes they use their religion to justify their racist ways. This is one of the great bonuses of this religion thing you seem to have more than a little soft spot for. But the fact that they use their religion to justify their racist beliefs, does not make the KKK or AN fundamentalist versions of Christianity. I''d call this a stretch but it's worse than a stretch. It's just not true.

YOU: "You should know this, timmy. Are you OK? Are you feeling ill these days?"

Just fine thank you. How about you?

Justilthen,

YOU: "Now you are a megaphone for western conditioning that radical islam represents the true message of Islam???

No, conditioning has nothing to do with it. I have read the Koran and the life of Mohammed and the history of Islam.

YOU: "I am seriously disappointed in you, timmy. You always seemed to adhere to the 'gods' of Rationality. You have dropped pegs for me"

Oh well. You defend an archaic and insane religion that was fabricated by a psychopathic lunatic and enslaves women and brainwashes children. I'm not too concerned about where I stand on your pegboard.

YOU: My good lord, timmy. Do you truly believe that only physical form in third dimension can evolve organically?

No.

YOU: "How is this not a form of evolution, and natural selection? You judge it, timmy, as I have always said that you do"

Yes I do judge it, as you judge me. Nothing wrong with judging, we couldn't survive without it. And in my judgement, religious doctrine is not arrived at by any process that could be described as "evolution". We'll just have to agree to disagree here.

YOU: "Interpretation" suggests RE- defining.

No it does not. Get a dictionary.

YOU: "an explanation of the meaning of another's artistic or creative work; an elucidation" Elucidation: " to make lucid or clear; throw light upon; explain"

Yes, an "explanation of the meaning", not a "RE-defining"

But also:
1) The Bible was not meant to be a work of art open for interpretation as a work of art. It was meant to be the word and laws of the creator and master of the universe.

2) The Bible clearly states which words in it are the words of God. The Bible clearly states with no ambiguity, that the word of God is eternal and unchanging.

Timmy,

Sorry for the disorganization of my last posts. It is late but I wanted to get to respond to your posts. I only got the the first post, and hope to say hello to the second.
Best.

timmy2,

"The original author(s) of any religious text had the only ever correct interpretation."

Trouble. Where to start? "Interpretation" suggests RE- defining.
"an explanation of the meaning of another's artistic or creative work; an elucidation"
Elucidation: " to make lucid or clear; throw light upon; explain"

You are giving credence to the authors of what you have always said are rabid lies.... You suggest for some reason that they are the only ones that have validity, ie "correct interpretation".
"Anyone who's honest attempt it is to find and follow this original interpretation has it as right as anyone can get."

Here you suggest the only decent disciples are those that follow the letter of the law, ie 'delusion'. You are here supporting fundamentalism. Else ye lose yer way...

But the modern versions of religions based on these texts, knowingly change the original intent of some of it's texts, based on their own morality and to suit modernity. The stupidity in this is obvious. You believe the original author enough to believe in the God he invented, but not enough to abide by all of the commandments given by his God. You believe him when he writes that his God is perfect, and that his word is eternal, but then you change the words that he attributes to his God or change the meaning that he originally ascribed to them. It just makes no sense. The original author is credible or he is not. Which is it?

"Arian Nation and KKK are not fundamental versions of any religion. They do not apply in this discussion. As for radical Islam, there is justification for all that they do in the Koran."

AN and KKK ARE disturbing digressions of fundamentalist versions of christianity, timmy. Come on. It is all about interpretation, boy. AR followers and KKK followers are church going believers in versions of christian thought. That is, they INTERPRET biblical scripture to address their own issues, find solace in scripture that supports their issues, and poof, a cult or religious offshoot is born.

You should know this, timmy. Are you OK? Are you feeling ill these days?

Timmy,

"It could easily be argued that they are the ones following the true words of the prophet and Allah and that the peaceful muslims here in the United States deserve to be killed for not fighting against their non muslim rulers."

Now you are a megaphone for western conditioning that radical islam represents the true message of Islam??? I am seriously disappointed in you, timmy. You always seemed to adhere to the 'gods' of Rationality. You have dropped pegs for me.

"One can not apply the concept of evolution to religion because it does not evolve organically."

My good lord, timmy. Do you truly believe that only physical form in third dimension can evolve organically? Seriously? Think about this. Are not all aspects involved on a level of existance, by definition, equally affected by the inherent natural laws of that level of existance? Yet you would like to exclude religion, and for what reason?

"It is a dictatorship. High priests reinterpret at will and set the new rules based on what is best for the religion, not for their people."

How is this not a form of evolution, and natural selection? You judge it, timmy, as I have always said that you do. It is your judgement of it that fogs your mind and reasoning. Gets in the way of clear perception. Your 'priests" are the alphas of that region of consciousness, for better or worse. It is they that set the rules, and the sheep follow. Alpha> betas.

Arosscpa:

I admit and agree that I am ignorant of Catholic "thought." I just know my own thoughts and defend from from others. You threw a rock, and I threw one back. That does not make me an anti-Catholic bigot.

I am ignorant of Catholic thought because there is so much to be ignorant of; I just know that being gay is not a sin, and if Catholic thought says it is, then Catholic thougt is wrong, and if this wrong thinking is being promoted publically as truth, for other people to follow, then I feel obligated to oppose it.

Timmy2 and The Moderate,

Order "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman (Hardcover - May 5, 2009)" at www.amazon.com after May 5, 2009

Thomas "The Hallucinator" Baum,

During your next visit with god, please ask him and his threesome buddies just what then did Darwin discover.

Sorry, the second quote below (the question) was The Moderate.
Forgot to put that in.

CCNL,

"It is well known that the material presently making up the human race could be compressed to neutron star density, or even to black hole density, by the right physical processes"

"Do you think it would be an improvement?"

It probably wouldn't be the first time it happened.
I wonder if this expansion is an improvement on the last?
And by who's or what's standards?

There could be life elsewhere in the universe that would laugh at our notion that things are somehow screwed up, or our notion that this universe was finely tuned for life. What the bleep do we know?

Persiflage,

No blight in your oversight. I too habitually misconstrue Uluru a mere rock appropriated for Mr Ayer. I put it down to reflexive whitefella schooling. We're only just beginning to sense the merest cusp of the blackfellas' Dreaming.

CCNL:

"But it still "boils down" to the current human race occupying the volume of a sugar cube weighing approximately 550 million tons."

It is well known that the material presently making up the human race could be compressed to neutron star density, or even to black hole density, by the right physical processes.

Do you think it would be an improvement?

Persiflage:

"Oh well - so many ideas and so little time.

Best regards -"

Sadly, it is late and I am fatigued, and so I cannot do justice to your array of interesting ideas. I did clip your append to my word processor, though, because I think it offers a rich field for discussion. Perhaps Timmy and others will continue as well. tomorrow is another day.

Best regards to you as well

Onofrio - .....from Uluru to Machu Picchu.

Better late than never at all.

Thomas,

YOU ASK: "Who said that this is what Darwin "discovered", besides Timmy2?"

Bible God supposedly created man fully formed. (Adam and Eve)
Darwin discovered that this was a lie by discovering that man actually evolved from a single celled organism over billions of years of evolution by natural selection. Therefore any religion that claims otherwise is clearly a lie.

YOU: "If this is what Darwin "discovered", then he was wrong"

Darwin was not wrong. The Bible is wrong.

Maybe you met God, Thomas, but you did not meet Bible God. Bible God does not exist. Darwin proved it. Admittedly Darwin did not prove your "Being of Pure love" God to be false. But he did prove Bible God to be a lie.

TIMMY2

You wrote, "We should have dispensed with it over a hundred years ago when Darwin discovered that Bible God was a bald faced lie".

Who said that this is what Darwin "discovered", besides Timmy2?

If this is what Darwin "discovered", then he was wrong.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Justilthen,

Continued....

YOU: "A religion MUST evolve and the original form must be cast aside to some extent to allow the process to grow"

If the original form is that God is literal, and all powerful, and perfect, and has given us his commands, then it is a moronic endeavor to pretend to still be of said religion, but to think that one can then change the eternal word of the perfect all powerful literal God, indeed that one can change God. As I said, such hanging on to the original whilst simultaneously evolving it and reinterpreting it at will, creates all of the divisiveness and tribalistic warring that goes on between those who have reinterpreted differently. Such insanity is inevitable when people try and follow religions invented by the elder tribesmen of bronze age nomadic goat herders.

YOU: "Religion will not go away. Been here from the beginning"

Really? It is news to me that organized religions have been around for 200,000 years. That's how long we have been around. Monotheism has only been around for 3 - 5000 years tops. Are you suggesting that monotheism will always be with us? Are you suggesting that it should be?

Slavery had been here from the beginning. It went away.

Omnipresent is not the same thing as "integral".

YOU: "(religion) Will be around in some form till "the end"

I see no reason to predict this. Spirituality will be around as long as the origin of the universe and "life" are a mystery. But religion has not been with is since the beginning, and I see no reason for it to be with us until the end. Or even now, for that matter. We should have dispensed with it over a hundred years ago when Darwin discovered that Bible God was a bald faced lie.

YOU: "Life, with only our own rational, scientific minds and left brains as dominant, will be void of... the void. Or the unknown. The mystery"

Who said anything about life with only our own rational, scientific minds and left brains as dominant? The right side of our brain is the "awareness" side, not the "religious" side. Religion in fact is created in the left side not the right.

Also, one does not need to shut down the right side to listen to the left side and visa versa.

YOU: "More my point is that adherents to a "moderate" form of a religion may be the ones that have it more correct, if such a word should be applied"

Not possible. They may have morality "more correct" for the times, but they do not have the religion more correct. Only the original author has the correct interpretation. And those making the best effort to follow the original intent of the original author have it more correct than those who make up their own version to suit them and their flock. But they are all out to lunch in my books. I know this attitude bothers you. But so be it. You've not made much of a case for the usefulness of following and holding sacred, ancient religious texts.

HI Justilthen,

"I do not mean to be trivial but call into question you bestowing 'correctness' upon fundamentalists in religions, as if they are the ones that have the correct interpretation of it"

I'll drop my use of the word "fundamentalist" if it's bothering you.
How about this. The original author(s) of any religious text had the only ever correct interpretation. Anyone who's honest attempt it is to find and follow this original interpretation has it as right as anyone can get. But the modern versions of religions based on these texts, knowingly change the original intent of some of it's texts, based on their own morality and to suit modernity. The stupidity in this is obvious. You believe the original author enough to believe in the God he invented, but not enough to abide by all of the commandments given by his God. You believe him when he writes that his God is perfect, and that his word is eternal, but then you change the words that he attributes to his God or change the meaning that he originally ascribed to them. It just makes no sense. The original author is credible or he is not. Which is it?

YOU: "In some forms of fundamentalism it is easy to view it and judge it to be less than embracing of "original intention" of the religion. Radical islam, Ayrian Nations and KKK as some"

Arian Nation and KKK are not fundamental versions of any religion. They do not apply in this discussion. As for radical Islam, there is justification for all that they do in the Koran. It could easily be argued that they are the ones following the true words of the prophet and Allah and that the peaceful muslims here in the United States deserve to be killed for not fighting against their non muslim rulers. This is all clearly laid out in the Koran. Hence the insanity of trying to follow ancient religions written by ignorant desert wanderers.

YOU: "But if one applies the concept of evolution to the process of religion as well as to physical form, (I think it applies to any organic process), then the fundies do not "have it right""

One can not apply the concept of evolution to religion because it does not evolve organically. It is a dictatorship. High priests reinterpret at will and set the new rules based on what is best for the religion, not for their people. There is no natural selection going on, nor is there supposed to be. The monotheistic religions are about people claiming to know the word of God. Again, the insanity and stupidity of believing an ancient author that his God exists, and that his God's word is eternal, and then claiming that that word can evolve based on your own interpretation? Talk about hypocrisy. Talk about delusional.

Hi Onofrio - gazing 'down' at the magnificent constellation of the Southern Cross has no doubt inspired you as a gifted mythologizer - as it has for countless shamans and magicians from Machu Picchu to Ayers Rock.

As above, so below......

But it still "boils down" to the current human race occupying the volume of a sugar cube weighing approximately 550 million tons. Keep that fact at the top of your list of perspectives and life's concepts are not so complicated.

i.e. Tis the space amongst the subatomic particles that is removed not the particles themselves as per Dr. Bob Berman
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7498 along with your password for Astronomy Magazine.

timmy2,

I do not mean to be trivial but call into question you bestowing 'correctness' upon fundamentalists in religions, as if they are the ones that have the correct interpretation of it. Especially as you have been such a critic of religions in general.

Your first and third quote are at odds:

"They intend to be. That is the definition of "fundamentalist". And that is what I was referring to when I used that term."

"Indeed, no one even knows or could know what a pure form of these two religions is anyway."

Though fundamentalists claim to adhere to a 'pure' reflection of the religion, they never do. It is always an alteration of it, an interpretation that is bent and molded to the present day and to the prejudices, loves and conditioning of those that 'developed' that version that is called 'fundamental'.

In some forms of fundamentalism it is easy to view it and judge it to be less than embracing of "original intention" of the religion. Radical islam, Ayrian Nations and KKK as some.

But if one applies the concept of evolution to the process of religion as well as to physical form, (I think it applies to any organic process), then the fundies do not "have it right". A religion MUST evolve and the original form must be cast aside to some extent to allow the process to grow.

Religion will not go away. Been here from the beginning. Will be around in some form till "the end". Life, with only our own rational, scientific minds and left brains as dominant, will be void of... the void. Or the unknown. The mystery.

But then that is another subject. More my point is that adherents to a "moderate" form of a religion may be the ones that have it more correct, if such a word should be applied.

persiflage,

Very nice.

"...science may be potentially unlimited, but then, science is us....so it goes where we go..."

Moderate, you said in response to my quip above:

'Mathematics, according to Gödel is Platonic and has a reality of its own. I do not think that either science or math "is us". It is waits to be discovered by us. We are incidental. I think that the inhabitants of Palain VII also discovered the laws of geometry and the Calculus. :^)

And I can understand the appeal of such a rarified plane, especially to theoretical mathematicians. That goes to show they have an very developed sense of their own mythos. Those of us that don't have access to that highly abstract language have to rely on other graphic/symbolic options residing in the unconscious.

The mystery of eidetic memory, mathematical prodigies, and savants in general, is truly a conundrum that seems to point to the quantum nature of the human brain!

And the calculations (and thinking) behind quantum mechanics is equally inaccessible.

I've always been fascinated by archetypal realms, and in particular Jung's collective unconscious, as well as the archetypal realms found in various religions e.g. the Tibetan realm of archetypal dieties found in the Tibetan Book of the Dead is one such example.

However, the greatest mystery (to my mind) is consciousness itself - rather than it's products and psychic proclivities. We can never know if a thing, a place, or an event exists independent of our ever-tenacious consciousness. There's just no standing outside of it.

The inhabitants of distant planetary worlds know what we know (and perhaps much more) because they possess consciousness too - that's my hypothesis!. In fact, we may owe our existence to ancient astronomers that preceeded us in their early exploration of the universe (going by Wheeler's idea of delayed measurements).

It seems to me that your preferred cosmology is teleological in nature - which is perhaps why so few astro-physicists support the anthropic view of our cosmic origins....can we really attribute purpose and meaning to the universe, apart from our own innate tendency to confer meaning - and which is clearly a root attribute of human consciousness?

As to parallel or multiple universes, isn't this also predicted by the general theory of relativity? Perhaps the past and the future must converge as probability waves in order to create the present - with the aid of some observational mechanism.

Oh well - so many ideas and so little time.

Best regards -

Justilthen,

YOU: "Generally speaking fundamentalists are not followers of the 'original' way of a religion"

They intend to be. That is the definition of "fundamentalist". And that is what I was referring to when I used that term.

YOU: "What WAS the original intent. It is an arena of vast difference of opinion to this day"

Of course, that's why it's pointless to try and reinterpret something when you don't even know what the original author said or intended to say. Just write a whole new line. Start fresh.

YOU: "Fundamentalist muslims do not practice a pure form of islam, and neither do evangelicals practice a pure form of christianity"

Indeed, no one even knows or could know what a pure form of these two religions is anyway. Ergo the insanity of attempting to follow either of these two ancient religions, and the divisiveness and tribalism caused by people forming groups around competing interpretations of their ancient texts.

YOU: "I am not sure that anyone has "got it right""

I'm quite sure that when it comes to religion, no one has got it right. My comment about the fundamentalists (small "f")is that they are at least trying to follow the original intention, as opposed to the modernized versions of these religions who knowingly change what they consider to be the original intent, to suit their current thinking and morality.

The Moderate,"

"Another option is that the Universe we can see was created intentionally to have good properties for life"

But this answers nothing, in fact it only raises the question of what universe does the creator exist in? And what created that universe and fine tuned it for life? And what created the creators creator....

One quickly comes to understand that something has to be eternal. The simplest answer seems to me to be that it is the energy/matter of our universe that is eternal, since we have no evidence of ever not existing. We only know that it was very compact at one point. We have no evidence or reason to believe that it came into existence at some point. And given that infinite regression tells us that something had to be eternal, Occam's razor tells me to assume for now that it is the energy/matter in which we live called the universe in it's current form of expansion. Positing a creator just creates more questions doesn't it?

Hello timmy2,

"No I sure don't. But with regards to their religions, they have the correct interpretation and the modernized versions are the impostors. That is what I meant by "they have it right".

My my, timmy, you are beginning to sound like a fundamentalist yourself with that rationalization.
A few things. Generally speaking fundamentalists are not followers of the 'original' way of a religion. Indeed they are usually far off of that, already evolving their own ideals of that religious paradigm. Fundies pursue devotion to God, and Jesus, in a far different way than the Apostles and early christians did. Popes and Doges likewise developed their own "correct interpretations". It is always the case that a thing evolves.

"I don't understand the use of taking ancient texts, and reinterpreting them to mean something fundamentally different from what you know the original intent was."

What WAS the original intent. It is an arena of vast difference of opinion to this day. Complicating it in that the ancient texts that you are talking of almost always are written after the fact and not by the authors that they are ascribed to. So.... Who is the originators of the religion? What is the original intention of the written message? Was the message in it's written form not already degraded from the "origin" of the way? How could it not be?

Fundamentalists in our present day are always "traditionalists", not necessarily 'originists'. Fundamentalist muslims do not practice a pure form of islam, and neither do evangelicals practice a pure form of christianity.

Though they would not readily admit it.

I am not sure that anyone has "got it right", except perhaps that everything evolves to a different adaptation of it, and that would be the point in this third dimension anyway.

The Moderate says:
"Basically, if the universe we see is the only one there is, it looks like the probability of the necessary initial conditions for the material, and the values of the necessary physical constants occurring simultaneously is infinitesimally small. In science when we see that a null hypothesis implies a very low probability for the observations, we dump the hypothesis, not the observations. Conclusion: the present Universe is no accident."

I think you're making the fatal (to your hypothesis) mistake of starting at the end and extrapolating backwards.

It's much the same as calculating the odds of your ever having been born: for you to be here, not only did your parents have to survive childhood, but had to meet, fall in love (or at least lust), and decide to have sex on just the right day, but so did every single generation of every ancestor all the way back to the first living thing. More than 3.5 billion years of just the right pairs at just the right time. If just *one* individual in *one* generation of, say, your fish ancestors, had been eaten as a fry - oops! You're not here.

The problem with this is that you're assuming that the end result - you - was a goal. At the risk of a bruised ego, this just isn't the case. If you hadn't been here, someone (or some *thing* - depending on where the difference ocurred) else would have, and it's all the same to Ma Nature.

I think it's much the same with the Universe. The constants and the initial conditions simply are what they are (or were what they were) - and this is what came of it. If not this, then something else. If something else didn't include the possibility of life, then we just wouldn't be here. No harm, no foul. You can't regret what you don't know.

Persiflage:

"...science may be potentially unlimited, but then, science is us....so it goes where we go..."

Mathematics, according to Gödel is Platonic and has a reality of its own. I do not think that either science or math "is us". It is waits to be discovered by us. We are incidental. I think that the inhabitants of Palain VII also discovered the laws of geometry and the Calculus. :^)

In answer to this week's question: if a faith based institution receives gov grants to provide social services, they should not be able to discriminate in hiring. If you take federal money, you should follow federal law.

However, in my opinion, churches (as opposed to faith based non profit institutions) should not ask for federal money. It is our duty, as Christians, to use our own resources to help the needy, the hungry and the homeless among us. That is the essence of the 2nd great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself.

Our church runs an ESL program, a food pantry, holds health fairs for our ESL participants, holds blood drives, provides money and volunteers to help rebuild one Louisiana community that we adopted after Katrina, provides money and a volunteer doctor once a year to a hospital in Ghana, and many other activities, all funded by our donations and staffed by us as volunteers. Due to the increased needs in our community in this recession, the paid church staff has decided to forego cost of living increases so that more of our donations can go to the benevolent fund and the food pantry. This is Christianity in action, and we are doing it without government money. Our help needs to come on top of the social services that the government provides, such as food stamps etc. because those are never enough to meet the needs of poor families. And our help is not conditional on the religion (or lack thereof) of the needy.

In my opinion, where government and churches or christian NGOs can best collaborate together is in the event of a disaster such as flood, tornado etc. where the government can use the already existing distribution networks to get supplies quickly to those who need them. Organizations like World Vision come to mind as they are oftern the first group at the scene of a disaster and already have the infrastructure in place to distribute supplies.

Arminius:

"Timmy, you wrote,
In regards to the looong sentence of Pamsm..."

As Timmy says, that is my append and not his. We are having a running discussion on the role of faith in the acceptance of cosmological theories. Basically, if the universe we see is the only one there is, it looks like the probability of the necessary initial conditions for the material, and the values of the necessary physical constants occurring simultaneously is infinitesimally small. In science when we see that a null hypothesis implies a very low probability for the observations, we dump the hypothesis, not the observations. Conclusion: the present Universe is no accident.

The multiverse hypothesis is that all possible universes must have occurred also, so the production of an improbable one like ours is inevitable. That may yet be shown, but there is no observational evidence for it. That is to say we can't see all those other universes. You can take multiverse on faith if you want to, but that is how it is.

Another option is that the Universe we can see was created intentionally to have good properties for life.

As to the feminine pronoun for God, creating a home for life seems to me to be a distinctly feminine thing to do. It also underscores that idea that this creative God may not be the Biblical God in any particular details. Could be PaganPlace's Goddess for all I know.

As to adding "God is Love", it is easy to see the creation of an abode for life was an act of love.

Beware, Albert Mohler is a hateful, bigoted evangelical PIG. He has said and written many slanderous things about my denomination. I for one will not be intimidated by evangelical PIGS like Mohler. I am ready to fight in the culture war against the evangelical PIGS.

Persiflage,

Thank you for your persistent kindwiselyness, and for your precis of Wheeler's "exceedingly elaborate, obstruse and arcane idea". Much appeal therein to this peacranial lunger-for-True.

Led me to dwell on the notion that our forwards is an illusion, and that we live actually backwards, the past above and ahead of us. Given this scene, how to mythify WELL is the question that presses me.

Living on the *underside* of the world, sometimes I've managed to perceive the night sky as truly below me, as if I were stuck to its solid ceiling, peering down into the deepest ocean of the past (drugless, scoffers!). Gives one a rather alarmarvellous sense of gravity and vertigo, to be sure! Zesta!

PLOUGHSHARES

As I state below, I worked as a consultant for the first faith-based initiative (Bush). The Bush administration ardently defended the right of religious group who received these federal funds to discriminate regarding whom they wanted to hire -- he created an exemption. This is a very, very important point to understand. Obama stated that he would consider allowing the exemption to continue on a "case by case basis."

SCOTTCHALLENGER wrote:
"The author has things backwards: Citizens, watch out. Religion is seductive, complicated, and dangerous. Sedutive: they will lure you in with promises of rainbows and sunshine while taking your wallet at the same time.."
Typical ignorance rear its ugly head...

The writer IS correct. Churches operate upon faith...IF they are relying upon God as HE told them to do. Never, Scott, would I dream of asking for your money. However, I WOULD pray for you. Not all churches are like the "mega-churches" ("mega-ripoffs," in reality!) or the Robert "Money-sucker" Tiltons of the world. Many churches which call themselves "Christian" ARE still Christian. They know about the word 'giving" and have the faith to let God bring in the support they need. *HE* doesn't need money, but humans, in helping others to know God, do need human elements such as money to spread the word.

Churches which accept government finances LACK the simple FAITH to operate as God intended. If they HAD the faith, they would not let themselves get into such financial shape that they would ask for help!!

Scott, I can't blame you for being disillusioned by churches; too many are into the power and money instead of God! The Mega-fools think they can carry their rebellious nature into Christianity and function as Christians. Without living by Biblical standards, one cannot see God. The BIble is very clear about that. "Faith without works is dead." Jas 2:20) That means that unless one has surrendered to Jesus and been converted, he doesn't have the *kind of relationship with God* that will get him into Heaven. W can't earn our way there, but our works show our faith! We can't verbally "accept" Jesus and go on sinning, expecting to get into Heaven. When He cleaned a woman caught in the act of adultery, Jesus told her, "Go, and sin no more (John 8:11). He also said to US, "If you love me, obey my commandments." (John 15:14) That's simple enough to understand.

The mega-leeches depend upon our human nature of not trusting God any more than we can our fellow men, who are sinners. They tell you, "It doesn't matter how you act; God will still work through you." I've NEVER seen a true miracle worked at the hands of an unconverted person. The "mega-members" don't feel any guilt for the lives they live because they've turned a deaf ear to God and HIs Spirit of Truth.

I'd bet, Scott, that if you actually looked around and tried to find people who were different...who really acted like God told us to...you will find them...although they are few and far between.

Again, I don't feel a church DOES represent God if they opt to ask the government for help. They should get off their lazy backsides and start acting in faith! If they cannot do that, they should drop the name "Christian," for Christ is not the one they live for.

Albert Mohler is right on one point and wrong on another. It is right for him to tell a faith-based organization (FBO) which is unable to separate its religious activities from its charity work to stop taking government grants of the taxpayers’ money for distribution. However, Albert Mohler’s interpretation of what President Bush did is wrong. President Bush’s executive order “Equal Protection of the Laws for Faith-Based and Community Organizations” told FBOs to keep their religious activities separate from their charity work, in compliance with U.S. law. A few years later, the General Accountability Office (GAO) said some of them were not doing that, as the GAO learned from a study. According to U.S. law, religionists can pick and choose employees for their religious activities, but they have to follow general employment laws just like every other U.S. employer when hiring for an FBO, which is clearly forbidden from engaging in such activities. Now the U.S. government has to make sure those laws are obeyed.

No tax payer money for church's!

During the previous administration, I worked for the federal contractor that provided technical support for the faith-based initiative known as the Compassion Capital Fund (CCF). Much was made about the Bush Administration’s innovativeness in providing public dollars to support the work of faith-based organizations. This was inaccurate. Government support through a network of grants and contracts has been provided to religious organizations for non-sectarian social services for the past 50 years.

What was new was allowing federal funds to be used to support religious and quasi-religious activities under the guise of social services. This happened with a wink and a nod through the Capital Compassion Fund and related faith-based initiatives. This cannot be allowed to continue in the Obama Administration.

Additionally, I witnessed first hand, technical assistance training on how CCF grantees could legally discriminate against people they didn’t want to hire based on religious predilections. As an American, I was and continue to be offended that taxpayer dollars would be used to exclude any group of people. This, as well, cannot be allowed to continue.

Yet, beyond these challenges, there is the wider, Constitutional issue of the separation of church and state. The previous administration – certainly not the most respectful of the Constitution in general – somehow believed that the separation clause was up for grabs. It is not.

We are all diminished when government can use its substantial weight to assault the Constitution by funding the peculiarities of religious entities. Let’s hope that President Obama, as a constitutional scholar, will safeguard these vital protections by curtailing the ability of any organizations – faith-based or otherwise – from using taxpayer dollars to discriminate against anyone.

I have written more on this issue on my blog: http://www.501cweb.com

Timmy - science may be potentially unlimited, but then, science is us....so it goes where we go.

One cosmological idea not yet introduced can be found in the work of famed physicist John Wheeler and his idea of 'delayed choice' measurements.

He theorizes that due to the observer effect, we are creating our own destiny in the present by observing the universe as it was in the distant past. This also explains the necessary boundary conditions and physical constants/laws required for our kind of universe.

He firmly maintains that based on the quantum mechanical theorem of the collapse of the probability wave function reprised in Schroedinger's formula - an observation is necessary in order to cause a 'fixed' particle-based reality (observer effect).

Our observation of the ancient universe plays that crucial role - in other words, the present creates the past...and by extension, the future creates the present. Parallel universes play a sigificant role in this paradigm.

Needless to say, this is an exceedingly elaborate, obstruse and arcane idea to anyone but a physicist - however, Wheeler's ideas have been proven out in the laboratory employing photon modeling. A detailed elaboration can be found in 'Parallel Universes' by Fred Alan Wolf, or perhaps in Wheeler's Wikipedia profile.

___________

Onofrio - great to see you back. Your work?
Amazing as always....

The author has things backwards: Citizens, watch out. Religion is seductive, complicated, and dangerous. Sedutive: they will lure you in with promises of rainbows and sunshine while taking your wallet at the same time; Complicated: which religion is right? There are so many, they're all so different, how can each be right (answer - none of them are right). Dangerous: you will undergo subtle brainwashing and never receive a shred og evidence to back up the claims(the GOP brand).

Corruption is a two way street. Not only can government control religion but religion can have way too much influence over government. Government and religion don't mix well. There's a really good reason that we have separation of church and state. All faith-based governmentally funded programs whould be immediately discontinued.

The church is the worst business in the world. They have been receiving government handouts with little to no measurable results. We'd be better off without them.

Government, beware. Church funding is seductive, complicated and dangerous.

Hmmm, someone reported that Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael was no longer commenting on the WAPO blog.

So then who is the Farnaz referenced below????

Re: When government policies violate the organization's convictions, or when regulations would require a compromise of those convictions, government funding is a trap.
--------
Refusing to hire someone because they have different beliefs is discrimination in any other organization except to religious groups. You want to maintain your right to discriminate. So be it and no funds. But that's just hiring a person. How about if the policy was that you had to actually change your convictions? Can you imagine the uproar from you if you had to adopt other convictions?

That was the exact purpose of the Mexico City Policy. And there were many religious groups that were quite pleased with with the notion of impacting an organizations convictions and principles.

You haven't changed a lot from the Pilgrims. They were interested in their religious freedom, not freedom of other people.

I encourage you to stay as far away as possible from my tax dollars. I don't even want to risk that you're going to teach people to discriminate. We already have enough of that to go around.

Once the churches get their hands on this money they will become a tool of government. Let them refuse the funds and do their own good works. Keep the government out of religion and keep religious organizations out of government.

Justilthen,

YOU SAID: "So I do not think that you really believe that fundamentalists have anything "right"

No I sure don't. But with regards to their religions, they have the correct interpretation and the modernized versions are the impostors. That is what I meant by "they have it right".

I don't understand the use of taking ancient texts, and reinterpreting them to mean something fundamentally different from what you know the original intent was.

The Moderate,

"Axioms by nature are statements of faith. However, it takes faith to accept the other alternatives"

It doesn't take faith to not accept any of the answers as true or as axioms, but to simply consider the question open, accepting all possibilities as possible on a scale of probability for each case.

Arminius,

You mistook moderate's post for mine.

Al,

One other thing: Have you considered that your support for discriminatory "faith-based" hiring makes historic community with an ugly period in America's ecclesiastical history? One from which it has yet to fully emerge?

Sad that a Religious organization would deny help to the needy to keep the right to discriminate! What a world we live in!

Hmmm, someone reported that Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael was no longer commenting on the WAPO blog.

So then who is the Farnaz below????

I cannot see the logic of an argument for ongoing discriminatory hiring, which is what yours, Mr. Mohler amounts to. Are you suggesting that churches should be officially exempted from the rules and regulations set down by the Department of Labor?

The problems, however, go deeper than the one you primarily address. The entire business is discriminatory. As long as we fund specific religious institutions, we are more likely to see those who are at least nominally members of those religions get the resources that all American taxpayers are supporting.

This entire business has to end, along with it, tax-exemptions for religious institutions. Funds for social services, social welfare are urgently needed. Right now, as I write, I'm involved with a grant providing social assistance on a nonsectarian basis. There are other such grants operating in the country, which, like ours, are enjoying considerable success. Ideally, these projects will become institutionalized and end this "faith-based" business once and for all.

In my view, the churches in the United States have permitted themselves to become "politicized". This means that religion loses and politics wins because the churches no longer provide a haven for spiritual privacy, a personal connection to one's God, and instead, have become a force for political power. One no longer enters the spiritual sanctuary to become a child of our God, one enters the sanctuary in order to be instructed in who to vote for in the next election.
And, who to give one's money to.

Faith-based initiatives? A better name would be "buying votes" initiatives!!!

Oh yeah, just listen to Reverend Mohler and be poor & stupid ... the ideal 21st Century Christian. You might as well be a 18th Century Mexican Catholic with thinking like his.

Mr. Mohler and the Southern Baptist Convention,

Let's hope you have convinced your faithfuls, because you have clearly outlined why you have no business doling out aid to the general public.

The Moderate asks:
"Do you propose a steady state universe?"

Is that the only sentence you read in my post? I only ask because I think I answered that question pretty clearly.

"For decades, many religious organizations have sought federal funding for social ministry programs. The logic is understandable, and there is no doubt that religious institutions and organizations are often far more effective and efficient in delivering these services."

HUH??? There is no logic for my having to shell out my tax dollars to fund churches in a country founded on a separation of church and state. There is also zero evidence that religious institutions are "often far more effective" in delivering anything other than indoctrination to their victims.

But at least you're seeing the folly in this trash (if not for the right reasons). Why don't we just rip up the Constitution, if we really think it's such an utter worthless piece of garbage? In fact, why not make peace with the Taliban over in Afghanistan, and invite them here to rule over us? If religious involvement in government is such a peachy keen idea - hey, it worked great in Old Salem, once they were able to hang all those pesky witches who were trying to foul things up - so why not in 21st century America? Who needs modernism? We got everything we need to run a modern country right there in that archeological artifact from the Bronze Age. Yep, let's shovel our precious tax dollars back into the Bronze Age. Great idea!

Please Obama, put an end to this first of many embarrassing albatrosses from the Bush era. Don't kiss up to the Taliban. You've gotten elected, just tell em to go back to the caves they crawled out of. We need to move FORWARD, not backward.

Timmy,

You to the Moderate'

"I think we are talking about two different things sometimes. I say religion, and I think you hear "universe creation theory". Because if we are talking about religion, it is the fundamentalists who have it right. The moderates have all changed the original intention of the texts and created new religions based on reinterpretations of insanity."

I cannot say that I have followed all of this but your paragraph above stuck out, for me. You have said a similar thing to me in the past. It makes no sense to me on a number of levels.

First I do not believe that you believe that ANY religion has it "right". You have railed against religions, in general and specific, as being bad, wrong and undesireable, as well being the creations of men and their myths instead of being 'divinely created'. You have given no credibility to the sacred texts of religions as being anything other than human concieved and designed, and the outcomes of religion as destructive.

So I do not think that you really believe that fundamentalists have anything "right". Further, it is clear that evolution of a species or process, (a valid and provable theory in your postings), brings about improvements in that species or process. If that is true then fundamentalists by nature are those that hold onto what they, at least, believe is the original plan or program, and so are counter evolutionary to that species or process.

Fundamentalism therefore is the old, even if what they claim to represent is invalid in your judgement. Perhaps that makes any evolution of that process, (religion), just a further definition from 'truth', (here again assuming that the original form of religion is based in some 'fabrication' and not valid Truth).

But then this process is true for all knowledge, no, in that there is no irrefutable truth and anything that we have come to accept as 'true' is via the successes and failures of past assumptions that are tried in the court of the proven and the false...

Timmy, Moderate, Pam, Persiflage, it has been a pleasure to read your discussion thus far re origins. Deux centimes from a ghola:

What monstering mote broke open this ocean,

with all its oystered potencies? Goose-laid

perhaps, or a fall of lion-headed fire from a faulty womb?

Is it woven, wordlessly, of gas, or self-sung,

thick with refrains and pauses? And can its bare

cataclysm bear to be dressed in math,

or its echo be knit into code? We, the mote’s

beholden mites titanic behold the jelly lenses,

the funnel whorls, the blood pump, and the sinews

lumpenly ours, and stalk the birthing room

with our retrospective spectre, casting it Begetter,

forgetting the mothering howl devouring.

solsticebelle writes:

"It never ceases to amaze me when churches expect praise for not taking money the government shouldn't be giving you in the first place. Nevertheless, you ARE subsidized by the taxpayers whether you participate in this or not.

When was the last time your church paid property taxes, you hypocrite?"
-------------------------------------

Probably the same time that any non-profit did.

By your logic here (which is certainly a valid viewpoint), all non-profits are subsidized by the taxpayers. However, we don't follow any one's opinions to decide whether a non-profit matches their philosophy well enough to allow for it being tax-exempt.

There is always a tension between the "the power to tax is the power to destroy" side of the coin with "tax-exemption is indirect subsidization".

Precisely because government money discredits religion is a good reason to encourage federal government money being funneled into such groups. As Europe has shown, if folks are to come to reject religion, it will be when it is tightly tied to the political structure (the Catholic Church to Franco's regime; the Catholic Church to France's monarchists; the Lutheran Church to Hitler, and so on....). The weakness of American fundamentalist Protestantism is revealed in the fact it seeks federal government assistance in the first place. And when Washington 'calls the tune' the Fundamentalist Protestant movement will be shown for what it is: a political movement designed to enrich certain pastors and to prop up 'traditionalist' political elements....

Timmy, you wrote,
"In regards to the looong sentence of Pamsm: I don't believe that either. My axiomatic religion project, based upon the single universe hypothesis, has just two axioms so far:

1. In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth.
2. She did this to create an abode for life.

Axioms by nature are statements of faith. However, it takes faith to accept the other alternatives, like an infinite number of unobserved and possibly unobservable universes, too."

Now that is damned interesting! And in the main, I agree.

I disagree with a feminine pronoun for God, since I don't ascribe any gender to God. No big deal. But I always found this bumper sticker funny: God is Coming and boy is She Pissed!

Being a Christian, I would add Axiom #3: God is Love. But that's just me, I guess.

Axioms, faith. Yes. Amazing how few people know that all math is founded on axioms, which by definition cannot be proved. Fewer still are aware of what Godel did to math and other fields of inquiry.

Timmy:

In regards to the looong sentence of Pamsm: I don't believe that either. My axiomatic religion project, based upon the single universe hypothesis, has just two axioms so far:

1. In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth.
2. She did this to create an abode for life.

Axioms by nature are statements of faith. However, it takes faith to accept the other alternatives, like an infinite number of unobserved and possibly unobservable universes, too.

oh jezus mother maria this homophobic A-hole mohler wants our tax money so he can discriminate against taxpaying gays/lesbians/women/blacks!! how about making churches pay their fair share? why should we be paying for their police/fire protection, sidewalk lights and repairs and so on?? who needs this bs?? it just shows that religion is a total money making scam a total fraud to get our well earned tax dollars! screw them!

Pamsm:

"Thermodynamics law #1 says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed - it only changes form."

Do you propose a steady state universe?

Timmy,

"No you are claiming that it didn't.
We only know that it existed at the a fraction of a second after the big bang, we know nothing about what happened before that, so one must make the assumption of ex nihilo."

You misunderstand. I am conducting an analysis that admits all possibilities. As part of that I am examining exactly which alternatives have exactly what support in observation.

The Multiverse has support in philosophy of science but, as yet, no support in observation.

Ditto the Many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Theory.

The Big Bang has increasing observational evidence, and the precision of the observations is improving. Whether there was anything "before" the Big Bang is not known.

A broad question is: was there a moment of creation or did something pre-exist the big bang? Or further, was there a moment of creation or did something "always" exist?

Basically all of these are beyond the reach the science of the present era.

In the single universe hypothesis (the only one one that is supported by observation) we need an explanation for the precision of various physical constants, and for the observed progression from lower to higher entropy with time.

There is a broader truth here that Rev. Mohler comes very close to recognizing: the comingling of government and religion is just as bad for religion as it is for government.

If Christians want to see societies where Christian faith and practice declined, they need only look at European monarchies where some form of Christianity was the state religion.

If one wanted to cause grievous harm to Christianity in the United States, the best way would be to give Christian extremists their way, abolish the First Amendment, and allow public schools to be used by Christian activists to promote their ideas (such as creation instead of evolution.

In the short run schools would be ruined and the energy of religious organizations would be consumed in endless fighting over school curriculum. But in the long run, I'm convinced, faith would decline if children were forced to learn the Bible in public school. Since the time of the Roman emperors, Christianity was vital when government has tried to suppress it and decadent when government tried to co-opt it.

TSAPP77:

You state:
"I am sure that Obama will have one requirement for all staff members of the faith based initiatives; they must be Democrats and liberals."

The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives was a Bush creation. The vast majority (over 95%) of organizations that were funded were christian. There were a few jewish groups. If you are going to speculate a particular bias from the new administration (and you have no data), you might have more credibility to understand what happened in the previous administration.

------------

I appreciate the posts that underscored the fact that in the U.S. religious organizations are provided with tax-exempt status which means that they are all subsidized by the Government and taxpayers.

------------

If you find accepting federal funds so odious to your beliefs, please don't take any.

Persiflage,

I don't find much to disagree with in your last post. I am open to all of these kind of scientific speculations. Quantum theory has really opened up some interesting possibilities. As you know, I am on board with your notion that another method of inquiry is meditation and contemplative thought in an effort to find the true essence of the self, or lack there of. I agree that it is not possible to examine consciousness from the outside only.

You said:

"Having said that, I'm not sure the human mind (or imagination) can easily comprehend a boundless, timeless and totally empty void, or the idea of infinity"

It is very difficult to imagine. The concept is not hard to imagine. But the reality is.

You said: "That may be the real limit that science confronts"

I see science as limitless. It is we who are limited. Science is always there waiting for us to catch up.

It never ceases to amaze me when churches expect praise for not taking money the government shouldn't be giving you in the first place. Nevertheless, you ARE subsidized by the taxpayers whether you participate in this or not.

When was the last time your church paid property taxes, you hypocrite?

The Moderate,

YOU: "In claiming that the expansion was a change of state, you are claiming that the material of the present universe existed before the Big Bang"

No you are claiming that it didn't.
We only know that it existed at the a fraction of a second after the big bang, we know nothing about what happened before that, so one must make the assumption of ex nihilo.

I do not claim that it existed before the big bang, I point out that we only know that it existed in a very condensed form a fraction of a second after the big bang and nothing more. We now must speculate on it's state prior to that. We are now in the realm of guessing, not "what we know".

I use Occam's razor for this guess as to what is most likely. Ex nihilo makes no sense to me. A creative agent fine tuning a universe for life does not answer the big question. Because we're right back where we started from now needing to answer where the creator came from? Something had to "just be", and it seems simpler and therefore more likely that that thing that "just is" is the energy/matter that exists in this form now, but is obviously ever changing, and at one time, was condensed into a singularity.

All options are on the table for me. Some just make less sense than others. Non of them make perfect sense. Hence my "I don't know and neither do you" stance.

YOU: "If it was not merely a change of state from then it was creation ex nihilo"

All we know is that it was a change of state.
Creation ex nihilo is a leap of logic and does not solve the ultimate question being asked anyway.

tsapp77 wrote:

I am sure that Obama will have one requirement for all staff members of the faith based initiatives; they must be Democrats and liberals.
----------------------------------------------
That may be true but I doubt it. President Obama has already proven by actions, not words, that he intend to be a bipartisan president.

How bipartisan was George Bush? Because what you are describing what President Obama MIGHT do but hasn't is EXACTLY what George Bush ACTUALLY did. Your post reveals what a hypocrite you are! It is ok for you to do unto others but they better not do it unto you! And you wonder why it is so hard for people to embrace the Southern Baptist's "convictions and values". It is clear in everything the Southern baptist do is driven purely from politics and a desire to control everyone who is not a white man. Christ is simply used as a marketing gimmick. And that is a shame because the world, especially this Nation, is badly in need of Jesus.

Mr. Mohler,
President Obama is right to make sure that organizations that accept tax payer money should abide by the labor and Civil Rights laws. Your statement that President Obama's policy would cause "A Christian church or denomination would, under this policy, be denied the right to deny a position in a sponsored faith-based organization to an atheist." If this is an issue for your organization then DON'T TAKE THE MONEY!!!

I am Christian and I have learned first hand how the Southern Baptist " convictions" operate. If you want to exclude people fine but do it on your own dime. I for one don't understand why your organization is standing in the welfare line anyways. Your organization gets huge tax breaks and tax exemptions. The government isn't breathing down your neck about what you do with the $100s of million dollars your organization take in annually.

The Southern baptist didn't stand up for its members who were against the Iraq war nor did the organization's "convictions" speak up when it was common knowledge that the Bush Administration lied to us about the Iraq war. So don't you dare hold President Obama to a standard you didn't hold your fair-headed boy George W. Bush to!

The Southern Baptist organization has a huge creditability problem. You claim you are driven by Christian values but your actions are completely political in nature. Hard right political views I might add and you are hypocrites even when applying your hard right politics. So go bark up another tree. You had your eight years!! It is someone else turn now!

Thermodynamics law #1 says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed - it only changes form.

Since all matter is energy, I have no problem with energy being ever present. Whether it continually recycles through a Big Bang/Gib Gnab alternation, is steady state, or produces multiple universes, I don't know, don't pretend to know, and don't see any way of knowing.

What makes *no* sense, however, is some anthropomorphic being with a mind and a will, who exists independently of *everything* else, and who sat around twiddling his thumbs for an infinite period of time before he decided to make a universe in which one tiny planet, circling one insignificant star, one of billions in a completely ordinary galaxy, lost in a universe of incomprehensible vastness, he would populate with beings whose every breath he notices, and who continually make him angry.

(Whew! That was a looong sentence!)

Rev Mohler,

You wrote: "For decades, many religious organizations have sought federal funding for social ministry programs. The logic is understandable, and there is no doubt that religious institutions and organizations are often far more effective and efficient in delivering these services"

In your backward country that is true. However, we do a great job here in France. So do the governments of the Netherlands, Belgians, Swiss, Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, Danes, Spanish, and many others.

You live in a third-world society.

Timmy:

"Once again, I have not stipulated any other realm."

You have. In claiming that the expansion was a change of state, you are claiming that the material of the present universe existed before the Big Bang. Whatever that pre-exising state, which transformed into the present one, is in my terminology, another realm. Perhaps another cycle of existence that collapsed in an earlier Big Crunch. Who knows.

If it was not merely a change of state from then it was creation ex nihilo.

'I'm just trying to see the logic of "the creation point" and I don't see it. I promise you I am open to seeing it. But I don't. Tell me what I am missing.'

Timmy - we don't disagree here. My orientation to cosmology is emergence rather than creation ex nihilo. The closest physics currently comes to a matrix of probability for this emergence is the idea of the quantum vacuum, and this is not different from David Bohm's idea of the Implicate order.

This vacuum is not simply 'nothing' but is the sea of infinite potential energy - and taken to Bohm's degree of sophistication, a virtual blueprint for all manifest things. Of course, all of this is pure speculation at present.

The variables causing these material manifestations and how they remain intact as seemingly integrated objects for different periods of time while remaining in an unbroken relationship with all other objects, is another quantum kind of consideration.

It is reasonable to assume that what has occurred once will occur again, although with unique variations - I believe this can be applied to cosmology or most anything other process.

Having said that, I'm not sure the human mind (or imagination) can easily comprehend a boundless, timeless and totally empty void, or the idea of infinity. That may be the real limit that science confronts.

I am sure that Obama will have one requirement for all staff members of the faith based initiatives; they must be Democrats and liberals.

Frankly, I'm glad that you wouldn't advise religious organizations to take the money - I'd prefer that my tax dollars didn't go to them. They're already tax exempt, they have membership, let them raise their own money. If you take taxpayer money, you abide by the rules any other employer would abide by. It's not complicated.

Tis the space amongst the subatomic particles that is removed not the particles themselves.
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7498 along with your password for Astronomy Magazine.

Persiflage,

"by eternal recurrence, are you per chance referring to the philosophy of Nietzsche?"

No, I didn't actually say anything about "eternal recurrence" as a theory, I was just using Occam's razor and logic on an unanswered question.

I think the main difference between myself and many bloggers here both theist and atheist, is that I don't feel the need to choose an answer to the unanswered, so that I can get on with my life or to form a philosophy around. The mystery of it is fine with me. I can operate and form an ever evolving philosophy for life based on our best evidence to date and my own analysis of all of the proposed theories and philosophies. I'm in the "I don't know and neither do you" camp. Because "if you knew, so would I, and I don't" camp.

The big bang, is no more a "creation point" than a broken china plate is a "creation point" of a bunch of tiny pieces of china. There is no logical reason to assume a creation of the mass. We know that a dense mass changed it's configuration dramatically and quickly at some point, why would you assume the thing that changed configuration came into existence itself from nothing just before it suddenly changed configuration?

I'm just trying to see the logic of "the creation point" and I don't see it. I promise you I am open to seeing it. But I don't. Tell me what I am missing.

The Moderate,

"Few here even realize the that Catholic thought has been profoundly beneficial to the progress of Western Civilization in many ways over two thousand years"

Please. Examples????

Timmy - by eternal recurrance, are you per chance referring to the philosophy of Nietzsche? Wiki has a pretty good cover of his ideas and early influences.

Obviously the Eastern religions covered this idea millenia before existentialism ever got ahold of it....and without the nihilism. As a point of fact, I'm supportive of the idea of cosmological recurrance myself.

I don't see a better way to explain the currently unexplainable - although Western science remains unconvinced that we have sufficient matter in the known universe to cause an eventual contraction or 'inbreath'. Time will tell - but it may take awhile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Moderate - I'm not necessarily a multiverse proponent, although multi-dimensional is another matter altogether!

The Mind of God is really not so different conceptually from Brahman of Vedanta or the Primal Awareness of Buddhism, at least in my view.

The Creator as a separate Being is where the very significant difference in these metaphysical constructs reside. We are still talking about a rarified realm or realms that few humans seem to experience directly - unless you count math as the arcane language of one of these archetypal realms.

Even so, we are unable to establish a reality of any kind, that exists apart from human consciousness. Like string theorists, we often believe we know the truth without ever being able to substantiate our beliefs.

While you are certainly correct that untestable theories have no explanatory value, they may lead to more cogent and testable ideas. All in all, this particular universe is so vast and baffling it may require a leap in the evolution of consciousness in order to break through our current scientific barriers.

In any case, all non-material cosmologies admit to a spiritual side of our material reality. And what may be considered spiritual today, will perhaps be incorporated in the science of tomorrow.

The Moderate,

Part two,

YOU: "Yes. I call that place the mind of God. Why? Because the creation that we see is amazingly well tuned to support life"

How can you say that when it is seemingly almost entirely void of life? Who would design such a huge vacuous space for little old us to live in. Seems wasteful.

YOU: "The only other viable hypothesis is a Multiverse in which all possible universes exist"

No there is another simpler option. That is that the energy/matter that makes up the universe has always been. At one point it was in a state of extreme density. Before that, who knows? But to think that it wasn't there at all is supernatural thinking. It had to be. Where did it come from otherwise? A supernatural eternal complex being created it all of a sudden? Makes no sense.

YOU: Doesn't Occam's Razor argues against multiplying causes unnecessarily?

Indeed. I am using Occam's razor. You are making things unnecissarily complex by positing a creator or creation point where there is no evidence for one. I am using the simplest logical deduction. It has always been. Most likely.

YOU: "God (or some other agent of creation you may wish to avoid calling "God") becomes, therefore, the parsimonious supposition"

Not at all. Infinite regression blows that posit out of the water. It is illogical.

The Moderate,

"You have the same problem. Your position seems to be a faith that unobserved (and possibly unobservable) preexisting realm resulted in the Universe we can see"

No that is not my position. My position is that we know that everything that we can see was at one point, very condensed before it abruptly expanded. And that is all we know. We don't know anything about what was happening before that. Assuming that there was nothing before that moment, and that all of the matter/energy that makes up our universe was created at that moment makes no logical sense.

YOU: "Seems to me that you have a problem that is identical to a supposition that a creator was the First Cause. As in where did your previous realm come from?"

I did not posit a previous realm. That is your posit. I do not posit anything beyond what we know, which is only that it was all very condensed at one point in time. It is you who is positing a creation event.

A sudden expansion of a dense mass is not a creation event. It is a transformation of state. If I drop a china plate, it breaks into hundreds of pieces. Those pieces were not created at that moment. They always existed, just on another form.

YOU: "What created that? Note that you cannot see, and there is no physical evidence for, this realm of being you stipulate"

Once again, I have not stipulated any other realm.

YOU: "By contrast, in the Universe we can see, things seem to emanate from a density singularity. Sounds like a moment of creation, at least from any point of view inside this universe"

You keep saying that but It does not sound like a moment of creation to me. It sounds like a density suddenly expanded. That is all. Any other speculation is just that. Speculation. There is no logical deduction that this was a creation point. In fact such a thought is entirely illogical due to the problem of infinite regression.

Persiflage,

By the way, Gödel himself did see his proof as a strong indicator of mathematical Platonism.

Persiflage:

"If you're convinced of the single universe view and also of the existence of an archetypal realm of numbers, then this Pythagorean/Platonic realm must have emerged complete at the moment of the Big Bang."

Perhaps mathematics is a language of God. So "this Pythagorean/Platonic realm" may have been in the mind of the creator, and hence it appears in creation. That is at least as good an assumption as theories that cannot be tested, or ones that have no basis in the observable universe. One could argue that it is simpler because it has only one uncaused cause.

Please note that this theological view has nothing whatever to to do with contemporary religions like Christianity or Buddhism, though the ancient Stoics seemed to get it.

Persiflage:

"Canadian physicist Lee Smollen (and others) believe that a multiverse is implied (required) by these close mathematical tolerances,..."

"Required" by one point of view that has no evidence to support it. Another view is that the Universe was self-created in a very constrained way that had only one answer. Still another is that it was created by some external agency.

String theory is becoming an embarrassment because it is not generating testable predictions and has so many forms that it may not be in the realm of science at all. So it could well be that string theory is actually a piece of twentieth century science that fell by accident into the twenty-first century.

Please bear in mind that all those extra universes have never been observed. So whatever that theory is, it is not hard science. Makes for great science fiction, though.

Why this idea of governmental funding of "faith-based programs," is beyond me. There has always been and will always be faith-based programs which the churches and denominations can preside over.
The government had no need to step into the arena of "faith-based," programs, people of faith administered these programs quite well without the help and interference of governmental regulations.
Any churches mission, was to reach the poor and needy without government interference, so that the person receiving the help was proselytized and helped with the requisite amount of arm-twisting to come to church. Now under the new administration, this will change, there will no longer be the arm-twisting and dragging your children to church, to learn any kind of values system. We are a nation adrift, with no clear direction. The government must regain the trust of the people, and to do this they must start by working and sweating like the average American.
There needs be a revival of hard work and togetherness, and until this happens, America will
drift slowly down the river of despair and dismay.
We are now in the worst financial crisis of American history, yet in this time of great financial despair, there are Americans who, in the halls of power, claim their "rightful" piece of the pie.
Money is pouring into the Congress like water covering the sea. No longer do the people in Congress, public servants all, care one whit about the poor and destitute of our nation. We cannot long stand this dismissal of the needs of the poor, before there is a revolution, of the kind that made this country. We will, see this happen, if the government continues to deny, housing, medical care, and a minimal standard of living to those who cannot provide for themselves.
The surest way to avert this catastrophe, is to allow the churches to continue their mission of loving and helping those less fortunate, without government help and without government restraint.

Moderate - well, of course Goedel's mathematical theory of incomplete systems was quite different from Jung's ideas about archetypal symbols, but the concept of self-existing archetypal realms of any kind (combined with consciousness), is the essence of the mystery.

If you're convinced of the single universe view and also of the existence of an archetypal realm of numbers, then this Pythagorean/Platonic realm must have emerged complete at the moment of the Big Bang. Or is it part of the Implicate Order of infinite potential posited by physicist David Bohm? This is a personal favorite of mine - he admits to being influenced by the Upanishads.

You made mention of the great mathematical odds against the emergence of the necessary physical constants and first conditions required for our particular material universe and it's physical laws.

Canadian physicist Lee Smollen (and others) believe that a multiverse is implied (required) by these close mathematical tolerances, and has attempted to make the case that this infinity of universes emerges from black holes in the same way that our 'original' universe emerged from the singularity of the primal atom some 14 billion years ago. Fred Alan Wolf makes the same case with his ideas on parallel universes.

Like string theory, these ideas don't lend themselves to rigorous experimental testing, so they remain pure speculation in the meantime.

Will science eventually travel beyond the Planck limits to see what's there? Has consciousness always been part of the universal scheme of things? The stuff of both science and religion, in my view.

BTW, do you have an umlaut key? I've wondered if either a language translator or special keys and keyboards are required to obtain certain language/symbol requirements.

If I read CCNL correctly, his post goes back to a previous discussion on the composition of atoms and the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. The idea of the sugar cube is allegedly what we have left of the human population once the space between sub-atomic elements has been removed from each and every extant human atom. Kind of a neutron star taken to the 10th power.

regards -

arosscpa:

"People who continue to critique the Church's doctrine on sexuality while ignorant of the profound reorientation introduced by these works are doing nothing but creating and destroying straw men that reflect little of Catholic thought."

Yes. That is what goes on here to a great extent. Though I am not a Catholic, I am here to tell you that the anti-Catholic bigotry on these boards is pervasive. Well reasoned Catholic bloggers could definitely elevate the level of discourse here. Few here even realize the that Catholic thought has been profoundly beneficial to the progress of Western Civilization in many ways over two thousand years.

I, for one would enjoy a literate and open minded discussion of Catholic thought. Many will throw rocks, though, so good luck and I hope you have a relatively thick hide.

Daniel....

My final two thoughts:

"Your comments certainly are, somehow dervied from Catholicism, but, I do not think there is any real, well thought-out statement of a Catholic program; it is all ad-hoc, make-it-up as you go top down system of belief on command."

If by this you mean it doesn't sound like traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic and natural law formulations of sexual ethics, you are correct. The late John Paul the Great re-founded Catholic sexual ethics in his works "Love and Responsibility" and "Theology of the Body." People who continue to critique the Church's doctrine on sexuality while ignorant of the profound reorientation introduced by these works are doing nothing but creating and destroying straw men that reflect little of Catholic thought.

"I have never before heard of the phrase "genitally expressed sexuality." "

To not know the difference between genitally expressed sexuality and other sexual expressions of primary relationships is sad; it's just profoundly sad. You need to stop wasting time on these discussion boards and get out and enjoy life. Today!

CCNL:

"...the current human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube if all the space amongst our protons, electrons, neutrons and other subatomic particles were removed."

Dude, if all "our protons, electrons, neutrons and other subatomic particles were removed." we would cease to exist. Those are what we are made of.

Your imprecise expression aside, what difference would it make the mass that constitutes the human race could be compressed enough to become a tiny bit of a neutron star?

As in: what is your point?

Timmy:

You: "How are you dealing with the problem of infinite regression?"

You have the same problem. Your position seems to be a faith that unobserved (and possibly unobservable) preexisting realm resulted in the Universe we can see. Seems to me that you have a problem that is identical to a supposition that a creator was the First Cause. As in where did your previous realm come from? What created that? Note that you cannot see, and there is no physical evidence for, this realm of being you stipulate.

By contrast, in the Universe we can see, things seem to emanate from a density singularity. Sounds like a moment of creation, at least from any point of view inside this universe.

You: "Somewhere along the line, something had to have existed eternally. A first principle. If it wasn't our universe, (energy/matter) then it was the place where our universe exists, or the place where that place exists. No?"

Yes. I call that place the mind of God. Why? Because the creation that we see is amazingly well tuned to support life. The only other viable hypothesis is a Multiverse in which all possible universes exist. However, it doesn't simplify matters to multiply the uncaused causes by an infinite number. Doesn't Occam's Razor argues against multiplying causes unnecessarily? Doesn't taking a multiverse on faith seems to fly in the face of that principle to an infinite degree?

God (or some other agent of creation you may wish to avoid calling "God") becomes, therefore, the parsimonious supposition.

First let me just say that Al Mohler once again hit the nail directly on the head.

Second, in response to the 'Catholic' thing: Catholicism is Not Christianity, it is a false religion with false priests who a million times a day make false sacrifices of a false Jesus on a false alter. If anyone is ever saved within Catholicism it is in spite of their doctrine and not because of it.

Third, in response to the creation debate, I would add this: Science has shown that the Universe had a "beginning", a starting point. They tend to call it "a big bang", but there is something else Science has shown us, and that is that "out of nothing, nothing comes" (in fact if there was ever a time when "Nothing" existed, then "nothing" would exist today. ) and that things at rest tend to stay at rest. So, what made "nothing", on a particular tuesday afternoon, explode into everything?

For every effect, there has to be a cause. At the risk of infinite regression, there has to be a "FIRST CAUSE" . For there to be a material, imminent universe to exist, there had to be a transendant, immaterial first cause.

I worship the Transcendent Uncaused Immaterial First cause of the Material Universe.

We celebrate His birth on Dec. 25th

Arosscpa

I have never before heard of the phrase "genitally expressed sexuality." Yet, somehow, I must admit, it sounds ludicrously Catholic. In my opinion, this is no tworthy of a reply. I say keep your graphic visualizaitons to yourself, and don't worry about what people do in private; you are not God, and it is none of your businsess.

I believe that being gay is a collection of traits, of which same-sex attraction is but one. I believe that the outward appearance of the Catholic Church has been heavily influenced by a gay sensibility for centuries, if not since the beginning. This includes homo-erotic art, and the decorative features of church interiors, rituals, and clerical attire.

Even the current Pope is an old gay man. How do I know? because I have eyes, and I can see.

So, isn't it just a bit disingenuous for such an institution to promote its very harsh anti-gay agenda? What credibiliby does the Catholic Church have on this matter?

NONE. ZERO. NADA.

To me, a non-Catholic, looking in, it is a disconnected confusion, tied up in knots so confused that no one can ever untangle them; it is a cacophonous drone of conflicting claims and motivations.

Your comments certainly are, somehow dervied from Catholicism, but, I do not think there is any real, well thought-out statement of a Catholic program; it is all ad-hoc, make-it-up as you go top down system of belief on command.

But, I am not Catholic and the Catholic commands to believe leave me cold. Your arguments are not credible. As I said, the problem is not in gay people; the problem is in confused Catholic theology, which I believe you have confused even worse than "normal."

In some respect, the dense blob prior to the Big Bang exists in us today. As per Bob Berman in the December issue of Astronomy Magazine, the current human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube if all the space amongst our protons, electrons, neutrons and other subatomic particles were removed. This sugar cube would weigh approximately 550 million tons. That is a very dense sugar cube!!!!!

The Moderate,

How are you dealing with the problem of infinite regression?
Somewhere along the line, something had to have existed eternally. A first principle. If it wasn't our universe, (energy/matter) then it was the place where our universe exists, or the place where that place exists. No?

The moderate,

YOU: "All present observations (science anyone?) suggest that the Universe emerged from a very dense beginning at the point of the Big Bang"

Yes, a very dense something. Not necessarily a "beginning" but a point at which everything was extremely condensed before it abruptly expanded.

The big bang emerged from a very dense something, not from nothing. Something was already there. It was just very dense before it abruptly expanded into all this.

Timmy,

"It was more likely in some other state prior to the big bang rather than non existent."

What state would that be? Or course, it emerged from a hyper-dimensional wormhole... from... Where? Is there a there, there? With no ability to observe that, would you be operating of faith?

Timmy,

All present observations (science anyone?) suggest that the Universe emerged from a very dense beginning at the point of the Big Bang. Any evidence to the contrary? Or are you invoking your inviolate faith in "science" to suggest some other unconfirmed (faith anyone?) initial condition? If so, what would that mean? And what was that?

Timmy,

"Where did the big bang occur? And when was that place created?

Here. About 12 billion years ago.

"See the problem?"

Nope. What is "the Problem"?

The Moderate,

"After Big Bang, a.k.a. the moment of creation"

There is no evidence that the big bang was a creation event. Meaning that the mater/energy that makes up the universe was not necessarily "created" at the big bang. It was more likely in some other state prior to the big bang rather than non existent. So what exactly do you think was "created" during the big bang? The current form of the universe was started by that event, but I don't know of any scientist who thinks that prior to the big bang, there was simply nothingness.

YOU: "Did "God" do it? That is a different matter. But denying that there was a creation event seems more and more antiquated.

Nonsense. Denying that there was a big bang would be silly.
But there is no evidence or good reason to believe that the big bang was a creation event.

YOU: "A lot of early twentieth century scientists believed that the Universe was eternal and in a "steady state" in contravention of Genesis because the Bible thumpers just *had* to be wrong. Too bad for them. She blinded them with Science, I guess"

Where did the big bang occur? And when was that place created?
See the problem?

Persiflage,

"Surely this is not different from Jung's realm of the 'collective unconscious' which exists independently of individual consciousness,..."

Eh... Gödel's proof is a *bit* different from Jung's observation of the cross cultural regularity of symbol systems. Not to say Jung is wrong, but he never got the remarkable precision of, say, Newton's Inverse Square law did.

As and applied mathematician, I am convinced of the "reality" of Platonic archetypes more with each passing decade of study; though I must say that others who are very competent may disagree.

Timmy,

"YOU: The observable Universe itself is pretty good evidence for a moment of creation.

I disagree."

Timmy, last time I checked, Penzias and Wilson got a Nobel for discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation. Since then the CMBR has been imaged, and by the best science suggests that it shows the surface of the Universe at the moment it became transparent perhaps as shortly as 300k years ABB (After Big Bang, a.k.a. the moment of creation.) Denying that is getting to be a bit like denying evolution. Other theories are possible but the preponderance of evidence is for the Big Bang, just as it is for evolution.

Did "God" do it? That is a different matter. But denying that there was a creation event seems more and more antiquated. A lot of early twentieth century scientists believed that the Universe was eternal and in a "steady state" in contravention of Genesis because the Bible thumpers just *had* to be wrong. Too bad for them. She blinded them with Science, I guess.

hyjanks writes:

Iamweaver writes:
"The same place that any NGO applies. As long as you have a functional social services arm that goes hand-in-hand with local community social needs, you are all set."

Really? You mean I've been spending all these years thinking that Ra was so ancient and irrelevant that no one in the Federal Government would possibly look at my application for funds to advance the aura of this Egyptian god?
And all I have to do is fill out a form?
You hear that, folks? All you have to do is go down the the Federal Building in your city and fill out a simple application to get the cash flowing!
Jeez! I wonder if George Bush--you know, the president who saw his Iraq adventure as a Crusade and admitted that he was the right hand man of Jesus--knows about this give-away? I hear he's desperately looking for funds for his Presidential Library. Maybe this would be his trump card.

------------------------------------------

There are no Federal funds available for direct evangelizing. Funds are available for social services programs that meet Federal and local needs, nothing more, nothing less. Things have changed only in that religious NGOs are now potential recipients under the current law.

The point of every editorial (including this one) is not on the receiving side, as you continue to assume, but on the organizational side - and therein lies the rub.

Iamweaver writes:
"The same place that any NGO applies. As long as you have a functional social services arm that goes hand-in-hand with local community social needs, you are all set."
Really? You mean I've been spending all these years thinking that Ra was so ancient and irrelevant that no one in the Federal Government would possibly look at my application for funds to advance the aura of this Egyptian god?
And all I have to do is fill out a form?
You hear that, folks? All you have to do is go down the the Federal Building in your city and fill out a simple application to get the cash flowing!
Jeez! I wonder if George Bush--you know, the president who saw his Iraq adventure as a Crusade and admitted that he was the right hand man of Jesus--knows about this give-away? I hear he's desperately looking for funds for his Presidential Library. Maybe this would be his trump card.

"For decades, many religious organizations have sought federal funding for social ministry programs."

This is the core of the problem. Donors to religious organizations receive tax deductions, and the religious properties receive tax preferences, based on the theory that much of the money is actually being used for social ministry such as housing, feeding and clothing the poor. How many of the religions actually spend even 10% of their revenue on these socially beneficial activities, as opposed to building cathedrals and paying sometimes very generous salaries to their leaders? Would Christ, were he to live today, enrich himself to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars as the leaders of some of today's evangelical movements do, and use the power of the state to force his beliefs on others and indoctrinate their children (e.g., through prayer in school requirements and Creationist or Intelligent Design mythologies)?

Our current crop of "Princes of the Church" seem more worshipful of Mammon and Caesar (money and power) than of the humility and tolerance of Christ.

To the Moderate and Timmy - I enjoyed the back and forth regarding mathematics, Kurt Godel, and the possible independent existence of Platonic archetypes vis a vis mathematics, as one example - and any number of mathematicians seem to believe this to be the case (who are curiously otherwise quite atheistic and with a materialist approach to reality).

Surely this is not different from Jung's realm of the 'collective unconscious' which exists independently of individual consciousness, and in it's own right - a transpersonal and symbol-based reality that each individual has access to, and also a timeless realm that seems to contain a wide variety of divine/sacred archetypes, depending on your religious persuasion.

It's peculiar to imagine (a key concept here) that there is a pre-existing and timeless realm that potentially contains all things, forms, ideas, and concepts before they are ever experienced in the time-bound 'fleshly' realm.

If this is actually true, it changes the fundamental nature of reality altogether - Jung certainly believed this to be the case....and many others concur.

For example, the realm of dreams opens doorways that still remain mysterious in their nature, origins, and purpose. Materialistic explanations travel further and further into the realm of non-materiality in order to explain dream phenomena (and other unconscious manifestations) via physiological modalities that ultimately fade into the uncertain realm of quantum realities.

Imagining that we're very 'close' to the answers makes the next million years of human evolution pretty boring to contemplate, if you ask me.
__________________

An addendum - Arosscpa sez - 'Let me be clear: I do not think same-sex attraction is something to be denied or healed. Same-sex friendship can lead to growth and fulfillment for both individuals. But friendship, like all kind of loving relationships, has its root in self donation that can only happen in the context of human freedom. There can be a sexual aspect to these friendships, which is expressed at a physical, emotional, and intellectual level. But the genital expression of committed love is reserved for relationships that point to a reciprocity, permanence, freedom, and complementarity only found in a man-woman covenant.'

In your opinion only, Arosscpa. The fundamental nature of human relationships changes, like anything else - homosexual relationships have been completely and culturally legitimate in our historical past and are becoming so once again - and at a very rapid pace.

We may be experiencing an evolutionary cusp as regards sexuality....hard to contemplate for many that are persuaded by conventional religious doctrines that view only heterosexualtiy as 'natural', but with a high probability of truth, nevertheless. Truth is invariably relative......

To the Moderate and Timmy - I enjoyed the back and forth regarding mathematics, Kurt Godel, and the possible independent existence of Platonic archetypes vis a vis mathematics, as one example - and any number of mathematicians seem to believe this to be the case (who are curiously otherwise quite atheistic and with a materialist approach to reality).

Surely this is not different from Jung's realm of the 'collective unconscious' which exists independently of individual consciousness, and in it's own right - a transpersonal and symbol-based reality that each individual has access to, and also a timeless realm that seems to contain a wide variety of divine/sacred archetypes, depending on your religious persuasion.

It's peculiar to imagine (a key concept here) that there is a pre-existing and timeless realm that potentially contains all things, forms, ideas, and concepts before they are ever experienced in the time-bound 'fleshly' realm.

If this is actually true, it changes the fundamental nature of reality altogether - Jung certainly believed this to be the case....and many others concur.

For example, the realm of dreams opens doorways that still remain mysterious in their nature, origins, and purpose. Materialistic explanations travel further and further into the realm of non-materiality in order to explain dream phenomena (and other unconscious manifestations) via physiological modalities that ultimately fade into the uncertain realm of quantum realities.

Imagining that we're very 'close' to the answers makes the next million years of human evolution pretty boring to contemplate, if you ask me.
__________________

An addendum - Arosscpa sez - 'Let me be clear: I do not think same-sex attraction is something to be denied or healed. Same-sex friendship can lead to growth and fulfillment for both individuals. But friendship, like all kind of loving relationships, has its root in self donation that can only happen in the context of human freedom. There can be a sexual aspect to these friendships, which is expressed at a physical, emotional, and intellectual level. But the genital expression of committed love is reserved for relationships that point to a reciprocity, permanence, freedom, and complementarity only found in a man-woman covenant.'

In your opinion only, Arosscpa. The fundamental nature of human relationships changes, like anything else - homosexual relationships have been completely and culturally legitimate in our historical past and are becoming so once again - and at a very rapid pace.

We may be experiencing an evolutionary cusp as regards sexuality....hard to contemplate for many that are persuaded by conventional religious doctrines that view only heterosexualtiy as 'natural', but with a high probability of truth, nevertheless. Truth is invariably relative......

hyjanks writes:

"Hey! As a follower of the Egyptian Sun God, Ra, I want some of this government largesse! If Christians can get a check, if Muslims can slop at the trough of Uncle Sam handouts, damn it, I want some too to spread the good tidings of my god!

I want money to bolster and spread the fruits of my imagination, damn it! Where do I apply?"
----------------------------------------------

The same place that any NGO applies. As long as you have a functional social services arm that goes hand-in-hand with local community social needs, you are all set.

Daniel....

You wrote "Being gay is more than same sex attraction, and same sex attraction is more than the mere logistics of sexual posiitons.

This, you apparently do not understand. Being gay is a sexual orientation, which is a profound and integral part of personality, and extends into the personal nature of perception, experience, and belief. You cannot excise the quality of being gay without butchering and ripping to shreds the human heart and the soul. "

While I do believe that you think this is true, it isn't. The 60's sexual revolution told straight people that the key to identity is overt sexual awareness and genital expression. Hence we have the hyper-sexualiztion of culture at present.When the gay movement grew out of the sexual liberation ideology,it inherited the view that sexual orientation is one principal determinant of personal identity.

Historically, the predominant understanding of sexuality in Western civilization is that sexuality serves the human person and humanity when it fosters loving, permanent small communities (families) for the bearing, education, and training of the next generation. It also provides the natural soil where love and intimacy can assist men and women in achieving their highest good. (Love being defined as a care and concern for the other expressed in acts of self-sacrifice and self-giving.)

I suggest that giving any sexuality the dominance in determining personal identity abrogates, not increases, human freedom. Both the biochemistry and psychological effects of repeated genital activity condition the human person to "need" to repeat the act. Genitally expressed sexuality degenerates in compulsive, addictive episodic behaviors that are no longer tied to values and virtues that serve true human freedom and dignity. Erotic love which seeks pleasure by the mutual exploitation of the other cannot replace the emotional and intellectual "being totally for the other" that makes one truly human and happy.

Let me be clear: I do not think same-sex attraction is something to be denied or healed. Same-sex friendship can lead to growth and fulfillment for both individuals. But friendship, like all kind of loving relationships, has its root in self donation that can only happen in the context of human freedom. There can be a sexual aspect to these friendships, which is expressed at a physical, emotional, and intellectual level. But the genital expression of committed love is reserved for relationships that point to a reciprocity, permanence, freedom, and complementarity only found in a man-woman covenant.

Hey! As a follower of the Egyptian Sun God, Ra, I want some of this government largesse! If Christians can get a check, if Muslims can slop at the trough of Uncle Sam handouts, damn it, I want some too to spread the good tidings of my god!
As a matter of fact, I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be on the take, also. And how about those enamored with the Mayan gods Chac, Ah Xoc, Yumil Kaxob, Yum Cimil Ixtab, and Kukulcan? They deserve at least a couple of million dollars to spread their word (even though their followers sacrificed virgins in their honor).
Odin, Thor, Loki, Frey, Sif and Hel, the Viking gods shouldn't be left out, either. Especially Freya, their goddess of sex. I'd like to see a few million shillings thrown in their collection plates.
And let us not forget the ancient Chinese gods Feng-Du, Yen-Lo-Wang, Guan-Yin and Ao-Chin. Even though one would have to travel to the headwaters of the Yellow River to some god-forsaken mud hut to find just one primitive who still worships any of these forgotten gods, still, they are worth a few dollars converted into Yuan and sent forthwith to said worshipper.
It would be the American way not to forget anyone of us who needs government assistance to spread the word of our immortal gods. Then again, as H.L. Mencken would maintain, gods aren't immortal at all, but figments of our imaginations.
I've got an imagination! I want money to bolster and spread the fruits of my imagination, damn it!
Where do I apply?

The Moderate,

"The issue is not actually faith, but *what* you will take on faith and why"

Tru dat.

I SAID: "Religious faith is entirely void of evidence. In fact, religious faith is in the face of overwhelming evidence against."

YOU ASKED: "Evidence against" such as?

Give me a religious faith and I will give you evidence against it.

YOU: The observable Universe itself is pretty good evidence for a moment of creation.

I disagree.

YOU: Really, this whole discussion is uninteresting if you take religion to be the province of the fundamentalists of any stripe from ancient to modern.

I think we are talking about two different things sometimes. I say religion, and I think you hear "universe creation theory". Because if we are talking about religion, it is the fundamentalists who have it right. The moderates have all changed the original intention of the texts and created new religions based on reinterpretations of insanity.

YOU: But I do take the Universe as evidence. After all, what else is there?

It is evidence.
It is evidence that the universe exists.

I guess what confuses me the most about the writer's point of view is that he claims to represent an ideal, "Christianity", that requires it followers to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"..... and "as you treat the least of these so too do you treat me".. yet he seems to be saying that "Christian" American organizations should be allowed to discriminate. In my view his position is neither Christ like nor in keeping with the ideals of the founding of the nation.

It would be laughable if it weren't so sad.

I guess the Southern Baptist Seminary teaches the Christianity of exclusion.......what an irony. But this too is not new in the world.

I absolutely agree -- religious groups should never take government money.

Religious leaders should pay for their cadilacs in the time honored way -- by grifting money from the poor and stupid.

"I am affirming that within homosexual communities we see higher rates of sexual abusers, particularly, abuse of children and adolescents."

AROSSCPA,

Do you have some sort of credible research data to back this up?

No, of course you don't. (Unless all those Catholic priests are really weighting the data.)

It's an utterly absurd claim.

Arosscpa

Being gay is more than same sex attraction, and same sex attraction is more than the mere logistics of sexual posiitons.

This, you apparently do not understand. Being gay is a sexual orientation, which is a profound and integral part of personality, and extends into the personal nature of perception, experience, and belief. You cannot excise the quality of being gay without butchering and ripping to shreds the human heart and the soul.

Your problem is not same sex attraction; your problem is not that you are intrinsically disordered. Your problem is that you have been damaged externally by the Catholic Church, by its false teachings and doctrines with regards to sex, in general, and homosexuality, in general.

Arosscpa :

I thought that you just said that being gay is a sin. I am not mixed up; are you? I think that being Catholic has damaged you more than being gay, and that perhaps it would help you to cast off the Catholic Church, and not your true inner self.

In fact, the current Pope has said that gay people are "intrinsically disordered." Those words were chosen carefully, by a committee of lawyers, to cause maximum damage to gay people, with a mimimum homophobic fall-out on the Catholic Church, with words that are seeminly so benign and unhateful. But is this really a moderation of tradiitonal Catholic homophobia?

To be intrinsically disordered is worse than to be sinful; it is to be made and created in a broken state, as compared to being normal, and that the state of brokenness is instrinsic and irretrievable. It is not mental illness that can be treated, and it is not sin from which one can repent. It is in fact a way to label a whole group of people as God's mistakes, who are therefore throw-away.

Is that how it was intended? I do not know, but this how I take it.

Now that was some circular reasoning. What would George Mueller do?

Timmy,

"I have read most of Dawkins' books. This is not how I would characterize him."

I have only read his posts here as a panel member, and that is how I characterize those posts. Still I must say you know more if you read his posts and books.

And the rest?

The Moderate,

"And, if you mean rigid people like Dick Dawkins who hold doctrines about science that have a fundamentalist religious quality and a general tendency to identify "heretics" as misguided, stupid, and evil, then I agree"

I have read most of Dawkins' books. This is not how I would characterize him.

Timmy,

Sorry about the multiple posts in reverse order below.

"But there are no good reasons to believe in most religious myths and yet they are taken by the faithful to be everlasting and unchangingly true."

Ah, now we might make some progress. The issue is not actually faith, but *what* you will take on faith and why.

"YOU: (on "Is science a religion?") Unshakable faith in Scientific Method is.

I have no doubt that my faith in the scientific method could be shaken some day, I just can't imagine by what? I guess just God talking to me. That would be the only thing I could think of."

Immaterial, *what* would shake it. Just that you would find it hard to imagine what in the world would. But what about Gödel's proof that mathematical systems entail some true things cannot be proven?

"It's not the same as religious faith. It is with good evidence. Religious faith is entirely void of evidence. In fact, religious faith is in the face of overwhelming evidence against."

"Evidence against" such as? The observable Universe itself is pretty good evidence for a moment of creation. The internal (Universal) evidence is that the act of creation (by what agency?) was extraordinarily, unbelievably, precise.

Another interesting read is Mario Livio's recent book "Is God a mathematician?" Good discussion of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in that one. Worth the read. He is less theological than I am, but he does run up against the issues I consider profound for this discussion.

Really, this whole discussion is uninteresting if you take religion to be the province of the fundamentalists of any stripe from ancient to modern. I don't. But I do take the Universe as evidence. After all, what else is there?

Timmy,

Continued...

But if you mean real foundations of mathematical discourse, we should talk.

"I don't think mathematicians take math on faith, but rather as current theory."

You are mixing physicists and scientists in that one. I refer you to Albert Einstein's excellent essay called "Geometry and Experience" (1921), which begins: "One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its propositions are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of all other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts."

Kurt Gödel, perhaps the most significant thinker on mathematical foundations since Euclid, was in fact a mathematical Platonist who believed that mathematical constructs exist apart from human discoverers. So interesting were his ideas that Einstein delayed his retirement so that he could walk to and from work with Gödel at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to discuss these matters with him.

Einstein goes on to say: "...an enigma presents itself, which in all ages has agitated inquiring minds. How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?" And that one is at the core of a set of philosophical discussions and theological speculations for me.

"To say that math is a religion is a semantics game."

Well, most everything I do is a semantics game. Et tu Brute? :^))

"There are good reasons to believe math axioms, and even still they are only regarded as current theory."

Eh... not so much. Some axiom systems represent structures of the universe waiting to be discovered. Others are simply recreational, but the mathematical systems do not change. Changing axioms creates new mathematical systems.

Timmy:

"Well that's not exactly the definition of religion. I think you know what we mean by "religion". And I think you know that math is not one."

Of course. And my friend, you always should look for the humorous side in what I write. If there is any doubt, laugh first, and wonder what the theory is later.

So if by "religion" you mean the various fundamentalist institutions like, say The Pius XI Society, Chabad-Lubavitch, The Episcopal Church, or the Church of Scientology, of course I agree. And, if you mean rigid people like Dick Dawkins who hold doctrines about science that have a fundamentalist religious quality and a general tendency to identify "heretics" as misguided, stupid, and evil, then I agree.

Danielinthelionsden:

You are absolutely correct: Being gay (i.e., the sexual attraction to members of the same sex) is not a sin. I'm not sure what the other religious bodies you listed teach, but the Catholic Church clearly teaches that same-sex attraction in itself does not constitute moral fault.

What the Catholic Church teaches more emphatically is that the end of life, the root of all human happiness, the only source of peace within any human network, lies in each person's transforming union with God; as fully as possible in this life, more perfected in the next. From this teaching, there cascades a list of ideas and actions that to a greater or lesser degree keep an individual from reaching union with God. I have no interest in which item(s) on the list keeps a person from his/her ultimate happiness; my concern is that the person is helped to overcome the obstacles that block the attainment of union.

Why should I care? Because the perfection of the human community depends upon each person reaching his/her own highest good. The Christian faith is evangelical precisely because the kingdom of Christ is fulfilled only to the degree each individual becomes his/her real self in Christ.

Arosscpa :

Being gay is not a sin. That is a false teaching and a false doctrine. It is a teaching that is against all the the other teachings of Jesus Christ. Hatred of gay people is personal bigotry, and religious justification for it is taking the name of the Lord in vain. Such false teachings undermine the credibility of the Catholic Church and is indeed one of the reasons for its rapid decline. On this issue, secular society is well-advanced over the Catholic Church and other Christian sects.

That God would regard being gay as a sin is ludicrous. It is a symptom of thoughtless subservience to antiquated scriptures and theologies. We are distinguished from the lower animals by a capacity of creative thought; we have brains; we should use them. The ludicrous dictates of Catholic theology and in fact any other Christian theology and in fact any religious theology should not trump our capacity for creative thought.

Being gay, is in fact, no big deal. People are born innocently gay. And therefore, if being gay is a sin, it is a sinless sin; it is a sin that is not a sin. Innoncense and guiltlessness is not sinful. Other than that, what is wrong with being gay? What is wrong with gay people? Why is it so terrible to be gay? Why are gay people so bad?

There is nothing wrong with being gay; nothing whatsoever. It is not a lifestyle choice, but rahter just the way that some people are.

If the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Baptist Church, and other churches and religions cannot get over this weird freakish neurosis about sexual orientation, then they deserve to be left behind in the progress of civilizaion.

This attitude is exactly why government funding for faith based groupsot is destined to crash and burn. Gay people are nthe ones with a mental disturbance; gay haters are; there is no "cure" for being gay, but there may be a cure for being bigotted.

and there are more pedophiles who are religious than who are atheists.

WJFreeman and KJohnson3:

I have experienced deep seated same-sex attraction for more than five decades. Most of my close friends might be similarly characterized. In my earlier days I embraced much proposed by a gay liberation agenda. At a point I recognized that either I spent a lot of time convincing myself that I had achieved the highest in human happiness, or helping triage others along the same line.

I am not suggesting no good comes from genitally expressive same-sex relationships. I am saying that a person cannot reach his/her highest possible good while being in a gentially-expressed relationship, either heterosexual or homosexual, outside a traditional, permanent m-w marriage. I believe that a life not seeking its highest good, is not a life well lived.

I did not equate homosexuality and pedophilia. I am affirming that within homosexual communities we see higher rates of sexual abusers, particularly, abuse of children and adolescents. This often is related to abusers that compulsively act out abuse cycles which they suffered as children.

ARISSCPA WROTE: "One sin on a very long list of sins is homosexuality. Homosexuality, whatever good one may attribute to it, always leaves the individual less that what he/she could have been. Where children are involved, at a minimum the homosexuality of the parent(s) burdens the child an incomplete and defective understanding of being a human person."

....... this is such a lie! What kind of voodoo religion would prompt someone to write something this glaringly untrue? And to try to pass it off as something that is true, is gross.

I agree with Mr. Mohler but not for the same reasons. I don't believe that you truly convert people with food, shelter and social services. When people are hungry and needy they can be easily manipulated and therefore do not become true converts to whatever religious group they are receiving aid from. And, faith organizations, as Mr. Mohler states, should be supported by the people of that faith, not the government.

Freeman, that was a quote from a prev poster, with my comment listed below. There is no such thing as an "evangelical atheist", that's just a phrase created by the fundamentalists to marginalize through association the philosophy of atheism.

ELIFE1975: What is an "evangelical atheists?"

You said: Proselytizing, by the way, is not an activity exclusive to believers. This site is a haven for all sorts of evangelical atheists who take great pleasure in insulting and offending believers in general and Catholic Christians in particular.
----------------------
Trying to get people to understand that 2+2 plainly and logically equals 4 isn't proselytizing, it's the vocalized frustrations of a large group of citizens arguing for reason from those brainwashed by ignorance and dogma.

Well said, wjfreeman1.

I have always found it particularly disgusting the way homophobes equate homosexuality and pedophilia. Perhaps this originates with the Catholics, whose priests have access to young boys whom they can manipulate but have no access to another adult human with whom to be intimate. Or perhaps it is the prospect of all those young boys which draws them to the priesthood in the first place.

But to apply that inclination to all homosexual adults is outrageous. Pedophilia is a perversion whether it occurs in the heterosexual or the homosexual sphere, and it occurs no more often in one than in the other.

Of course, you cannot ever hope to convince religious dinosaurs like AROSSCPA that their favorite sin to persecute others for committing isn't a sin at all.

AROSSCPA: I must respond to your incredibly ill informed and bigoted post. I wonder if your knuckles drag on the ground when you walk! Clearly you know nothing of gay or lesbian people or the science of sexual orientation. Further, you employ the decades-old vicious stereotype that gay men are closeted pedophiles. Pedophilia is a sexual disorder; homosexuality, like heterosexual is a constitutionally fixed orientation. It is your ignorant reasoning that is used by the Catholic Church to continued its sinful and shameful treatment of gay and lesbian people.

In relationship to federal faith-based funding, your arguments are a perfect example of why religious institutions cannot be allowed to discriminate against anyone if they are to receive federal funds. This is America, you are fully entitled to hate, discriminate, and exclude anyone -- just do it on your own dime. I’m not paying for it and I will take you and your ilk to court to make sure we don’t.

Shame on you!

AROSSCPA: I must respond to your incredibly ill informed and bigoted post. I wonder if your knuckles drag on the ground when you walk! Clearly you know nothing of gay or lesbian people or the science of sexual orientation. Further, you employ the decades-old vicious stereotype that gay men are closeted pedophiles. Pedophilia is a sexual disorder; homosexuality, like heterosexual is a constitutionally fixed orientation. It is your ignorant reasoning that is used by the Catholic Church to continued its sinful and shameful treatment of gay and lesbian people.

In relationship to federal faith-based funding, your arguments are a perfect example of why religious institutions cannot be allowed to discriminate against anyone if they are to receive federal funds. This is America, you are fully entitled to hate, discriminate, and exclude anyone -- just do it on your own dime. I’m not paying for it and I will take you and your ilk to court to make we don’t.

Shame on you!

arosscpa said: "As one who has known the Cardinal for many years, my mind boggles at trying to use his name and the word "hate" in the same sentence, at least in relation to individuals. What the Cardinal hates is sin; sin always ends in unhappiness, truncation, and minimization of the person who commits the sin, and those affected by it.

One sin on a very long list of sins is homosexuality. Homosexuality, whatever good one may attribute to it, always leaves the individual less that what he/she could have been. Where children are involved, at a minimum the homosexuality of the parent(s) burdens the child an incomplete and defective understanding of being a human person."

I'm a bit confused. In my mind, these two paragraphs directly contradict each other. How is it that he does NOT hate homosexuals when he believes they are less than human?

And I also find it funny that people are quick to pick and choose which "sins" are to be adhered to. Leviticus states that I can own slaves (but they cannot be from my own country) Lev 25:44, selling my daughter into slavery is ok Ex 21:7, men are not allowed contact with woman who are on their period Lev 15:19-24, people who work on Sunday should be put to death Ex 35:2, eating shellfish is an abomination Lev 11:10, getting your hair cut Lev 19:27...

Mr. Mohler is right. If religious groups take Federal money, then they will be "trapped" into abandoning their bigoted policies. Obviously, they want to please their magical, invisible friend, and behaving like bigots is one of their most effective ways of achieving this end.
So, believers, reject that Federal money, and protect your precious right to practice religious bigotry! It's what Jesus wants you to do!

Hillman:
No. It's because Catholic Charities is blinded by their hatred of gay people, to the point that they'd rather let a child go unadopted than place it with a qualified gay couple.

First, it was not the board of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Boston that decided to close their adoption agency; the decision came from Sean Cardinal O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston.

As one who has known the Cardinal for many years, my mind boggles at trying to use his name and the word "hate" in the same sentence, at least in relation to individuals. What the Cardinal hates is sin; sin always ends in unhappiness, truncation, and minimization of the person who commits the sin, and those affected by it.

One sin on a very long list of sins is homosexuality. Homosexuality, whatever good one may attribute to it, always leaves the individual less that what he/she could have been. Where children are involved, at a minimum the homosexuality of the parent(s) burdens the child an incomplete and defective understanding of being a human person.

One also must consider that Cardinal O'Malley, Rome's principal pastoral agent in those US dioceses hit most by priestly pedophiliac abuse, would necessarily know first hand of the increased chances of the physical and sexual abuse of children by persons burdened with homosexual tendencies compared with a more general population.

Cardinal O'Malley's refusal to comply with Mass. state regulations mandating that adoption agencies consider homosexual persons or couples as qualified adoptive parents was not based on hating any person or group. His concern is solely the good of souls, both those of the parent and the child as is his legal and religious duty.

This is telling: a dilemma for "faith-based" groups on whether to take money from the government or continue employment discrimination. Since you can't teach an old dog new tricks, my guess is that these groups will take the money and keep discriminating. And their fantasy god will handle any legal repercussions. Get rid of this anti-governmental office! England rid itself of crazy religionists 400 years ago. Can't we just do the same today?

Krankyman

"By their fruits we shall know them. By is fruits one sees that Obama is a unitarian who has no convictions based in a fantasy world that has never, in the almost 2000 years that it's been around, been able to provide proof of its validity, been able to keep a good score card of positive effects it's had on the world, or been able to undo the horrendous wrongs it's caused that continue to this day including but not limited to: racial discrimination, the insubordinate status of women, and the interference with medical progress."

I fixed your quote for you =)

Taking government money is a terrible idea.

Governments don't give money out of love or charity. They give money from a desire to control.

Christian groups that take this money after the Obama edict will lose their soul.

They'll lose their freedom of religion.
They'll lose their freedom of speech.
They'll lose their freedom of association.

All freedoms guaranteed by the constitution which Liberal Socialists will take away.

All of these freedoms sold for mere money.

I am very disappointed by Obama. The man claims to be a Christian but his very first acts was to sign an order to fund abortion and now this order to take away freedom of religion.

By their fruits we shall know them. By is fruits one sees that Obama is a unitarian who has no convictions based in Truth.

Timmy, No I do not believe that religious organizations that receive public funding to provide social service should be allowed to use those funds to proselytize, but convicted Christians would understand helping to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, care for sick, and comfort the prisoner to be an important way to witness to the Good News. It is to act in the imitation of Christ.

Freeman, I also am not surprised to hear that this type of program was subject to abuse under the Bush administration.

Hillman, who really hates whom? I certainly don't wish damnation on anyone, but I do believe that marriage is a sacramental institution instituted by God and confirmed in the life and teachings of Jesus.

Finally, secular institutions like political parties and business corporations are much more serious threats to liberty in the contemporary United States than are religions congregations

Thanks to all for an interesting and challenging exchange.

During the previous administration, I worked for the federal contractor that provided technical support for the faith-based initiative known as the Compassion Capital Fund (CCF). Much was made about the Bush Administration’s innovativeness in providing public dollars to support the work of faith-based organizations. This was inaccurate. Government support through a network of grants and contracts has been provided to religious organizations for non-sectarian social services for the past 50 years.

What was new was allowing federal funds to be used to support religious and quasi-religious activities under the guise of social services. This happened with a wink and a nod through the Capital Compassion Fund and related faith-based initiatives. This cannot be allowed to continue in the Obama Administration.

Additionally, I witnessed first hand, technical assistance training on how CCF grantees could legally discriminate against people they didn’t want to hire based on religious predilections. As an American, I was and continue to be offended that taxpayer dollars would be used to exclude any group of people. This, as well, cannot be allowed to continue.

Yet, beyond these challenges, there is the wider, Constitutional issue of the separation of church and state. The previous administration – certainly not the most respectful of the Constitution in general – somehow believed that the separation clause was up for grabs. It is not.

We are all diminished when government can use its substantial weight to assault the Constitution by funding the peculiarities of religious entities. Let’s hope that President Obama, as a constitutional scholar, will safeguard these vital protections by curtailing the ability of any organizations – faith-based or otherwise – from using taxpayer dollars to discriminate against anyone.

CornishPJ

YOU SAID: "Biblical religion is an integral strand of our civil conversation"

Here you mistake "omnipresent" with "integral".
You made a case for "omnipresent", but I've never seen a good case for "integral".

YOU SAID: "It threatens religious liberty by imposing standards on people with religious convictions who cannot be represented in governmental deliberation because they are precluded from expressing their interests in the language of religious faith"

There is a difference between individuals and "The Church".

It is not about restricting the voice of individuals. Secularism is about restricting the voice of a very large and powerful institution (the church) whose doctrine is fantasy based, not evidentiary based. With a secular distribution institution, individuals are free to express their spirituality as they interact with those they are helping, as you say, when the subject comes up.

Secular distribution does not mean, distribution by atheists.
It just means distribution by no one particular religious or atheist institution. Good hearted people of all faiths and non-faiths can partake in the volunteer army of distribution, organized by a non sectarian body.

"The United States has been shaped and molded for the better by all sorts of faithbased political movements, from abolitionists and early women's rights advocates to the modern civil rights movement."

No, Cornish, I don't accept this. I would agree that these were "faith-involved" movements, but they were not solely peopled by -- or exclusively spearheaded by -- religious organizations. And there have been many "faith-based" positions that didn't improve people's lives but, rather, victimized them and increased their suffering.

For instance, look at Hillman's example of faith-based adoption agencies that deny needy, orphaned children a home with two loving parents on the theory that institutional care is better than any placement in a gay household. And keep in mind that the Christian church thought slavery in this country was just fine and dandy...until they didn't.

So, no, I don't buy into the notion that our country is founded on Christian principles; rather, it is founded on principles of decency, morality, and ethical behavior. These values may exist in an idealized form in the scripture of many religions, but they are rarely lived as they were intended.

Actually, I think that cjellis66 has got it right:

"Jesus quite frequently served the people and didn't start teaching or preaching until people asked him to. If you live your faith outwardly for everyone to see, then you won't necessarily need to proselytize. It will take care of itself."

If only Mohler and his ilk could understand this -- live your convictions by example -- they would do more good than they'll ever accomplish by telling people what to believe.

CornishPJ,

I read your reply and I must say that my argument holds water even in your scenario.

Is it your contention that religious organizations should be aloud to proselytize whilst helping the government distribute aid to the needy?

KJohnson3

First of all, I think that we actually agree that government funding (at least at the federal level) for faith based social services is a bad idea. Just for different reasons. I believe that it will take responsive locally organized service providers and turn them into faceless governmental bureaucracies.

Secondly, can you give me documented evidence of any faithbased social service program that requires clients to accept or even listen to sectarian preaching? The point of Mohler's argument has little to do with who is or is not going to receive services from faithbased providers. It has to do with what services will be provided BY whom.

Finally, freedom from religion is what is guaranteed by the Constitution of France, not the Constitution of the United States. The United States has been shaped and molded for the better by all sorts of faithbased political movements, from abolitionists and early women's rights advocates to the modern civil rights movement. Biblical religion is an integral strand of our civil conversation.

The approach advocated by the ACLU, People for the American Way, and Citizens for the Separation of Church and State privileges secular modes of expression and action in public fora and deliberation. It threatens religious liberty by imposing standards on people with religious convictions who cannot be represented in governmental deliberation because they are precluded from expressing their interests in the language of religious faith.

"That is exactly why the Catholic Charities no longer operates adoption services is Massachusetts."

No. It's because Catholic Charities is blinded by their hatred of gay people, to the point that they'd rather let a child go unadopted than place it with a qualified gay couple.

Just like a lot of people used to let a child go unadopted rather than place it with an interracial couple. Or nonChristian couple.

St Francis of Assisi got it right when he said "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." It's called 'Lifestyle Evangelism'. If you think about it, actions do speak louder than words. I think that should take care of a lof the differences.

If you 'show' the love of God to others through tangible acts of careing, then they will be drawn to God. While a faith based organization may not be able to 'proselytize' in the course of providing social services, if you live your life in a way that shows your faith (not religion, but faith... there is a difference), there will be some who will ask you about it. If someone else initiates the conversation by asking questions and all you do is answer as honestly as you can, it is not considered 'proselytizing' - but yet the person will hear about your faith.

People make it too complicated by thinking they have to present someone with some kind of sermon or lesson right off the bat. Jesus quite frequently served the people and didn't start teaching or preaching until people asked him to. If you live your faith outwardly for everyone to see, then you won't necessarily need to proselytize. It will take care of itself.

As far as hiring athiests, I'm not sure why an athiest would want to work for a faith-based organization unless they want to 'proselytize' their unbelief in God, which would be illegal for them as well. The restrictions would have to be the same for them too. And who knows, maybe if someone who is not of the same faith as that of the organization, may come to believe in God and develop their own faith by working with people of faith who live their faith outwardly. Evangelizing doesn't necessarily have to be only to those who the services are provided, but can also be to employees. If the person is a good worker who honestly cares for people and wants to help, I don't know why they shouldn't be hired. Refusing to hire them, would in effect be putting God in a box and trying to limit Him, which never works out.

Yes, I am an evangelical Christian, but think some have tunnel vision when it comes issues like this. Come on people, think outside the box. God does.

"The doctrine that people are entitled to freedom FROM religion undermines religious liberty and freedom of conscience in that it requires government officials to act based on an assumption against the believer's right to freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association and personal liberty."

Cornishpj,

That is absurd. Religious liberty means that you cannot be persecuted for your beliefs, not that you can browbeat other people with them.

You have religious liberty in that you can go to the worship service of your choice (or not do so) and believe in the god you choose to (or not believe in any god) without fearing that you will be arrested and imprisoned or made to recant your beliefs, and also in the secure knowledge that you are legally protected from those who would try to stop you.

But that's as far as it goes. Your right to practice your religion is restricted by my right not to be interfered with in practicing (or not practicing) my own set of beliefs...or my right to go to the supermarket without being evangelically harrassed on the way.

That's what you fundamentalist types can never seem to understand. You can't make people listen to you, even by claiming that your rights are being infringed if they don't.

And, as it applies in the present debate, you can't withhold government-funded food and blankets from a hungry, cold, homeless guy until he agrees to accept Jesus...or even until he agrees to listen to you bleating at him about Jesus.

Your religious liberty isn't being infringed here any more than my right to free speech is being infringed because I'm prohibited by law from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. The yardstick in these cases is, "Are people being hurt, or potentially being hurt, by your actions?" In both cases, the answer would be yes.

Timmy2

Your argument would hold water if we lived in a kind of libertarian utopia (I would say Dystopia)in which individuals could live happy healthy lives without interaction with the government or society at large. I am very glad to live in a community and realize that community standards will influence what I do or do not have to listen to, and more importantly what can or cannot be taught to children in government schools. We are all required to hear each other, otherwise we will live in something aking to Hobbes' state of nature. We are not separate, we are united by strands of common humanity and interest.

CornishPJ,

YOU SAID: "Proselytizing, by the way, is not an activity exclusive to believers. This site is a haven for all sorts of evangelical atheists who take great pleasure in insulting and offending believers in general and Catholic Christians in particular"

None of us atheists are receiving government funding to be here.

YOU: "The difference from my perspective is that I realize that the Constitution and justice itself preclude me from seeking to silence those whose opinions offend me"

Not at all. You can easily silence those here who offend you. Stop reading their words. Go to another web site. Turn off your computer. Etc. Boom, We are silenced. (to your ears)

What the constitution does is protect you from having to listen to our atheist message while receiving much need financial aid from your government. You should should not have to listen to an atheist message while you are in such a desperate and helpless position and can not just turn the message off. But here, you can easily silence us. We are not providing you with life saving aid, so you can turn off our message. Get it?

I think that Al Mohler has done a reasonably good job of tackling this issue. As a Southern Baptist, I have been increasingly alarmed at the political stands that my denomination has taken over the past 30 or so years. To be true to the faith, I somehow feel that churches should refrain from accepting Federal financial assistance. Partnering with the Federal government to distribute aid during a time of crisis and so forth makes sense. However, when money exchanges hands, there should be limits otherwise the lines that separate church and state become too blurred.

A point of clarification, when I argue that Christian service is preaching the Good News I mean to emphasize the teaching of St. Francis of Assisi, who urged his followers to preach always, and when necessary use words. I know of no Catholic or Christian Social Service provider that requires people to submit to sectarian doctrine (of course I have always lived in the Great Lakes region) in order to receive care or benefits.

The doctrine that people are entitled to freedom FROM religion undermines religious liberty and freedom of conscience in that it requires government officials to act based on an assumption against the believer's right to freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association and personal liberty. It is, in short, the antithesis of the doctrine of religious liberty intended by founders like John Adams, George Washington and even that nutcase Jefferson himself.

Proselytizing, by the way, is not an activity exclusive to believers. This site is a haven for all sorts of evangelical atheists who take great pleasure in insulting and offending believers in general and Catholic Christians in particular. The difference from my perspective is that I realize that the Constitution and justice itself preclude me from seeking to silence those whose opinions offend me.

Mr. Mohler is from the school of evangelism that says, in essence, that one is only deserving of aid if one accepts the teachings of the aid-giver. In other words, feeding the poor and healing the sick is not enough. Those who receive that support have an obligation to hear the word of the god whose followers are providing that service.

Even though there may be Jews who can heal the sick and atheists who can feed the poor, they cannot be permitted to do this through a religious organization because they can't also beat the beneficiaries over the head with the employers' version of religion.

As a Jewish man who has worked extensively in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia and interacted with numerous faith-based groups, I can tell you that not all religious organizations hold this view.

For example, Catholic groups, in my experience, don't subscribe to this approach. They provide food, they clothe the poor, they run schools and health clinics. Services are provided without any mention of religion.

Perhaps the Catholics believe that people will be attracted to their religion when they see the good deeds of their followers.

Mr. Mohler's view is intolerant and discriminatory. As a previous post said so eloquently, these are not acceptable positions when it comes to how my tax dollars are spent.

I would go even further and state that it is unacceptable to me that any institution that benefits from our government, through government support or tax breaks or exemptions, should not be permitted to discriminate on the basis of religion, sexual identity or orientation, gender, race, or ethnicity.

If Mr. Mohler wants to be free to discriminate, his organization must pay taxes.

"...it is now freedom FROM religion."

Well, that's been the point all along. Our Constitution grants people the right to practice religion AND the right to be free from it. That's the meaning of the first words of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

As to "free exercise," clearly the words don't mean that anything goes as long as it's part of your religion tradition. You can't say, "Well, our religious book specifies an annual blood sacrifice of 16 virgins" and expect to be granted the legal right to "exercise" this expression of belief.

Similarly, claiming that evangelism is part of your belief system doesn't permit you to evangelize where government restrictions say you can't. That's because your right to freedom of religious expression ends where my freedom from being harrassed by you begins.

reetings

Well, it makes sense to you I am sure, but Ithink Jesus would have a different take on this - Jesus helped people tp help people - becasue it was and is the kind loving thing to do.Thankfully for you - he going to judge you more kindly than you judge others. But then you are not suppose to judge. Judge not lest ye be judged.

As far as hiring folks - hire the best - who want to help - isn't the object here helping people - or is it helping only those who toe your line. If its only ones who toe your line - you need to get out of the helping people business becasue you are being a hypocrite. I suspect Jesus sees this and you will be ashamed when you have your life review and see how petty and small you are - and how great and generous you could have been.

I know where you are coming from - but maybe you need to step out of the box - and see how others see it. Must admit - when I needed help - a Jewish Organzition stepped right up - and my religion was never in question. Granted I wasn't into drugs or booze - just had a house fire and took in a homeless child and was a single parent already - but they never ask - they just helped financially, and with a sliding scale payment program for medical care.

Goddess Bless - Trisha Cummings

Mr. Mohler is, of course, entirely correct. Christian social service IS preaching the Good News. Contemporary Supreme Court jurisprudence at the national and state levels has construed the Constitution in a way that threatens the personal integrity of Christians who engage in government sponsored social service programs. That is exactly why the Catholic Charities no longer operates adoption services is Massachusetts. We no longer have freedom of religion, it is now freedom FROM religion.

Mr. Mohler,
I take offense at your use of the words "danger" and "trap". It suggests that the government is luring in churches with false promises. On the contrary, the terms of the deal are quite clear. Government funding comes from tax dollars. Taxes paid by all Americans, whether they share your faith or not. I don't begrudge your church its tax-exempt status, but I do not want my tax dollars to fund your marketing campaign (i.e., evangelizing). Any organization that accepts government funding must agree to use that funding to advance our society's commonly accepted goals of helping the sick and needy, providing education (and no, that does not mean your particular religion's dogma), etc. You are free to pursue your religion's own particular activities on your own dime.

Of course, arguing with an evangelical about not proselytizing is asking him to remove the blinders to his own narrow view of the world and the way reality trumps ideology. The so called "mission trips" and public services are their attempts to feel better about themselves and spread the word, ignoring the real injustice. Would they ever advocate birth control (and I'm not talking abortion) so that when people inevitably "sin", or make poor choices, they are at least being protected against disease. Their June and Ward Cleaver view of the world has no place in a modern society, it is now, as it was then a smoke screen to hide inconvenient truths.

"When President Obama commented on ths question, he made reference to the fact that religious organizations must avoid any effort "to proselytize to the people you help" through these funded programs. Take a good look at those words. That is a price too high for any Christian organization."

Too high a price? Silence in exchange for the ability to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and comfort the dying is too high a price?

Yeah, I'm sure Jesus would have agreed that, if you can't try to convert people, then there's no reason to help them and try to relieve their suffering.

What kind of message is this, coming as it does from a Christian pastor? It's nothing more than a call for sanctioned intolerance.

The concept of an Office of Faith-Based Organizations is not meant to be a big ol' payday for churches wanting money to spread their gospels. Churches already get our tax dollars to do that (i.e., tax-exempt status).

The whole point is that, since churches often have mechanisms for helping the needy already in place, they can efficiently use government funding to get the help out far, wide, and quickly. Churches that expect to be able to take this money and evangelize while using it are fooling themselves.

"If the government is going to fund faith-based programs, it must respect the right of such organizations to be faithful to their own convictions. To do otherwise is to secularize these programs in the name of faith-based partnerships."

No, you've got it backward. If faith-based programs want money to help the needy and underserved, then they have to accept the possibility of working elbow-to-elbow with people whose convictions they don't like. That's what real helping is all about. That's tolerance. That's loving your neighbor and not judging him.

Jesus would have gotten it.

Mr. Mohler,

With respect, can I call your own version of Christianity into question here? You are essentially saying that if some government funding would allow you to help thousands of needy people that might otherwise might not get the help they need, you would refuse to help those people if you weren't allowed to proselytize at the same time. That is not a Christian attitude, in my book; at least not the Christianity I was brought in (Roman Catholic). In fact, it's a very selfish, uncaring attitude that seems to put your own particular version of Christian dogma first ---- and human beings, second.

Secondly, even though I'm guessing you're an American citizen, one cannot discern any respect for our Constitution anywhere in your article. And when it comes to disbursing the people's money, it is the Constitution that rules - not any of the 6000 different religions represented in the United States.

We are, after all, One Nation -- Under the Constitution.

Dave Huntsman