Deadline Is A Reality, Not Just A Metaphor

I know it is a little late to post on this thread; everyone is probably gone. But RB-freedom-for-all, you are the only one who seems to have understood, in a real way, what I mean. As a Christian, I am offered the hope of Heaven. But I am afraid of Heaven, because it will not be like the earth, which I love, even though I must suffer here. With no cares, worries, aches, or pains, not even jealously, hate, nor even live, no concept of the dearness and preciousness of life, what will it be like? Will it be boring? If it could be like earth, but only, maybe with not so many ups and downs, that might be better.

Also, I commented extensively about how we do not really choose our own beliefs and thoughts, and Gerry replied that I do not believe in free-will. But I did not say anything about free-will. What I meant is that our beliefs are formed, in a way not of our choosing, but which, is mysterious to me. We do not choose, but things do happen, not necessarily by pre-destination. I had already stated that the world exists and operates according to patterns that seem paradoxical to us; that is why I can sense that we do not choose our beliefs, yet, at the same time, we do have free choice.

Daniel:

You said: "the nature of contrasting experience, makes suffering for all people, a necessry part of existence, necessary, not as a required rule, but necessary in order to exist at all."

I can relate to your musings on the nature of suffering. One of the thoughts I consider from time to time is the idea that, when we (our spirits) become one with God and experience bliss for eternity, eternity is such a long time! Maybe HEAVEN is being granted a corporeal, mortal life and experiencing the joy, love, pain, suffering, passions, and pleasures that accompany an existence on the physical plane of life, short-lived as it is! After all that eternal bliss, life as a cure for boredom would seem like HEAVEN!

Seems like American nuns, and nuns in some other places, are gradually becoming "None". Sorry, but I could not resist that pun. :(

There are remarkably few young women joining the various orders of nuns, most likely because they can have much more lucrative careers elsewhere while still leading lives that are at least approximately "normal". They do not have to sacrifice either their sexuality or their families to do so.

And the result is that the US nun population has become remarkably old -- as of recently, US nuns' average age is around 70. Catholic schools, which once had plenty of nuns to employ as teachers, now employ lay Catholics -- and also non-Catholics. I have a female relative who is a non-Catholic, but who recently taught in a Catholic school for a year. She worried that she might not get the job, but she discovered that she was far from alone in being a non-Catholic there.

Sorry, the post @ 12:28 was mine.

Hi Susan,

I always get a kick out of statements such as your statement below, not because I doubt that your grandmother was a really kind person, just because your worldview has a hard time explaining the why and "ought" of ethics,

"I often dream of her when I am wrestling with a particularly troublesome ethical dilemma, because she was the kindest person I ever knew. I don't have to ask, "What would Jesus do?" I ask what my gran would do."

The question is how do you arrive at an ethical judgment, such as "kindness" without an absolute, objective, ultimate standard or measure?

Please forgive me for the tough question, but why is your grandmother the standard we should or "ought" to be looking to in modeling kindness? In a world of relative ethics, why should my definition of kindness be the same as your definition, and if it is not then how do we determine which is correct? Just because you or I say so?

Thank goodness words do have definite meaning and God has spoken so that we can have a true understanding of what kindness is, for His Word is true and He does not contradict Himself.

I find the Huxley quote interesting,

"One thing people shall not call me with justice and that is--a liar."

Why, does he set the standard of what truth is? Is what he says without error? (John 8:44; Romans 1:18, 25)

Hi A-gnostic,

Your quote goes,

"“In quantum physics objects are not seen as definite things, as we are used to seeing them. Newton taught us that objects are definite things, they can be seen all the time, moving in definite trajectories. Quantum physics doesn't depict objects that way at all. In quantum physics, objects are seen as possibilities, possibility waves."

I'm hoping your quantum theory takes into consideration the physicalness of the speeding bus as a definite thing as you cross the street, not just a wave of possibility!

You said,

"The material world of quantum physics is just possibility. It is consciousness, through the conversion of possibility into actuality, that creates what we see manifest. In other words, consciousness creates the manifest world.”

In that case I see the bus and you don't. If you are creating your own reality I can fully understand why you do not see the bus and will shortly be wearing it. I think I'll stick to Newton's definite object for now thanks!

A-Gnostic: I have a permanently open mind, I just have an aversion to folks who don't label their musings as such (not you, Goswami). Serious quantum physicists don't pretend that they know the implications of the observations and paradoxes they are attempting to explain for the physical universe, let alone the metaphysical one.

Joet:

If consciousness is the ground of being, then the material world only exists due to the existence of consciousness (also called "spirit" in many religions)

The following are excerpts of an interview with Dr. Amit Goswami, a theoretical physicist who wrote the book, “The Self Aware Universe”.

“How it started happening first was that quantum objects—objects in quantum physics—began to be looked upon as waves of possibility. They are not waves in space and time. They cannot be called waves in space and time at all—they have properties which do not jibe with those of ordinary waves. So they began to be recognized as waves in potential, waves of possibility, and the potential was recognized as transcendent, beyond matter somehow.”

“In quantum physics objects are not seen as definite things, as we are used to seeing them. Newton taught us that objects are definite things, they can be seen all the time, moving in definite trajectories. Quantum physics doesn't depict objects that way at all. In quantum physics, objects are seen as possibilities, possibility waves. So then the question arises, what converts possibility into actuality? Because, when we see, we only see actual events. That's starting with us. When you see a chair, you see an actual chair, you don't see a possible chair.”

“Now this is called the "quantum measurement paradox." It is a paradox because who are we to do this conversion? Because after all, in the materialist paradigm we don't have any causal efficacy. We are nothing but the brain, which is made up of atoms and elementary particles. So how can a brain which is made up of atoms and elementary particles convert a possibility wave that it itself is? It itself is made up of the possibility waves of atoms and elementary particles, so it cannot convert its own possibility wave into actuality. This is called a paradox. Now in the new view, consciousness is the ground of being. So who converts possibility into actuality? Consciousness does, because consciousness does not obey quantum physics. Consciousness is not made of material. Consciousness is transcendent. The material world of quantum physics is just possibility. It is consciousness, through the conversion of possibility into actuality, that creates what we see manifest. In other words, consciousness creates the manifest world.”

Please do not close your mind to the interconnectedness of ideas and theories that are being integrated into the new paradigm of consciousness study.

there's enough nonsense out there without any suggestion that quantum physics has anything to say on this or any other religious or biological subject.

Belief in the afterlife is nothing more than egoistic wishful thinking.

Our fragile egos cannot fathom the thought of non-existence, so we drop all sense of reason and evidence to grasp the rope of hope that religion throws into this pool of despair. Unfortunately the rope is not attached to anything of substance, and you drown anyway.

Hi Jihadist,

Thanks for including me in your list. I respect the views of those other two individuals. I have been visiting the atheist forums of Sam Harris, Susan Jacoby and the gang. I am just licking my latest wounds, waiting for another interesting topic to arrive. Actually Sam Harris' latest post is riddled with contradictions that I plan to sit down to and feast on.

I always enjoy and take the time to read your posts when I come across them. I think we could have an interesting discussion on Islam and Christianity. There are many contradictions between the two faiths on essential doctrines, although on the non-essentials we do share a lot in common, including a high view of the Sovereign God. But, although we trace our God back to the Old Testament, to Abraham and beyond, do you think we worship the same God, for in order to worship God you need to have an accurate understanding of who He is. The Lord Jesus put it very succinctly when He said,

"...true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24)

I would love to hear your views on these subjects if you are willing. Again, thank you for your thoughtful insights. My hope and prayer is that the Sovereign and Almighty Lord will be gracious and merciful to you!

The essence of most “religious” teachings is that consciousness is the ground of being instead of material. Of course, with the Popper-esque paradigm dominating most of the current scientific thought, materialistic science views consciousness as merely an epiphenomenon of the material brain and no more. Clearly, this perspective limits the interpretation of phenomena such as near death experiences, out of body experiences, telepathy, etc. With the recent findings in quantum mechanics, however, this purely material paradigm is becoming outdated and lacking in explanatory theories. Consciousness appears to be much more than merely the epiphenomena that materialist scientist claim. To determine if there is an afterlife one must extrapolate and theorise from different findings and theories not merely rely on one type of method of inquiry, I.e. material science.

I think that many enlightened mystics of human history have attempted to teach other people the methods necessary to be enlightened but their teachings have been co-opted by the “followers” who are self interested, egocentric and greedy people. The result of these organizers of religions is a “belief” system instead of a pure “practice” as you see in Zen. Simply “believe in this dogma and you will be rewarded” is the resulting misconception of many religion’s teachings. Jesus Christ seemed to be teaching his followers that they should be one with God and give up their entity of self in each moment. (See Matthew 6:28, Luke 17:21, John 15:13 and John17:21-23) This view seems to be similar to Buddhist thought (except the concept of God which could be interpreted as a personification of ultimate reality). Of course the followers of Christ misinterpreted his teachings in order to fulfill prophecy and to create a self-interested entity of “church”.

Can we integrate the modern theoretical physics and the essence of the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Great Buddha, etc.? If the recent interpretations of quantum mechanics are correct, then the integration has begun!

Malasia,an islamofascist country in 2007.

-People are *obligated* to put their money at so-called *islamic bank*
-Malay women(malay people 60 percent of Malasia) are *obligated* to put on *chain*/headscarf on their heads and NOT to wear *tight trousers* and *t-shirt*.
-*Fast Police*(islamic SS units) are observing people whether they keep *fasting* or not.
-Sisters(harem) and Brothers(salam) are *obligated* to sit *separated places*.Let me remind *harem-salam* is *islamic stone age mentality obligation*.
-PAS(islamofascist/taliban party of Malasia) clearly declares that if they take control *Sharia*(islamofascist stone age rules) wil be obligated to apply(some region of Malasia is already under sharia law).
-Some places under Patronas Tower re-designed as *bedouin center* and reject *modernity*
-World-wide famous singer Beyonce has been refused to come Malasia.

Darn it, The Jihadist is back and apparently has invested all that oil/terror money already this month and has time for more of her Islamic wishy-wash failing for the upteenth time to address the flaws in the foundations and founders of Islam. If said flaws were presented to the brainwashed citizens of the Islamic terror theocracy of Iran, the citizens would all be secularists in a minute.

Reading the commentary of Ayaan Hirsi Ali would be a great way to educate all Iranians. Hmmm, I wonder why her writings and book are banned in Islamic countries????

Hopefully, Ayaan Hirsi Ali receives the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 for exposing the evil and dangers of Islam to the free world.

As always, we offer The Jihadist and her liberal Islamics a simple five step program designed to free them from 1400 years of lies and fear of Islamic death squads.

Good thing I look in. A more interesting discussion now.

Fascinating that none of the unbelievers or believers took me aside to point out that it is wrong to steal, especially from one's father. A bit slack on ethics, morals and values there. Religion is not just about belief in God, but those inconvenient things (for some) briefly and insufficently listed in the Ten Commandments.

Actually, at 15, I took that Kerouc book from my father's library, read it, and put it in my bookshelf after finishing. He came to my room, took it and put it back in his library.

But good to know everyone either don't watch pornography or to shy to admit it. Two titles were deliberately stated wrongly. The real titles are, "Behind the Green Door", and Shaving Ryan's Privates. Yes well, easy to be vulgar.

Should we worry that ethics, values and morals are less important in our personal lives and be subsumed by what we do and achieve in the public arena? After all, Clinton and Kennedy are quite randy fellows but they are good presidents in the estimation of some or many.

Meg:

Yes, brevity is the art of wit, but not striving for it here:) Just overcompensating for the loss of Pablo, Canyon Shearer, Peter Huff. They seem to have been driven out of On Faith. I do miss their posts for insights in certain beliefs. I also miss Mary Cunningham and Speed 123 the valiant Catholics against some enthusiastic atheists and anti-theists against their faith and belief.

Ahmed:

Thanks for a more honest response there. Perhaps I should consider with other religionists the possibility of giving out medals to self-congratulating and being congratulated non-believers that they don't believe any more, that they are free at last, and should be lauded for it. But for just that is a bit too much if they ar not doing anything really substantive in life and work. Like being doctors without borders, or activists for human rights or the environment.

Yes, I have read the books by Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins before On Faith was started by WaPo and this reader started coming in to know what others think and feel about their faiths and beliefs. On atheism, am still impressed by Bertrand Russell among all atheistic writers. Weill and Wittgenstein are tremendous too whatever their personal religious or non-religious beliefs.

As being free from belief is freedom for you and from your own personal doubts and fears, all the very best then. Especially for those who felt free in mind to be the best they can be after acknowledging their non-beliefs or disbelief to themselves and others. And does this individual freedom of mind also means freeing oneself from community and collective responsibilities because others subscribe to a "cult" or adhere to "groupthink" of, (dare I say the words that made some non-believers gagged?) organised religion and God?

Ignoring state suppression by laws and other measures to coerce citizens, I will posit here the obvious - freedom is also state of mind that no one can take away unless one lets them. And obviously, one can think one is free from religion or belief, and yet one is never fully free from the state, one's temporal commitments and one's personal take on ethics, morals and values against others, even against one's fellows religionists or atheists. If one really think one is truly free in society and states, this is also a form of delusion and denial that should be look into as well.

The state, from America to China in varying degrees, is more likely to repress one's personal freedom and religious beliefs, or both and have the temporal tools to enforce them - laws, regulations etc. Unless it is a theocratic state by law or Constitution, with the double edged sword of secular and religious laws imposed on and suffocating its citizens' personal and collective freedoms.

So, what can you ever do about this believer who have faith, who believe and have no freedom at all to think, if at all believers can and do think?

Non-believers set their own standards as being smarter and better than believers. Believers have nothing to proove actually, but for the existence of God using a microscope. The bars set by non-believers is really low for believers to rise up to if we deign to rise up to such rational and logical standards.

Daniel:

Thanks for your posts. Suffering is more the focus of Hinduism and Buddhism (sangsara). Enlightenment is sough towards personal freedom from suffering and ultimately, salvation from the cycles of life.

I take it you mean life is not just an attempt to free oneself from suffering that is beyond one's control but is also self-inflicted. Perhaps that defends on one's temperament and personal will. Both Hinduism and Buddhism focus on individual suffering and englightenment/salvation from it. As you know, there are measures instituted, including medidatation/yoga for personal discipline to aid in focussing body and mind for clarity of thought and purpose.

Russell Holloway:

Groupthink is obviously everywhere. Groupthink of monotheist believers - there is a God. Groupthink of non-believers - there is no God. The most difficult to get out, as one can possibly be accused and charged with treason at worst, and the relatively milder allegations of unpatriotism is the "groupthink" forged and rammed down our throats by states - singing the National Anthem, upholding the Constitution, putting the hand on the heart in pledging allegiance to the state, ascribing to state values such as liberty, equality and fraternity and such. Even when one migrate to escape a state or secular groupthink one don't agree with, one still has to pledge allegiance to, and to swear to uphold and subscribe to the fundamental groupthink of one's new state that makes us French, British, Malaysians, Indonesians, Americans.

I had thought that non-believers ascribe "cults" for the religious types, not "groupthink." If you do remember correctly, the term "groupthink" you borrowed from that book was explicitly stated by the author to be imposed by the state. He was talking about a totalitarian state. So, lovely and trite try to imply Islam as fascistic and totatalitarian and such as hyperventilated and generalised by some neocons, and thinker-writers such as Daniel Pipes. You're not subscribing to their attempts of forging a "groupthink" on Islam and Muslims are you?

Concerned the Christian Now Liberated:

What's new pussycat? Nothing? As this is the last day of leave for Eid Al Fitr for me, and I'm recovering from all that feasting and jollity, I repeat:

There are no flaws in Islam.
Islam is perfect.
Islam is a way of life.
Convert to Islam.

Small print : I can't guarantee you'd be a flawless and fault-free Muslim. And there's that Sura - No compulsion in religion. Darn!

Okay then, I should, as Jihadist the Muslim Now Unconcerned, further infuriate you on Islam and Muslims in going again into matters that is not of primary concern to you:)

On Iran, ask the Iranians what what they did, why they did it, and what they went though. Iranians got the theocracy they wanted, they can get out of it if they wanted.

Perhaps the western mind should look at Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters as, respectively Robespierre and the Jacobins, to grasp the Iranian Revolution a wee bit better. For one, even though French women were among the unacknowldged impetus for the French Revolution, (Storming of the Bastille, Day of the Market Women) their rights was subsequently sidelined by Robespierre and the Jacobins. These women literally lost their heads and lives too. The hardline and excessive Jacobins were too enthusiastic in starting their own reign of terror in replacing the ancien regime.

The rise of Iranian theocracy was also, in no small part, due to accumulated anger and reaction against the deposed Shah's policies and repression of his own people. Not to mention, a particular foreign country interference and hand in deposing the Iranians nationalist prime minister. Blowback time.

Likewise, the rise of the Taliban was also due the use by a certain country of Afghanistan as the battleground to wage a hot war by proxy, an ideological battle against its adversary that left Afghanistan a chaotic mess and lawless state. The Taliban, appalled, came in and restore order in the only way they know.

9/11? I would not go around rubbing 9/11 to Afghans and Iraqis if we are to consider that day and its consequence for them from their perspective. Osama and his gang brought two buildings down with, at most 3,200 dead. More innocent Afghan and Iraqi were mained or killed, more of their homes, public buildings and infrastucture bombed every day. Osama never apprehended, and more Osama type terrorists pouring into Iraq to create further havoc and deaths.

Of course, all these are the fault of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Muslims the world over) who are now the greatest threats to civilisation as we know it. Read that as western civilisation which even Indians and Chinese, with their own most impressive civilisations, would take note, respect and but not stop thinking their own civilisations are tremendous too. Of course, Muslims thinks their own civilisation is important for them too and to value as such.

If only the Muslims would stop being so difficult! It only they would just be an agreeable lot in agreeing with everything the west tells them, what to read, how and what to think, what to believe in! If only these selfish Muslims would give up their personal and national interests for us! If only the unenlightened Muslims and their dodgy and iffy leaders would let us roll into their countries unmolested and without dissent, there would be peace on earth and civilisation as we know it (which one?), would be saved. Hallejujah!!!!

And finally, pussycat Concy Christy Libby .... want to start a group against the defamation and degradation of women who are nuns, porn stars, pole dancers and prostitutes by their own choice? And also to defend and free them if they are forced into it against their will? What is one's ethics, morals and values then, on this? Surely this does not call one to believe or disbelief in God? Only to be a humanist who believe in freedom and rights. But whose rights and freedom are more important - Self? Others? Both in one's personal estimation?

Yakety yak. Yakety yak. LOL

Thank you and best regards

J

Ours is the only species to have evolved to the degree of development whereby we have the cognizance of our own death; and the elaboration of language through which explanations as such are imagined and created. The sub-consciousness then seeks to defer death through explanations of a transcendence to our Being. Bounded by history, people struggle to save presence by attempting to create or find a saving presence. This quest furthers the effort to deny death.

God exists, but only as a concept.

Hume suggests God as well as the self is a fiction required by our nature. The problem of religion is then not whether God exists, but whether we need the idea of God in order to exist, or as Pascal asks, who has the better mode of existence, the believer or the non-believer.

We are offered current understanding of the immanence of life by Geertz, who defines religions as specific systems of symbols, “which act to establish pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic”. He also suggests that nature and culture are not unrelated because it is precisely the indeterminacy of the genetic code that makes the cultural code necessary. Summarizing, the cultural analogous of the gene is called a ‘meme’ a “unit of cultural inheritance, hypothesized as analogous to the particulate gene, and as naturally selected by virtue of the genotype or phenotype. Genotype designating the “genetic constitution of an individual organism, as distinguished from its physical appearance.” Phenotype specifies the “genetically determined and observable appearance of an organism, especially as considered with respect to all possible genetically influenced expressions of one specific character.” The evolutionary process is directed to the perpetuation of the genetic code rather than to the promotion of individual organisms.

The society of man is an imperfect, ongoing scientific experiment. Man has “evolved’ systems of religions since the onset of civilization, ‘progressing’ from worshp of animals and the various naturally occurring entities, i.e. the sun, the moon and the stars, through polytheism to monotheism. Monotheism, in the current stage of evolution (that word again) brings us today a single god in many different forms and versions, i.e. Islam, Christian, Jewish, etc. In the truest sense of the word, religion has evolved as has physical man. Both are still in an imperfect state; the physical man and the spiritual man. The danger of modern religion is that, through ignorance or dogma, it presupposes tht man at the present is in its final form, i.e. an act of perfection by an allmighty god. That evil (the claim of perfection) is central to the various religions, each one of which lays claim to be the chosen few, and, as such, is the evolutionary equivalent of a lethal gene. I rest my case on the countless number of bodies that religion in its myriad forms have strewn about the world, past and present.

Meg,

consider that "right" is always only an approximation, sometimes even e fallacy. Where there is no elbow room for meaning and understanding, there is no life. A wheel and an axis have to have some "play" or "leeway" to funcion. If they are mathematically exact, they will come to a grinding halt. No group of people can live together if everybody wants to always be "right". Modern technology even cannot function withour "fuzzy logic". A company without a tolerance zone is doomed.

To sum it up: "Right" can be wrong.

Thanks Gerry,
Sometimes the send button is too easy to push, I wish at times I would have given it more thought.

Blessings,
terra

What's so bad about getting it right?
Not a thing Meg, heathen does not mean faithless or godless...it merely means a country person that was not Christian..

Have a good day,
terra

Terra Gazelle;

Here's what my little book of word origins says.

"Heathen (OE) Etymologically, a heathen is 'someone who lives on the heath'...that is,someone who lives in a wild up country area,and is uncivilized and savage (the word was derived in prehistoric Germanic times from 'khaithiz'(heath),and is also represented in German 'heide', Dutch 'heiden', and Swedish and Danish 'Heden').
It's specific use for 'person who is not a Christian' seems to be directly inspired by Latin 'paganus' (source of English pagan), which likewise originally meant 'country dweller'.
(Etymologically,'savages' too were to begin with dwellers in 'wild woodland' areas,while 'civilized' or 'urbane' people lived in cities or towns.)
The now archaic 'hoyden' (high spirited girl) was borrowed from Dutch 'heiden' (heathen)."

From the Arcade Dictionary of Word Origins,by John Ayto,published by Arcade Publising.NY.

What's so bad about getting it right?
Take care Terra.

A guy who thinks "god invented dictionaries" is unable to think one single authentic thought worth answering. Unsurpassable stupidity.

Terra, I may not be of your opinion, but strangely the pagans (heathens) are the most sympathetic crowd of all believers in any religion on these threads, as compared to the aggressive bigots desperately trying to defend their undefensible "truths", whatever it may consist of, Christian or Muslim.

Mohamed,
Belittling others does not win your argument.And as far as it goes...whose "God" invented the dictionary? The one that held the pen or the one who turned the pages?

A fool says what he knows, and a wise man knows what he says.

terra

Terra writes:

"Pagan" is a Latin word meaning the people of the pagus or countryside (who are more likely to cling to ancient ways)."

Question: do you feel that an idea or belief being "ancient" somehow adds truth to said idea or belief?

I ask this because I have friends (a married couple) who have a deep belief in god & Jesus but also are wrapped up in astrology and bits and pieces of what I'd guess you'd call paganism (they believe in witches, for example). I've asked them about this, and their rationale is that "the ancients had secret knowledge that we've lost."

I find that risible, but for them it forms a basis for believing, well, anything, as long as you can show it isn't a "modern" thought.

Any thoughts on that?

Terra Gazelle;
Miss Gazelle,you are an idiot.Why do you think God invented Dictionaries? Can you imagine the turmoil if we all made up our own words? Are you so afraid to be shown to be mistaken? Is your teeny weenie ego not up to it? Oh you poor baby,You poor baby.

It seems to me the whole business of free will
is a little overwrought. In small ways, we may seem to have it on occasion, but why then do people go throughout entire lifetimes doing stuff they don't want to do?

Well, they're not fully in control of all the contingenies of their infinitely complex lives. The unpredictable just keeps happening! Of course that includes beliefs foisted off on them before the age of reason (and reasonableness). And yes, it does take quite a struggle to shuck off and discard outmoded, unworkable, self-defeating beliefs. Many times one feels great relief and a sense of freedom when successful.

If this happens late enough in life, old beliefs may not be replaced - except in the form of non-belief in the 'old' used-to-be. On the other hand, younger believers generally replace the old with the new. I suppose the new seems true compared to the old, but how to know??

Is this an act of free will - or just another reflexive response to 'outside'forces?? We'll all remember that BF Skinner (the reknowned behavioral psychologist) disavowed any concept of free will whatsoever. Behavior of all kinds (including the mental/cognitive realm) was simply a conditioned & learned response to intervening/outside stimuli....well of course, many always have and will continue to dispute this.

Schools of psychology are legion - who knows how many?? George Gurdjeiff of the esoteric Fourth Way school (see his books and also Ouspensky) claimed that humanity was essentially robotic and mechanical in the extreme (fully asleep without knowing it) - transcending this conditioning and reaching the true realm of 'free will' where a doer is actually capable of doing anything at all independently was the work of a lifetime, and a very high level of spiritual attainment. He does not have a very optimistic view of the human animal in general!!

Free will in the large sense of completely independent and autonomous action is probably an illusion for most. Those that actually attain this state are probably unknown and unknowable - what powers they must possess!!

Gerry wrote (in response to Daniel):

"You are positing that we have no free will whatsoever. I very strongly disagree: We, and the universe, would thus be a dead automaton running off predictably in every instance, a philosophy that has prevailed around 1900 but which nobody really cultivates anymore.

Even the most "scientific-superstitious" scientists hesitate in front of such a horror. And I think you might consider Heisenberg and others, who do not postulate a complete determination, in spite of the "laws" of nature."

I'd like to comment on that if I may. I have a slightly different take on free will. If you actually think about free will, most people's concept of free will makes no sense at all.

If you think about it, to have free will, your thought processes must be at least partially deterministic.

When I exercise my free will, I think about what choices I have and what the consequences of those choices, and I choose based on which consequences that are most in line with my goals. There is nothing in that process that requires non-determinism. In fact if any of the steps in that process were non-deterministic, the process would be messed up and I would not be making the choice that I really wanted to make.

Free will is the ability for you to make choices that have an impact on what happens. It allows you to *determine* the future at least partially. The more non-deterministic the process that connects your thoughts to the results of your choices is, the less control you have. I.e. the less free will you have.

Determinism is necessary for free will, non-determinism is incompatible with free will.

That's exactly the opposite of what most people believe, but I don't think most people actually think about what free will means.

Think about it!

Realist

I can't define a word when that word defines me? heck you say??

Sorry but I choose to.

The hebrews invaded the Pagan lands, killing the people, stealing the lands, destroying the temples and shrines...then came the Christians.

The Christians invaded the Heathen lands...and made war, killing and stealing and forcing conversions.

The Christians forced conversions,destroyed cultures, took our holy days, our temples and our shrines...they even took Goddesses and because the people would not leave them made them into saints. They called the old folks evil and our gods demons. They defined what was according to them...Now you think you can define what we are...taking what we use to define ourselves.

I can choose what words I define myself...you can not take those words. We took the name Pagan and Heathen and wore it proudly when people spit on us or kept us from our civil rights. Our Pagan military men and women could not have Pagan on their dog tags, we had to fight for it. Our Pagan men and women that died in war could not be buried under our Pagan symbol, for 10 years we fought. We finally won...You can not use those words that others fought and died under. It does not belong to you.

So yes, I can define the word for the rest of you. You have your own word..Atheist. Take it use it..and don't take ours to be cute or bring a smile. Those words were too hard fought to bring a bit of tolerance to.

terra

My first sentence should say "heathen" not "pagan".
My error.

Terra Gazelle;

As I said earlier,the word pagan has several definitions according to the Oxford Reference Dictionary.
Words evolve,like most other things.Time changes words original meanings,through usage.
Through usage people have the final say in what a word means,and the ORD mentions 5 or 6 of them.
Nowadays,people obviously mean different things when they use the word heathen.Your definition is fine,and so is Meg's.
You can't define the word for the rest of us.

"Pagan" is a Latin word meaning the people of the pagus or countryside (who are more likely to cling to ancient ways). "Heathen" is a Germanic word meaning people of the heath, or wilderness, who were likely to be doing the same thing.

What ever your dictionary says that those words came to be known to mean...Heathen was country person same as Pagan.

Both these words came to mean Godless after the Christians took power and had a hard time getting those country people to turn away from their old gods.They made our gods into devils...so we were then seen to have no god. My ancestors were called Pagani.. hicks, rednecks, a backward person who was not modern because they would not worship the new god.

As a Pagan I am not faithless and knowing Heathens, they are also not faithless. So call yourselves what you wish, but try not to further misconceptions about those of us who are Pagans and Heathen.

terra

Drew

You just beat me to it.I was about to tell Terra that she was wrong,and should consult a dictionary before jumping in to contradict another's use of a word.
I am a heathen.I am an atheist.I am a person who has no religion.I am also a person who uses dictionaries.
Thanks Terra for trying to make me a more articulate person,but I'm doing fine on my own.

Terra Gazelle;

My Oxford reference dictionary says that Heathen also means "not having a religion".
Like many words,it has more than just one definition.
The first definition is "a person who does not belong to a widely held religion";and another is,
"an unenlightened person;a person regarded as lacking culture or moral principles".
there are one or two other definitions too.
I am a heathen in that I do not have a religion;though I usually call myself an atheist.

Meg,
A Heathen is not a faithless person. They are not Christian, but they do have faith...a Heathen is a Pagan of Northern Europe. They are Pagans...such as the Norse Asatru. Oh and Meg, the Norse Heathens were anything but harmless, they were warriors to arm against.

I really do not think you meant you were Pagan...but atheist. Heathens are not atheist.

terra

Terry,

It was a reponse specifically to those who believe in Catholic "mumbo-jumbo", analogous to believing in "pwtfft"s and the "demons of the demented".

Congratulations YoYo on rejecting your programming. Free will is alive and well.

Concerned - was this a cynic's response to anything with a vaguely religious motif, or were
you just debunking the phenomenon of 'stigmata'
based on your own irrefutable evidence? The hypocrisy and pecuniary opportunism of the Cappucians in this regard is probably a different topic altogether.

Afterall, we weren't speaking of causes, divine or otherwise - just pointing to a curiously inexplicable happening among ' a chosen few' as you point out. Of course it does have a religious theme, but the study of religion is certainly as valid as other subject matter.

As we know from our friend Daniel, quantum physics, as the ultimate predictive measuring tool in science, is strictly man-made based on what we observe and designed to measure limited phenomena, rather than getting at the heart of ultimate reality - not to be compared to religion, which is totally subjective and experience-based .... a different kind of metaphysics altogether.

Or, as Bertrand Russell put it: 'mathematics may be defined as a subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true'.

Religion as a human creation is widely studied academically as a sociological and psychological
phenomenon without passing judgement as to it's inherent 'objective' validity one way or another.
People often have strange attributes - 'stigmata'
is one such.....now bi-location and levitation will require further study.

all the best.....

Its like we're all computers
and our religious beliefs are programed into us
throughout our childhoods.
What we end up believing has nothing to do with truth,
and everything to do with the program.
And different religion, different program.
If I had been born and raised in a Muslim country,
today I'd praying 5 times a day facing Mecca:
and would consider Christians to be infidels.
Had I been raised a Hindu,today I might be
burning incense and praying to Vishnu. Had I been
raised in Utah by Mormons,I'd now be a Mormon.
in Ireland,probably a devout catholic.
We all believe what we were raised to believe;
and what our community believes.
Why don't we get it?
Religions are just passed-on customs and beliefs
from ancient times that cannot all claim to be true.
The likelyhood is none of it is true.
If it wasn't programed into our heads as kids,
we'd never believe it as intelligent adults,
hearing about God,or Allah,or Vishnu,for the first time.
It would sound perfectly ridiculous.

Thanks Ahmed,

Another vote for free will.

Bobby B.:

Interesting essay Susan.

Of course there is no life after death.Just death.
If there was no death,there would be no religion.
The fear of death,for oneself as well as for loved ones,
is religion's bread and butter.
The church and the mosque and the synagogue offer eternal life for believers only.
Hell for everyone else.
Like other posters,I find this transparently ludicrous,
and I'm continually amazed that people actually believe it.I can only attribute it to fear.

I had religion,but now I don't.

It feels good and I dont have headaches like before.
I have lost Allah and now I think better and make more sense deep inside myself.
The books I read here are not allowed whare I came from.And David Hume opened my eyes.And Sam Harris too.
All my life I was an idiot.I believed all stupid ideas.so everybody did.
When it is all around you it is very difficult to think in other ways.
But now I live in UK,and work and play with people who don't talk or think about religion and gods.
It is a beautiful world with no god.A honest world.
an uncomplicated world. I am happy like never before.
I understand now.I am only sorry I wasted time believing lies.

E.Favorite;

yeah...best to be up front;people do adjust to blunt honesty.Heathen works for me,it's raw and real.
It also has a nice eccentric touch to it,that sometimes disarms people,and makes them smile to be around someone so quirky.(At least that's how I read the smiles).
I'm a heathen but I'm harmless.
Keep up the goodfight,EFave.

Meg: "I realized I had become a Born-Again Heathen, returned to my original, natural, faithless state."

Born-again Heathen -- I love it. Do you use that term when people ask what your religion is?

If so, how do they respond?

If not - please consider it and then tell us what happened.

Meg,

Thanks for the very well written post. Your theme follows closely that of my good friend Daniel.

But I must agree with Gerry. We have free will to choose for ourselves, as evidenced by the fact that you, Gerry, I and many others have managed to escape from our early indoctrination.

There is still hope for our friend Daniel.

Stigmata????

You must be kidding!!! Padre Pio was embellished by his order, the Cappuchins to fill the coffers. They even got him "sainted". And now you can even buy "Saint" Pio baseball hats, tee shirts, sweatshirts, and socks covered with the "blood" of the stigmata. Gross!!!

Strange how it is only the nuns, monks and uneducated Catholic peasant children that are the ones privy to such gifts/visits from the higher or nether worlds!!! Hmmm, too much fasting and not enough sleep followed by staring at the sun???? And greedy local bishops???

John Stuart Mill;

"My father's rejection of all that is called religious belief was not,as
many might suppose,primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds for
it were moral, more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe
that a world so full of evil was the work of a God combining infinite
power with perfect goodness and righteousness.
His aversion to religion,in the sense usually attached to the term,was of
the same kind with that of Lucretius; he regarded it with the feelings due
not to mere mental delusion but to a great moral evil.
It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty to
allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings
respecting religion;and he impressed on me from the first that the manner in
which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was
known."

John Stuart Mill quoted in "Why I Am Not A Christian",by Bertrand Russell.

The ubiquity and intransigence of belief in religious dogma is hardly a mystery.
Parents unwittingly practice the “big lie” on gullible and credulous young, thereby programming their read-only memories (brain-washing them) with belief systems with which they, themselves, were earlier brain-washed. In this obvious way, children grow up with the unshakable conviction faith is the one area of humanity exempt from critical inquiry.

Thus, the beliefs of the parents are instilled in their progeny even unto the seventieth generation.

Catholic parents beget Catholics, Protestant parents beget Protestants. Jewish parents beget Jews. Mormon Parents beget Mormons. Muslim parents beget Muslims. Wiccan parents beget Wiccans. And genetic inheritance has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It’s not a matter of nature but of quasi-natural nurture.

Occasionally evangelism or delusional epiphany ostensibly convert an individual from one belief system to another, but in virtually every case, the core cultural imperatives associated with their “cradle faith” will remain largely intact. That is why, for example, many fallen away Christians continue, as if by knee-jerk reflex, to behave impulsively in supposedly “Christian” ways.

It all began with a comprehension of death which egotistical humans deplore and do not share with other animals. By providing the “sure and certain hope” of life after death, manipulators in all ages and places have invoked a “soul wrenching” tool to bend others to their temporal will. Never mind that a thoughtful person might find such promised eternal life to be quite tedious.

I consider myself a Born-Again Heathen. Like everyone else, I was born a Heathen without any sort of faith. By the chance of the draw, my parents were Christians and instilled their religious beliefs and related cultural value system in me - their faith by precept and their value system by their behavioral example. Monkey see, monkey do.

Eventually, I came to see my instilled faith as nonsense and was ultimately able to reconcile myself with the reality of my mortality - that when life is over, it’s all over. At that point, I realized I had become a Born-Again Heathen, returned to my original, natural, faithless state. Nevertheless, I continue to practice “turn the other cheek” as a part of my cultural legacy. This is perversely nonsensical because I know how that imperative was imprinted and fully understand intellectually that it is now known to be contraindicated. So much for free will.

It now seems clear to me that “free will” is an illusion and that everything, including everything I am and do, is deterministic - the inexorable result of cumulative antecedent genetics, experience, and possibly influences which, albeit not consciously perceived, have helped to shape my subconscious from which all my decisions actually emanate.

Daniel,

may I suggest you think over your views once again.

You are positing that we have no free will whatsoever. I very strongly disagree: We, and the universe, would thus be a dead automaton running off predictably in every instance, a philosophy that has prevailed around 1900 but which nobody really cultivates anymore.

Even the most "scientific-superstitious" scientists hesitate in front of such a horror. And I think you might consider Heisenberg and others, who do not postulate a complete determination, in spite of the "laws" of nature.

I am convinced that I arrived at my way of thinking after working through all the influences you mentioned, and I agree with, AGAINST many cultural and personal influences.

Of course I am aware, one can even spin such an autonomous development of a person around so that it appears to be a mirage.

The (logical mutually exclusive) light dualism might induce you to think about a dualism on a higher level, with freedom AND causality.

I still believe in clear, honest thinking, avoiding logical games along the line of Achilles and the turtle.

Gerry

I do not think we are "brainwashed" up to a certain point, until we "break free" and then we begin to freely choose our beliefs.

Assuming the heritage of beliefs passed along to you is not being brainwashed. It is not a malevolent process such as brainwashing implies; it is just the way things are. Your parents teach you what they believe; how could you expect them to do otherwise?

But even when you have reached the point where you no longer believe what they taught you, you are merely transitioning from one aspect of your heritage to another, from what your parents have taught you, to what others have told you, and from your own experiences, which you have not freely chosen.

And then, when you finally come to the point where you are choosing your beliefs, are you really? Not really; you cannot choose; inside of your head, there is an autonomic processing mechanism which produces your beliefs for you; and even if you try to "choose" differently, you cannot. That is why, even when people are tortured for their heretical beliefs, they cannot change them; your ideas and beliefs appear, by unknown mechanisms, and are resistent to your ability or desire to change them or wish them away.

FYI, my two posts, above, are not the same; the first one is type-ridden; the second was proof-read, so read the second one (if you care to).

I make the following argument to point out that an atheist's belief in natural law is just as much of a mirage as the religious person's belief in God:

Science is a reflection of our impressions of order in the world.

In seeking to analyze these impressions of order, we notice patterns.

We call these patterns laws of nature.

But we have no knowledge of these laws, othere than that we seem to notice them. They are not material things, nor energy fields; nor is there any scientific experiment that postulates their existence and then proves it. They are, in fact, the philosopher's speculations on these regular patterns and the scientist's ability to discern them.

These laws of nature do not have anything to do with nature. They are rules that describe models that we create in our minds to simulate aspects of nature. When we notice patterns in quantum phenomenon that make us think of particles, then we envision a particle model. But when observing the exact same phenomenom, we notice patterns that make us think of waves, we envision a wave model. But we cannot imagine a model that simultaneously subsumes both the particle and wave characteristics of quantum phenomenon.

This is called the particle-wave duality of matter, and it seems paradoxical. But it only seems paradoxical because of the way in which our minds are organized. This is only a paradox because of our limitations of perception and thought. This is nature, which cannot conform to laws that were invented by us for our purposes of understanding.

In asserting the existence of natural laws that cause all things to operate, you are implying some tell-tale signs of the possible existence of God. In dismissing these laws of nature as illusions that have no reality outside of our thoughts, I am also sealing off any arguments for the existence of God, such as "intelligent designers" might believe in. For if such laws of nature really do exist, intelligent design is not really so far-fetched, but can even seem reasonable.

My belief is God in not based on a belief in an intelligent designer that causes all things to be. My belief in God derives from the seeming reality of these laws of nature, which do indeed seem very real, but which are not real. For if the commonly asssumed basis of all reality is not real, then phenomenon that cannot be real, that is in fact, sealed from our perception and knowlege, may be real. By this, I mean, we cannot, by the nature of existential reality and the organization of our minds ever have any knowledge of things that, yet, exist.

In this, I can envision God. The nature of this God remains unknown. I come to this conclusion with ease, as the natural progession of my thoughts and not as a contorted proof of a pre-conceived God, that I wish to be.

Because I have this belief in God which has come to me fairly easily, I therefore have a peaceful mind with regards to God's existence and feel no need to prove it to atheists nor do I have any ill will towards people who do not understand or who may believe differently.

In this peaceful, even tranquil mental state, I feel that I am attaining a degree of serentiy which many religious people seem to crave, but which seems to elude most of them.

I make the following argument to point out that an atheist's belief in natural law is just as much of a mirage as the religious person's belief in God:

Science is a reflection of our impressions of order in the world.

In seeking to analyze these impressions of order, we notice patterns.

We call these patterns laws of nature.

Vut e have no knowledge of these laws, othere than that we seem to notice them. They are not material things, nor energy fields; nor is there any scientific experiment that postulates their existence and the proves it. They are, in fact, the philosopher's speculations on these regular patterns and the scientist's ability to discern them.

These laws of nature do not have anything to do with nature. They are rules that describe models that we create in our minds to simulate aspects of nature. When we notice patterns in quantum phenomenon that make us think of particles, then we envision a particle model. But when observing the exact same phenomenom, we notice patterns that make us think of waves, we envision a wave model. But we cannot imagine a model that simultaneiously subsumes both the particle and wave characteristics of quantum phenomenon.

This is called the particle-wave duality of matter, and it seems paradoxical. But it only seems paradoxical because of the way in which our minds are organized. This is only a paradox because of our limitations of perception and thought. This is nature, which cannot conform to laws that were invented by us for our purposes of understanding.

In asserting the existence of natural laws that cause all things to operate, you are implying some tell-tale signs of the possible existence of God. In dismissing these laws of nature as illusions that have no reality outside of our thoughts, I am also sealing off any arguments for the existence of God, such as "intelligent designers" might believe in. For if such laws of nature really do exist, intelligent design is not really so far-fetched, but can even seem reasonable.

My belief in God in not based on a belief in an intelligent designer that causes all things to be. My belief in God derives from the seeming reality of these laws of nature, which do indeed seem very real, but which are not real. For if the commonly asssumed basis of all reality is not real, then phenomenon that cannot be real, that is in fact, sealed from our perception and knowlege, may be real. By this, I mean, we cannot, by the nature of existential reality and the organization of our minds every have any knowledge of things that, yet, exist.

In this, I can envision God. The nature of this God remains unknown. I come to this conclusion with ease, as the natural progession of my thougts and not as a contorted proof of a pre-conceived God, that I wish to be.

Because I have this belief in God which has come to me fairly easily, I therefore have a peaceful mind with regards to God's existence and feel not need to prove it to atheists nor do I have any ill will towards people who do not understand or who may believe differently.

In this peaceful, even tranquil mental state, I feel that I am attaining a degree of serentiy which many religious people seem to crave, but which seems to elude most of them.

Daniel,

I think we have at least some residue of free will and autonomous judgment, even if we were brainwashed, as I was, and still have developed into a freethinkng and atheist mind.

Or again...

We are not conscious beings that freely choose our beliefs. Rather, our beliefs are a heritage that is passed onto to us; and it is this heritage of beliefs which forges our minds, and motivates our consciousness, and not the other way around.

For Jihadist, and some others (atheists, too)

I do not believe that we choose our beliefs. Rather, our beliefs are a heritage that is passed on to us, as we come into the world.

We are born in a tiny neighborhood of earth, in a brief moment of time. The extent of all that we may become, derives from this origin, over which we have no choice, and from which we cannot escape.

My view on God does not come from my free choice, but is colored by all the human interpretations of God that I have encountered, together with my own conscious thinking and wondering, and then analyzed by some mysteriously autonomic analyzing process that operates in my head.

I am aware, where others may not be (perhaps most others) that my total being, personality, and beliefs are merely contingent on virtual "accidents" of the flow of events; and where I may have been on any certain day; and who may have spoken to me; whom I may have listened to; what book, movie, or television show I might have read or watched; if I glanced into the sky and saw a shape in the clouds that cheered me up or made me think of some specific thing...that the world impresses itself upon me, and forms me into all that I become, with only a very little bit of my own destiny and outcome, that I can determine by my own free will or choice.

I do not know much, but I know all of this.

I thought Wayne had some good points.

I tried to analyze the nature of suffering in the world, and Jihadist (and others) criticized it because I did not include enough praise and glory to Allah or God. But that was not the point of my argument; it was about the nature of suffering.

No one actually acknowledged or criticized my point, that suffering is a result of the way in which we exist in the world, by contrasting experiences. And I would go further to say, here, that, to revoke suffering would change the very nature of existence, and extinguish our contrasting experiences, so that we could not exist as we now do.

"Why?" Jihadist, might ask, "wouldn't God make a better world than that?" That is an argument to take up with God, not me, because, that is the world in which we dwell; he did not make a better world; maybe this is the best world he could make.

I said,

"At the very best, suffering is a mystery. I do not believe that God has made a world of suffering. Rather, by Providence, we dwell in a world of contrasting experience, and only by this contrasting nature of experience can we experience anything at all.

By this Providence, we feel joy and sadness, each together, in contrast, and cannot know either without the other. We are aware of pain and pleasure, repose and struggle, light and darkness only because of their contrasting natures. By this Providence and the way it works and operates, and by our simple existence as part of it, we must suffer; suffering is a part of the way we exist in the world."

That is what I said. I would be interested in some feedback on actually what I said about suffering. I find this way of thinking a little helpful in coping with suffering in my own life, and observing it in the world in others, and in reconciling it with my religious beliefs.

These are my true and sincere efforts to understand suffering, so that is why I did not put alot of religion-boosting, quasi-political stuff in it, just my feelings and observations.

Wayne - good post...although I'm not altogether certain you can hope to study all aspects of mysticism with rational and scientific or neuroscientific methods (at least as yet).

Take as a small example, the phenomenon of the stigmata. This is something all Catholics are likely familiar with, and St. Francis of Assisi is alleged to have been the first to spontaneously manifest the wounds of Christ in his side, hands and feet. St. Theresa of Avila was another (although not her contemporary, St. John of the Cross). A more recent example is Padre Pio, who died in recent years (and was also alledged to be capable of bi-location - seen in two places at once, and also the power of levitation). Of course, 'Miracles' of all sorts are attributed to the many saints and mystics of all the various world religions.

The most thoroughly studied stigmatic was Therese Neumann, a German mystic born in 1898-1962. The stigmata were clearly different than actual wounds might be - the hand wounds were incorrect because crucifictions were conducted by driving spikes through the wrists to support the weight of the body. Nevertheless, wounds in the hands is commonly depicted in statues and pictures of Christ, and it is surmized that the subconscious of the (frequently prayerful) stigmatic
has picked up the wound placement from representations of Christ...very interesting stuff.

But here's the real kicker - Therese Neuman neither ate nor drank for about the last 40 years of her life - holy commmunion only. This was verified many times over by examiners.

See Wikipedia for a short summary.

The world of mysticism and mystics is pretty vast and relatively unexplored and/or discounted by both 'orthodox' practitioners and the clergy of various religions - and in like manner, most atheists might be inclined to explain this 'peculiar' world as full of religious hysteria, self-generated hallucinations and self-deception. I can completely agree that visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima and Lourdes (and elsewhere) are very likely to be mass/group hallucinations - but fascinating nevertheless.

Quite distinct and apart from supernatural causes, the power of mind over matter should never be discounted - but the question remains...is the mind other than matter??

Something for science to chew on for the next few decades.....

A letter from writer Martin Amis to Jasmin Alibhai-Brown,the Independent UK columnist.

Dear Yasmin,

Yes, I remember those drinks we had at the Cheltenham Festival last year – just the four of us, you and Mr Brown, me and Ms Fonseca. (You enjoyed a Ribena, as I recall, while I addressed myself to a powerful scotch.) That night you revealed, inter alia, that you were Shia; and, as far as I understand it, the Shia minority speaks for the more dreamy and poetic face of Islam, the more lax and capacious (tolerant, for example, of representations of the human form), the more spiritual (in the general sense of that word), as opposed to the Sunnis, whose approach is known to be stricter and more legalistic. Your Shia identity endeared you to me, and made me feel protective, because Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me – it wants to kill you.

When you write that I am "with the beasts" on Islamic questions, it is because you've been listening, rather dreamily perhaps, to Professor Terry Eagleton. Now Eagleton, Yasmin, has a chair at Manchester University, where I have recently taken up an enjoyable post, and he is a man of a redundant but familiar type: an ideological relict, unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx. More remarkably, he combines a cruising hostility with an almost neurotic indifference to truth; on the matter of checking his facts, he is, to be frank, an embarrassment to the academic profession. But his human need is simple enough: he wants attention to be paid to his self-righteousness – righteousness being his particular brand of vanity.

It is a dull business, correcting Eagleton's distortions, but this is the work he is obliging me to do. The anti-Muslim measures he says I "advocated" I merely adumbrated, not "in an essay" ("he wrote", "wrote Amis" – each of these is an untruth), but in a long interview with the press. It was a thought experiment, or a mood experiment, and the remarks were preceded by the following: "There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say... [etc, etc]." I felt that urge, for a day or two. My mood, I admit, was bleak – how I longed, Yasmin, for your soothing hand on my brow! It was, in its way, one of the bitterest moments, one of the moments of wormwood, in the strange tale that began five years earlier, in September 2001.

The press interview took place in the immediate aftermath of the foiled plot (August 2006) to obliterate 10 commercial jets with explosives put together in transit. Which would have resulted in the deaths of another 3,000 random Westerners, the majority of them women and children (these were summer flights across the North Atlantic). Human beings, born of women, caressed such thoughts in their minds.

There were two additional depressants. At least one of the alleged would-be mass murderers had taken the trouble to convert to Islam, suggesting that the exterminatory virus was about to mutate, like bird flu. And I'm sure you remember, Yasmin, that passengers on this route were suddenly forbidden to take books on the eight-hour flight – a resonant symbolic victory for the forces of ignorance, humourlessness, literalism, boredom and misery.

Anyway, the mood, the retaliatory "urge" soon evaporated, and I went back to feeling that we must, of course, build all the bridges we can between ourselves and the Muslim majority, which we know to be moderate. Moderate, and mute. The quietism is perhaps no mystery. In 15th-century Spain, not many people, I imagine, were proclaiming that the Inquisition had gone too far. The extremists, for now, have the monopoly of violence, intimidation, and self-righteousness. Meanwhile, I don't want to stripsearch you, Yasmin, or do anything else that would trouble or even momentarily surprise your dignity, or that of any other eirenic Muslim.

People like Eagleton are the nearest thing we have to the "iron mullahs": he is, in other words, a deluded flailer and stirrer. He recently did a similar job on my old mucker Sir Salman Rushdie; and the rigged-up spat ended with a helpless apology from Manchester. I don't know, or can't remember, how you felt about the knighthood. My father (also lazily and cornily defamed by Eagleton) said of his KBE: "It's not too little, but it is too late." An anachronistic award, perhaps – though one fully deserved by the author of the triumphant Shalimar the Clown. The "storm" that followed the announcement was unforeseen by everybody, including the Fourth Estate (which then hollered on about how "inevitable" it was). You see, time had advanced, in the West, since 1989. Time moves more slowly in Iran and Pakistan. As I don't need to tell you, Yasmin, there is something the matter with the Islamic clock.

You wrong your own intelligence when you write that atheism is another form of fanaticism. This notion is a philosophical non-starter. Adherence, however "moderate", to a holy book that recommends (for instance) the murder of apostates and the beating of women (on suspicion of disobedience) carries certain consequences. Whereas nothing follows from atheism. With atheism, there is no what-next.

I am off to Cheltenham tomorrow afternoon. And I hope to see you at the bar. With all best wishes to you and your husband,

Martin

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are forms of socially sanctioned lunacy, their fundamental tenets and rituals irrational, archaic and more importantly when it comes to matters of humanity’s long-term survival, mutually incompatible. There are names for people who have beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common, we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad,’ ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional.’ ‘’ To cite but one example: ‘’Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad?’’ The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.’’

Criticizing a person’s faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture. On this subject, liberals and conservatives have reached a rare consensus: religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse. Criticizing a person’s ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not.’’

A zippered-lip policy would be fine, a pleasant display of the neighborly tolerance that we consider part of an advanced democracy, if not for the mortal perils inherent in strong religious faith. The terrorists who flew jet planes into the World Trade Center believed in the holiness of their cause. The Christian apocalypticists who are willing to risk a nuclear conflagration in the Middle East for the sake of expediting the second coming of Christ believe in the holiness of their cause. Such fundamentalists are not misinterpreting their religious texts or ideals. They are not defaming or distorting their faith. To the contrary, they are taking their religion seriously, attending to the holy texts on which their faith is built. Unhappily for international community, the Good Books that undergird the world’s major religions are extraordinary anthologies of violence and vengeance, celestial decrees that infidels must die.

In the 21st century when swords have been beaten into megaton bombs, the persistence of ancient, blood-washed theisms that emphasize their singular righteousness and their superiority over competing faiths poses a genuine threat to the future of humanity, if not the biosphere: ‘’We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation,’’ he writes, ‘’because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.’’

I have a particular ire for religious moderates, those who ‘’have taken the apparent high road of pluralism, asserting the equal validity of all faiths’’ and who ‘’imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others.’’ Religious moderates are the ones who thwart all efforts to criticize religious literalism. By preaching tolerance, they become intolerant of any rational discussion of religion and ‘’betray faith and reason equally.’’

The human need for a mystical dimension to life like mysticism and other forms of knowledge, can be approached rationally and explored with the tools of modern neuroscience, without recourse to superstition and credulity.

At this time Islam is the reigning threat to humankind. Much like a gruesome, Inquisition-style Christianity of the 13th century only leads us to believe not all cultures are at the same stage of moral development,’’ I couldn’t help but think of Ann Coulter’s morally developed suggestion that we invade Muslim countries, kill their leaders and convert their citizens to Christianity.

I will say this of Faith: it has been the foundation of every religion, every cult, every sect, every religious terrorist organization that desired to gain advocates whose will greatly exceeded their intelligence. When a religion asks that its followers believe all that it declares, and to do so without evidence, it speaks volumes of the intent and meaning of that religion. These churches, temples and mosques, they will keep their followers in the shadows of millennium past. Evolution is still howled as the great enemy of faith. It simply has the greatest following of scientists and evidence. It's not scientifically that any religion has ever tried to debunk Evolution. They brought forth no evidence. They claimed no new discoveries. Their only tactic was to point to tattered and very old scriptues -- to flip through the pages, and read the rancid words, almost as if they were pure gold. Faith does not require investigation, or evidence, or demonstration, or observation, or logical deductions. It simply requires that a person believe, in spite of what evidence may say: it requires that a person blindfolds themselves when demonstration is shown, to use earplugs when anyone speaks of logic, and to turn away at every reason for them to believe what Faith tells them is wrong. Those cults and sects which have utilized violence for the realization of their apocalyptic future -- they required nothing but the willpower and a great deal of Faith.

To be brief, most religious types like The Jihadist suffer from the Three B's i.e. they were Bred, Born and Brainwashed in their religion.

And note The Jihadist again fails to mention the Islamic terror theocracy of Iran, a country dripping in the blood of Sunnis who are being sent to an early afterlife on a 24/7 basis.

Jihadist

Brevity is the art of wit.

Bertrand Russell

Why I am not a Christian pp22

Fear,the Foundation of Religion
Religion is based,I think,primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes.
Fear is the basis of the whole thing-fear of the mysterious,fear of defeat,fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty,
and therefore it is no wonder if religion and cruelty have gone hand in hand.It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things,and a little to master them by help of science,
which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion,against the churches,and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us,and I think our own hearts can teach us,no longer to look around for imaginary supports,no longer to invent allies in the sky,but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in,instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

Bertrand Russell

There is an idea-that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion.
It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked.
You find this curious fact,that the more intense has been the religion of any period,and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief,the greater
has been the cruelty,and the worse has been the state of affairs.
In the so-called ages of faith,when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness,there was
the inquisition,with its tortures;there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches,and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling,every improvement
in the criminal law,every step toward the diminution of war,every step towards better treatment of the coloured races,
or every mitigation of slavery,every moral progress that there has been in the world,has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion,as organized in its churches,has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
Bertrand Russell. "Why I Am Not A Christian"

Jihadist;

You sound exactly like a person who has been indoctrinated into a religion at the expense of his intelligence.You parrot the groupthink into which you were born like a true indoctrinate.
You think like you do because you are supposed to think like you do,which is the whole purpose of indoctrination in the first place.
Indoctrination works just as well with irrational nonsense,as it does with truth.
Indoctrination convinced the Muslim maniacs to unleash the wrath of Islam on the United States on September 11 2001,for a one way ticket to the big brothel in the sky.
If only they had been skeptical enough to question the veracity of it all,9/11 would never have happened.But unfortunately indoctrination is not that easy to throw off.It usually lasts for life,
as so many of you prove.

RB-Freedom-for-All

Confused on what I've written? Good. That means you've recovered from that rather sweeping remarks you made about nuns in your first post here:)

Never mind, and hello again. Thank you for your clarification on the nuns and priests in the US and the various orders of who teaches and who tends to the sick. As hierachical as ever and very repressive for the nuns.

As for your not understaning what I've posted, well, of course again. I do put in too many words and adopt the elliptical and allusive way so I won't offend believers of other faiths. Muslims are suppose to respect the beliefs of others and not to question their beliefs. I have transgress that in some ways on Buddhism and now Catholicism here.

For clarity so you won't be confused, let's cut to the chase and for me to be really blunt before putting in the "fillers" to expand on them.

As everyone knows, in third world/developing countries where Catholics are not the majority, the Vatican send out priests and nuns to proselytise under the cover of humanitarian work such as schools and clinics. Not only nuns but priests become teachers and proselytise in ways crude or suble or hilarious. Not only do priests and nuns give medical and health services in clinics and hospitals but they do proselytise to their patients and their families if they can. As anyone and everyone would know, the purpose of Catholic the clergy is to make the whole world Catholic in faith and and catholic in values and culture by saving everyone's souls through accepting Christ etc.

Right, the fillers for further clarifications:

Catholicism as practiced by its adherents in Indonesia and Malaysia is not the same as in the US, Italy or Mexico. Much closer to the Filipino Catholics in fact. Not quite pure as the Vatican decreed, being quite far and independent some ways from the Vatican in terms of geography, income and culture. To be clearer on that, Indonesian, Malaysian and Filipino Catholic nuns and priests are not the white fellows ensconed in magnificent residences and garbed in splendid robes in Rome. Religion may be unifying, but race and region do matter too.

I'm Indonesian-Malaysian. The nuns are mostly Indonesians or Malaysians, not westeners. So are the priests. Both Indonesia and Malaysia have single sex schools started by religious entities and governments, mostly in heavily populated urban areas. Smaller towns and rural areas have more schools of mixed gender due to number of students.

Priests do teach in Catholic affiliated boys' schools in Indonesia and Malaysia. But the majority of students of these Catholic affiliated schools are not Catholics, but Muslims. Muslim parents send their children to Catholic schools due to the higher standards demanded from students academically in extra-mural activities and sports and behavior.

It is a well known fact among Muslim Indonesians and Malaysians that Catholic priests and nuns in such schools do "soft" selling of Catholicism among Muslim students - infusing Catholic beliefs and dogma in classes casually, constantly speaking of Jesus is love etc. and recommending or showing movies like "Jesus of Nazareth", peppy Christian songs.

Not only in Indonesia and Malaysia, but if you go to other parts of Asia and Africa, you'd easily come across priests as teachers. Who better to proselytise among heathens and infidels than members or clergy who can teach school subjects, talk about God, dogma, and to undertake extra-mural programmes and activities strongly infused with Catholic values and beliefs?

By the way, the joke by the nuns, is a joke; one like those told about Mulla Nasruddin as a Sufi teaching methodolgy. Mother Superior fluffed, mispoke on what she wanted to ask the Pope. Even Mother Superior can make mistakes and to let off a subconscious thought. Come to think of it, perhaps that Mother Superior don't even want to address the Pope with titles accorded according to hierachical ranks such as Your Excellency, Your Eminence, Your Grace etc. Or Your Highness. The nuns who taught me - they're renegades, they're rebels, they're mavericks in their own way in the choice they made to be nuns.

I'm getting off now to see that the house and its compounds are ready in every way to receive guests for Eid El Fitr tomorrow, Saturday 13 October, and the days after for festivities, feasting and a jolly good time to be had by all.

Happy Eid to you.

Thank you and best regards
J

Daniel:

Hello again. How do you do?

As to what Anonymous said : "Therefore I see reason to doubt either (1) that God is all powerful, (2) that God exists, or (3) that God is good."

Don't go off to let it percolate. We're not coffee.

It is just this simple - God is not only all powerful, but All Mighty. God do exists and started off that Singularity that created the Universe and for that, God is not just "good" but God is Great in thus creating the heavens (universe) and the earth. Here I am Lord, to live my life as I should in the right way to be worthy of my existence and the well-being of my community. Yes, I assert this certainty without proof that unbelievers hate and want to put me in a straightjacket and send me off to an insane asylum.:)

Of course, some of the really serious and credible Muslim clerical thinkers, scholars and clerical figures doth take a position that is almost deistic or agnostic on and about the Ultimate that is God who cannot be though of nor describe adequately in human terms. The Muslim Sufi influenced thinkers softened the faith into a more spiritual one rather than temporal focus in dealing with everything from usury to divorce to war to governance.

Why should anyone flich from believing and saying, "There is no God, but God". Whether one believe or otherwise, "God doth guide to it whom It will." Not really my concern then, if anyone don't believe, but I do cast eyes on those who proclaim they are anti-theists as a first shot.

No one expect anyone to say he don't believe in God just to comfort and reassure atheists who don't believe in God, and are averse to organised religion for reasons that are sometimes valid and sometimes questionable.

Ahmed:

You're once very religious, prayed five times every day, loved the Mosque? But was troubled by the terrorism and it made you ill and that it was sinful? Then you read on philosophy and the existentialists? And the works of Hume and John Stuart Mill?

Really! You're that rarest former "Muslim" who said you love the mosque. Reading some of the existentialist philosophers can make one seek solace in faith and orgainised relgion.:)

As any Muslim would know, going to the mosque for Friday and Ramadan prayers can be an experiece of lost or misplaced shoes, lost family members and friends in the crowd, and really cramped personal space for prayers.

The best time to be in a mosque is during the off designated prayers time. Then, time seems suspended and space seem both intimate and infinite making one feel peace and well-being.

I've met some former Muslims in Europe who told me they don't believe in God and Islam anymore after 9/11. After a few questions, it turns out they are already non-practicing or cultural Muslims who already have doubts about the existence of God since they were young but were never expressed publicly.

So whenever anyone comes in On Faith and says he's a "former Muslim", it is easy to spot the real from the faux. Easier and more honest for a former Muslim to say, for example, that he's never believe in God nor adhere to the Islamic faith for a long time. 9/11 may claimed to be the "tipping point" for some European and North American Muslims to come out and declare why they are not Muslims any more.

But 9/11 is also the defining moment for millions other formerly politically and religiously indifferent Muslims. Do speculate as to why and how, but as a hint, Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins are quite off the mark when they write and talk about Muslims.

Lucy Ann Tucker:

You : "If I get it in Utah,I will believe in the Mormon God. If I get it in Iran,I will believe in the Muslim God.If I get it in Ireland,I will believe in the Catholic God. If,in India,I will believe in a Hindu God."

Not this thrust of reasoning again from atheists! You do know that not all in Utah are Mormons, not all Iranians are Muslims, not all Irish are Catholics, not all Indians are Hindus.

Perhaps better to say - If your family is Buddhist, you'd most likely to be Buddhist regardless of being in Utah or India.

Better to say - What one thinks of one's faith and how one acts or don't on one's beliefs have more to do with how one's faith and belief are conveyed and imbued by family and community of fellow believers.

Bobby B:

You : "The church and the mosque and the synagogue offer eternal life for believers only."

I can't say for the church and synogogue, but the imams of mosques don't quite talk about eternal life for believers, rather on Judgement Day if they do to account for one deeds. If they are not reminding believers to do the right thing for themselves and for the sake of others, they mostly talk about the here and now - from governance to corruption to social issues.
The imams in mosques talking about temporal issues is more scary for Muslim goverments who are not effective in governance and delivery of expectations.

By the way, so you be "correct" when trashing faiths and beliefs, re the after-life, or more correctly the hereafer, it is stated in a Sura that unbelievers will be shown the sign of God as proof of God. If he still disbelief, only then will he be decided by God on what his fate will be. Now you can go and thrast this if you must.

And, the "afterlife" evokes visions of ghosts. The "hereafter" evokes souls going on after death in heaven, after a stint of hell for those that deserve a bit of fire and brimstone. As for movies such as "The Exorcist", or the "The Exorcism of Emily Rose", one don't know what to make of this Christian genre or belief that the Devil can actually possess people's bodies.

In Islamic belief, Satan tempts one not to do the right thing and to led one astray, but one still make the final decisions and be accountable for them. So, it is quite boggling to think that Satan or the Devil seem to regard Catholics as its favourite and prime preys to possess bodily, spit out bile, choice words and ancient languages.

If one don't believe in the afterlife, the hereafter or reincarnation, perhaps it is a liberating feeling. But surely one is also fearful of thinking the unthinkable, the unknowable, the unreasonable in catching up with one actions right up to one's death and beyond. Not considering the possibility of a hereafter is also an acknowledgement of intellectual surrender not to let the mind soar and spirit hope by hiding behind the the wall of logic, armour of reason and ramparts of rationalism - an "Oh gee, I can't see it, I can't prove it. Bloody hell! I can't imagine it! I can't think of it at all! It is too scary! All that hellfire! All the demons! All the angels! All the leprechauns! Gnomes! Goblins and most scary of all Santa Claus! And there could actually be an Entity bigger, smarter, greater, more powerful than man, than me out there?"

Ms. Susan Jacoby

What you wrote on the death of your loved ones and how you deal with it is moving.

My Eid El Fitr greetings to you.

Thank you and best regards
J

Jihadist:

Your comments are stange to me and I don't know what to make of them.

First, nuns here in the U.S. teach both boys and girls. Its not a case where nuns teach girls and priests teach boys. Whether it is an all-girls school, all-boys school, or co-ed school, nuns are teachers and priests are clergy.

There are other male orders that teach school, some of them are ordained priests and some are not. For example, Christian Brothers are teachers in some schools and but are not ordained priests. Jesuits, on the other hand, sometimes teach and are ordained priests.

Nuns orders are usually either teaching orders or nursing orders. I'm not aware of any other function they serve. I guess your favorite nun Mother Teresa belonged to a nursing order, in which case it was her function to care for the sick.

Perhaps if you sent your sons to a catholic school where they were taught by nuns you would understand my viewpoint better.

Finally, I don't know anyone who would call the pope "Lord." "Lord" is a term used to address Jesus in the liturgy of the mass. I can't imagine using it to address the pope. So your joke sounds very strange to my ear.

""Therefore I see reason to doubt either (1) that God is all powerful, (2) that God exists, or (3) that God is good."

I don't get your point. What is your point? I never said in my argument that God is all powerful, that God exists, or that God is good. I merely commented on the nature of suffering. Therefore, what is your criticism of me? I cannot tell."

Hmm, maybe I misunderstood your point. Your post above says that you believe in God. It also seems to argue that God exists, and to attempt to explain how the existence of God is compatible with suffering. Did I not read your post right?

My response was that the suffering that exists in the world is hard to reconcile with the idea of a good, all-powerful God.

You do believe in God ... so you do think that God is not all-powerful, or that He's not good? Or do you just reject my arguments about suffering in general?

Rick

I have an answer for you, percolating inside. Maybe I can write it out by tomorrow.

Dan

An anonymous person said:

"Therefore I see reason to doubt either (1) that God is all powerful, (2) that God exists, or (3) that God is good."

I don't get your point. What is your point? I never said in my argument that God is all powerful, that God exists, or that God is good. I merely commented on the nature of suffering. Therefore, what is your criticism of me? I cannot tell.

"I was just trying to explain how, in my opinion, and according to my own experiences, the nature of contrasting experience, makes suffering for all people, a necessry part of existence, necessary, not as a required rule, but necessary in order to exist at all."

I don't see why suffering is necessary. If God is all loving and all powerful, He can create a world without suffering, or at least a world without suffering that is pointless. I see a lot of suffering in the world that is pointless. Therefore I see reason to doubt either (1) that God is all powerful, (2) that God exists, or (3) that God is good.

Daniel makes a good point.

We are straying off topic, but not entirely. We are discussing religious beliefs after all. And religion is often co-opted by politicians for their own greedy, nefarious ends. After all, didn’t our Dear Leader and World Class Hypocrite in the White House march us into Iraq as instructed by God?

Hello Daniel,

I always enjoy your posts on these threads. You are a Christian, but are thoughtful, and recognize the foolishness of trying to convince others to acquire your beliefs.

Now, in response to my following question to Susan on another thread: ‘I take it that you do not believe that god exists. But, can you say that the likelihood that the universe spontaneously sprang into existence from nothing is greater than the likelihood that God exists?

Or, can you say that the likelihood that the universe has always existed on an infinite timeline, from negative infinity to the present time, is greater than the likelihood that God exists?’

You respond that such questions are inherently absurd, because if I understand you correctly, this information is forever locked away from humans, just as is similar information about the nature of God.

You may be right. I certainly never expect to have the answer to these questions in my life time, and perhaps no human will ever acquire this information. But we know that there is no greater urge ingrained in the very fabric of our being to seek answers to these questions: who are we, where did we come from, what are we doing here, etc.

It is no wonder that Susan did not respond. How could she? All we can say as atheists/agnostics is that I don’t know; but based on the evidence available to me, I don’t believe that God exists.

Just as you, I believe, have decided that you don’t know either, but you have always lived in a Christian family, and see no reason to change your beliefs.

I really don’t believe that we are that far apart.

You seem to have some ideas about atheists/agnostics attributing our, and the universe’s, existence to chance, that I don’t believe are correct. We believe that we and the universe are evolving according to laws of natural selection and other physical laws of nature; e.g. gravity, momentum, etc., that are understandable to a certain degree.

You look deeper and conclude that we do not truly understand the underlying cause of these laws; e.g. ‘force at a distance’ (gravity and electromagnetism) and never will. This knowledge is forever locked away from us. I am not ready to accept this. You, being a physicist, know that our greatest minds (astrophysicists and others) are striving mightily to answer these questions and are making progress with new theories such as String Theory and M-Theory. We will see what they find out, unfortunately probably not in our life time.

And also, since it is my expectation that this is the only life we will ever have (no afterlife and no reincarnation), I will probably never know the answer to these wonders. But as Susan says on another thread, I will just have to make the most of the knowledge that I can acquire and things that I can experience during this ever so brief lifetime.

It’s not all that bad a life is it?

Concerned The Christian Now Liberated:

Save all those thoughts about Muslims for your personal journal. The question here is,"do you believe in life after death?"

Rick,

Some statistics to back up your statement, "And our phony war on terror manufactures more terrorists than it get’s rid of.

???????????

And what religion do these "new" terrorists belong to??????

Apparently they can't wait to access the afterlife naturally!!!!!

And the Islamic terror theocracy of Iran??? Thoughts?????

Dear Anonymous

All people suffer, eventually. No one gets off the hook.

I am sorry that you did not understand my ideas.

I was not trying to prove the existence of God, nor try to explain to you what God is thinking.

I was just trying to explain how, in my opinion, and according to my own experiences, the nature of contrasting experience, makes suffering for all people, a necessry part of existence, necessary, not as a required rule, but necessary in order to exist at all.

"Providence has brought us forth into a ready-made world, ourselves, each, individually, ready-made, for the experiences that this world must impress upon us. Suffering is a part of this Providential package. We must take it, or leave it. Only we do not even have that choice; we must take it. Part of this Providence we may enjoy; part of it we must endure with existential nerve."

This doesn't make sense to me. If I were an all loving God, I would create a better universe (this is Russel's argument). Most likely, I would not make people suffer. If for some reason I decided suffering was necessary (to give people character, or sympathy, or whatever), I wouldn't make people suffer unless it was consistent with that reason. For example, if I decided that people must suffer sometimes because it makes them more sympathetic to other people's problems, then there would be no death among young children. That type of suffering does not make the young children any more sympathetic, and while it might make their parents more sympathetic, there would be easier ways to get them to be sympathetic.

This clearly is not the universe that we live in! We cannot discern a rhyme or reason behind why some people suffer and others don't. People who are sympathetic---people who are really, really good in almost every measure---experience really bad things.

The Christian response to this is usually that man cannot understand God's designs. But this to me is a very unsatisfactory argument. We can explain suffering by saying that God doesn't exist, or that He doesn't intervene in human affairs. So why should I accept your explanation, which doesn't explain suffering at all?

"-but they don't explain why."

This is true, and there are several possible responses to this. The first response is that there is really no "why". The universe does not have to explain itself to humans, and it need not be true that there are "whys" intelligible to humans behind every natural phenomenon. Our attempt to explain "whys" behind every natural phenomenon assumes that the universe thinks like we do, which isn't necessarily the case.

The other response is that there is some "why", but that doesn't necessarily mean that that "why" is God. It could be one of a million different things.

True, but there's no real evidence for this longer life (except for the books that BZ pointed to, which provide evidence for reincarnation rather than heaven, and though I find them intriguing I'm not yet convinced that they provide evidence for reincarnation either).

-ok.

Also, there's lots of suffering that cannot be rationally described as serving any greater good. For example, the death of a young child doesn't help the child in any way. One could argue that it helps the parent by teaching them some sort of lesson, but if God is all powerful he could teach the parent that lesson without killing a young kid. The same thing can be said about the things that I mentioned above, like the Holocaust. Did the Holocaust teach us a lesson? The only lesson that I can think of is that humans are hateful at times. But why did we need to learn that? And couldn't we have learned that by reading about one of the many other previous genocides? I don't see how a loving God could have let the Holocaust happen.

--I guess God could command us to be moral and we would be just like an apple the grows on a tree, but is that consistent with love? I mean we must have free will because it is a precondition for love. Love is what God wants us to receive and give. He can't do that if he commands us to be moral. We have to be free to choose love, not be commanded.

Newton's laws and all of the other scientific laws can be explained without resorting to God.

--They can't be explained but why are they even there? It did not have to be this way given all the possible outcomes.

"--You're alive and with the capacity to love and be loved while on this earth. You are here because He loves you. How are you not affected?"

"You are here because He loves you" just assumes the point we're trying to prove. Also, evolution can explain love and the other human emotions.

-but they don't explain why.

"--I think the only way to help you (I don't mean that in a condescending way!) is for you to begin to talk to the void and see if He is there."

I prayed twice a day for 4 years, and before that for once a day for about 3 years. And I also read the entire New Testament and parts of the Old Testament, and went to church. But I still have these doubts.

-doubts are okay.

David, as a Christian, takes a poke back at his antheistic rivals. I believe in God, and I also consider myself to be a Christian, but most of the self-appointed spokesmen for Christianity do not speak for me.

Most of them are jerks, ignorant jerks. Most of them are rude and obnoxious, and seek to impose, more than that, to force others to believe as they do; they insist on it, and they also expect, even demand respect, and preferential treatment, as Christians. That is how many Christian spokesmen appear.

A recent poll of young people under 25 asked them what do they most associate with Christians, and the most often cited reply was "being anti-gay." That is what people think of us, Christians, that is all we are. When atheist express such anger and hostility towards Christians, David, you should try to be aware of why this is; it is a reaction; a push-back. You seek to push very hard, yet you seem suprised that there could be a push-back. Don't be offended by what I am saying. I am trying to help you to understand the hostility that many people feel towards Christians; being petty and angry in reply is not helpful or useful.

Another commenter discussed suffering. No one knows why we suffer. Merely saying that it makes us better or gives us character indicates an ignorance of real suffering, which we all eventually experience; it minimizes the suffering of humanity, and undermines any of your subsequent arguements regarding suffering and Christianity.

Christianity seeks to provide an answer to the suffering of man. Yet, many people cannot accept the concept of a loving God in a world with so much suffering. “Why must we suffer?” is the cry of man. Even I have said, “my God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me.”

At the very best, it is a mystery. I do not believe that God has made a world of suffering. Rather, by Providence, we dwell in a world of contrasting experience, and only by this contrasting nature of experience can we experience anything at all.

Providence has brought us forth into a ready-made world, ourselves, each, individually, ready-made, for the experiences that this world must impress upon us. Suffering is a part of this Providential package. We must take it, or leave it. Only we do not even have that choice; we must take it. Part of this Providence we may enjoy; part of it we must endure with existential nerve.

By this Providence, we feel joy and sadness, each together, in contrast, and cannot know either without the other. We are aware of pain and pleasure, repose and struggle, light and darkness only because of their contrasting natures. By this Providence and the way it works and operates, and by our simple existence as part of it, we must suffer; suffering is a part of the way we exist in the world.

"I guess no one can answer the question without an ad hominem attack, so I'll try again:
To the Atheists:
What evidence would it take for you to believe in a loving God?"

I'm not sure about the loving part, but for evidence of just any god (in its many many versions), I would want multiple consistent observations by competent observers, physical or photographic evidence, and full documentation of the appearance, including evaluation of all natural phenomena that could account for what was experienced. Even then, depending on how good the evidence was, I might not exclude the possibiliy of a hoax or observational error.

You can ask the same question in regards to alien spacecraft, unicorns, bigfoot, or any other entity for which we have no evidence. Pick anything that you personally do not believe exists, and which you do not have an emotional stake in accepting/rejecting, and ask yourself: what kind of evidence would I have to have to change my opinion about the reality of X?

CTCNL,

You say:

‘And of course, you never admit that there are flaws in the foundations and founders of all religions especially Islam. But you also probably believe in "pwtfft"s as all Muslims are required to do. ’

Nope, I’m atheistic/agnostic, no pwtffts looking out for me.

As for your other points about the Sunni-Shiite conflict, you are correct of course, but so what. That’s not our concern. We are only responsible for our own actions and had best be getting off our dependency on Middle East oil. It just doesn’t look all that reliable as a future energy source.

And our phony war on terror manufactures more terrorists than it get’s rid of.

"

--Christians don't have an easy answer for suffering. But let's put it into perspective. If you believe in a loving eternal life with the Trinity in heaven and the community of believers, then your suffering on earth becomes completely insignificant. I'm simply saying suffering looks very different to a Christian because of our ultimate destination which is nothing short of bliss.

Secondly, lets acknowledge that suffering is painful and hurts, but it does usually bring out the greater good in an individual. We grow emotionally and spiritually from suffering. We step outside of ourselves and that is exactly what Christ of the Gospels is preaching. Suffering purifies... I know that may sound cruel to our modern sensibilities but nonetheless it makes us better people."

True, but there's no real evidence for this longer life (except for the books that BZ pointed to, which provide evidence for reincarnation rather than heaven, and though I find them intriguing I'm not yet convinced that they provide evidence for reincarnation either).

Also, there's lots of suffering that cannot be rationally described as serving any greater good. For example, the death of a young child doesn't help the child in any way. One could argue that it helps the parent by teaching them some sort of lesson, but if God is all powerful he could teach the parent that lesson without killing a young kid. The same thing can be said about the things that I mentioned above, like the Holocaust. Did the Holocaust teach us a lesson? The only lesson that I can think of is that humans are hateful at times. But why did we need to learn that? And couldn't we have learned that by reading about one of the many other previous genocides? I don't see how a loving God could have let the Holocaust happen.

"--I think Newton's laws are a pretty amazing discovery and lets face it, it didn't have to be this way. I think the valence structure of carbon is amazing. I too think the cones in the back of my retina that send millions of impulses down the optic nerve per second to allow me to look into the eyes of my wife are pretty amazing. I think the existence of these ordinary things are spiritual and cumulatively reveal Someone who wants me to love and know him, be it through my wife or through looking at a mountain peak in solitude."

Newton's laws and all of the other scientific laws can be explained without resorting to God. You're arguing here for intelligent design. I don't really feel like arguing against intelligent design here because many others have done so already. Wikipedia has a great entry on the subject.

"--You're alive and with the capacity to love and be loved while on this earth. You are here because He loves you. How are you not affected?"

"You are here because He loves you" just assumes the point we're trying to prove. Also, evolution can explain love and the other human emotions.

"--I think the only way to help you (I don't mean that in a condescending way!) is for you to begin to talk to the void and see if He is there."

I prayed twice a day for 4 years, and before that for once a day for about 3 years. And I also read the entire New Testament and parts of the Old Testament, and went to church. But I still have these doubts.

"But for me to ascribe to atheism I would have to hear a cogent philosophical argument as to how materialism can account for the many internal contradictions it faces. The more I look into it the more it seems to me that materialism just doesn't add up. Materialism alone can't account for many processes which operate in the natural world."

BZ, I think your posts are very interesting. But can you describe these problems or provide some kind of link to something that describes them?

BZ got upset with me because I did not acknowlege his list of books as scientific proof that conciousness continues after death. All I did was express skeptism that there is scientific proof of this. If there is proof show me the proof. Don't give me a list of books about philosophy and anecdotal stories. Just give the example of the proof.

I am not trying to belittle his or anyone's believe in God or the supernatural--I am just correcting the mis-statement that there is scientific proof for such things. Belief is something different than scientific proof. Skepticism is the mark of science. Any proof should easily overcome any skepticism. If it cannot, then it is not proof.

If someone believes in God and an afterlife, that is valid; no one can tell you what you believe or do not believe, but it is a mis-statement to say that there is scientific proof. And it is mis-leading to say that scientists are part of an anti-relgious conspiracy to suppress the scientific findings that prove an afterlife. If there were such proof, I think everyone, including scientists, would be very pleased.

Even a very well thought-out philosophical argument, which seems air-tight in its logic, is not proof; it is philosophy. Philosophy is fine, but it is not scientific proof. Scientists do not claim to know everything with scientific precision; scientists view the world, like all human beings, according to a multitude of philosophies, and scientists practice many and varied religions.

Rick,

Hmmm, so there is a substantial Muslim/Arab lobby effort in Washington. Glad to see you have come to grips with that.

And for some reason, you fail to address the "before Israel" Sunni-Shiite conflicts. Said conflicts prevent humanitarian and mega energy projects. Said conflicts also use Israel as a scapegoat for rationalizing terrorist activities, activities which continue to assist in keeping the price of oil and our taxes high.

("Al-Sistani was apparently referring to Abdullah bin Jabrain, a key member of Saudi Arabia's clerical establishment, who last month joined a chorus of other senior figures from the hardline Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam that regards Shiites as infidels.

Bin Jabrain described Shiites as "the most vicious enemy of Muslims." CNN)

And of course, you never admit that there are flaws in the foundations and founders of all religions especially Islam.

But you also probably believe in "pwtfft"s as all Muslims are required to do.

There is a basic misunderstanding among the religious folks. They think, if you don't believe in "god" (nobody ever produced a satisfactory definition of what that word may mean!), you must be a dirty materialist, soulless, cold. (Ask Ann Coulter!)

Everything that is, is. That's what we call nature, and it includes the vast parts of it we don't know, we don't know yet or we possible will never know. However, we know more today than 3000 years ago. So, on a simple logical level, a "supernatural" entity is completely unnecessary: There is enough stuff available we don't know within nature!

The unknown parts of what "is" all belong to nature, of course. The wish for a supernatural level comes mostly from people who have a very shallow notion of nature, which they regard as "materialist". Anybody who has occupied his mind just a little bit with the "secrets" of nature, down to quantum mechanics or 4-dimensional time-space, knows, that WITHIN nature we arrive at notions we can posit, calculate, speculate upon, even prove and use (atomic energy) without even "knowing" exactly WHAT they are. We know, however, they are natural phenomena, although their essence exceeds our wildest imaginations. Einsteins relativity theory belongs to nature, of course, although it is more difficult to imagine than a simple god.

We don't even "know" what light is (corpuscles and waves are, in our logic, mutually exclusive hypotheses). We only know that our brain reacts to a certain spectrum of wave lenghts, producing an "impression" of colors. The colors "are" not: Our brains produce them.

Of course, everybody can feel free to call "supernatural" all the vast fields of nature yet unknown, maybe unknowable to us. But that still is not positing an "intentional god", a supernatural being who suspends physical laws for a moment to please our wishes. In reality it is the human mind which makes up gods since the beginning of known history. There is no other conceivable source to make up gods than our minds! As they develop, so the god notion has changed and continues to change, in spite of the childish biblical "eternal truth" apologists.

There is a guy around these threads here who literally believes that god "stopped" the sun so that Joshua could kill all the inhabitants of Jericho and that the Grand Canyon was formed by the biblical flood 6000 years ago. Such infantilism disgraces every serious truth seeker.

BZ,

Thank you for your comments. You and I seem to be on the same wavelength regarding both the nature of consciousness as it is being determined through quantum mechanics and the nature of modern materialist science. You many already be familiar with some of the following references but I wanted to add them here for you and others to consider before they make up their minds one way or the other. If you are interested in the current philosophical thought surrounding the evolution of consciousness combined with both the experiential traditions such as Sufism, Buddhism, etc. and modern psychology, I suggest the integral philosopher Ken Wilbur and consciousness guru Andrew Cohen. Both of these forward thinkers contribute to a magazine, "What is Enlightenment"
http://www.wie.org
For a view into the fascinating world of the role of consciousness within the enigmatic theory of quantum mechanics, I suggest "The Self Aware Universe" by Amit Goswami.

Of course, religious institutions of many types suffer from the same attachments to a self entity that cause individual humans to suffer on a daily basis. By promoting their self interest, organizations and individuals separate themselves from all "others". Until our species comes to the full realization that we are not autonomous "things" but instead only part of all things (both physically and consciously and both in finite time and in eternal timelessness), we will be sidetracked from the path toward the ultimate goal of universal peaceful collective consciousness existing timelessly in the transcendent ultimate dimension. For an excellent website explaining the timeless nature of our universe from the viewpoint of modern theoretical physics, please go to:
http://www.everythingforever.com

If one looks deeply into their existence, one can determine that humans are not separate entities from the rest of the universe. In other words, we as physical beings are intimately connected to other “things” in the universe. We cannot survive without water, oxygen, vegetables, fruit, etc. and, therefore, we are a “part” of the “whole” Our ability to distinguish ourselves from other humans or animals or plants is an evolutionary strategy for self survival. But when you combine our intellectual abilities of conceptualization with our self awareness, we “create” a complex selfish entity. Within our thoughts over our lifetimes, we create an entity of self that attempts to protect itself from others and attach itself to people and to things. In Christian terminology this selfishness is defined as sin. Selfish acts and thoughts always cause the selfish person to suffer. Also, since in true reality we are part of all things, when we are selfless in thoughts and acts, we are one with “god“. Is this not essentially what history’s great spiritual teachers were teaching?

Could “god” be the collective consciousness of all space and time that exists in the transcendent order (see Einstein’s absolute space-time, David Bohm’s implicate order, Stephen Hawking’s time has no boundary proposal, etc.) which is actually “created” in the explicate order by conscious beings’ experiences. In other words do our impermanent conscious experiences in the historical dimension create the “god” of the transcendent ultimate dimension. While “god” may be irrelevant in Buddhist thought and practice, (especially as an interceding being) doesn’t the collective consciousness of the ultimate dimension (Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s terminology) lead to a similar transcendent, universal, absolute “being”?

We must continue to strive toward a future of inclusion instead of division in order to continue our quest toward being fully evolved creatures within our universe. While our divisions as individuals and as groups have served our struggles to survive in a hostile world, we have now evolved to the point where we must strive to educate ourselves about our true nature as our great spiritual teachers have attempted to impart to us. If we do not unite together with the understanding of our interconnectedness and mutual interdependence in a rapidly shrinking world, we may not survive. May we one day all find peace in every moment and compassion and unconditional love for all.

As theoretical physicist David Bohm stated:” “Ultimately, all moments are really one. Therefore now is eternity" Or as theoretical physicist Brian Greene says: "Just as we envision all of space as really being out there, as really existing, we should also envision all of time as really being out there, as really existing too."

And finally to quote the great American Christian minister Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

"What evidence would it take for you to believe in a loving God?"

I think this is an excellent question. I'd like to ask it back of the theists: What would it take for you to reconsider your belief in God?

But back to your question. I want some kind of evidence. Right now, the evidence against God as I see it is this: First, there's no proof that God has ever intervened in human affairs. There are a number of historical events that I think are just too difficult to explain if you believe in God. Why would a loving God allow Europe to lose a third of its population in the Hundred Years War? Why would He allow Rome to fall, setting back Western civilization a thousand years? How could he allow the plague, the Holocaust, or the deaths caused by Mao Zedong's failed experiment in communist agriculture?

--Christians don't have an easy answer for suffering. But let's put it into perspective. If you believe in a loving eternal life with the Trinity in heaven and the community of believers, then your suffering on earth becomes completely insignificant. I'm simply saying suffering looks very different to a Christian because of our ultimate destination which is nothing short of bliss.

Secondly, lets acknowledge that suffering is painful and hurts, but it does usually bring out the greater good in an individual. We grow emotionally and spiritually from suffering. We step outside of ourselves and that is exactly what Christ of the Gospels is preaching. Suffering purifies... I know that may sound cruel to our modern sensibilities but nonetheless it makes us better people.

Second, there's no scientific evidence of any spiritual force. We have scientific proof of a ton of things that aren't easy to observe, like the four fundamental forces of the universe, or that time is relative. If God exists, why do we have no measurements of him?

--I think Newton's laws are a pretty amazing discovery and lets face it, it didn't have to be this way. I think the valence structure of carbon is amazing. I too think the cones in the back of my retina that send millions of impulses down the optic nerve per second to allow me to look into the eyes of my wife are pretty amazing. I think the existence of these ordinary things are spiritual and cumulatively reveal Someone who wants me to love and know him, be it through my wife or through looking at a mountain peak in solitude.

As I see it, there's no evidence that God has ever intervened in human affairs, and there's no evidence that God is doing anything in the world currently. Thus, the only way God could exist would be if he never intervenes in the world, and is invisible to us despite the fact that our scientific instruments are so advanced that we can measure things like the weak nuclear force. I just don't understand why I'm supposed to believe in something that has never affected the world, and that we cannot measure.

--You're alive and with the capacity to love and be loved while on this earth. You are here because He loves you. How are you not affected?

Look, I want to believe. I really wish that there were an all powerful, benevolent deity who watches out for us, plans our lives, and knows what's best. I hope there's some sort of afterlife, and that it's a happy one. But I just don't see any evidence for it, and see a lot of evidence to the contrary. But hey, enlighten me.

--I think the only way to help you (I don't mean that in a condescending way!) is for you to begin to talk to the void and see if He is there.

CTCNL,

Yes, there is certainly no lack of lobbyists of all flavors in Washington D.C. since ‘what passes for democracy in America is for sale to the highest bidder...’

The Saudi (and other) corrupt leaders of the region’s days are numbered. A people’s revolt is in the works. This is all the more reason for the U.S. and others to get serious about alternate energy.

And yes again, that is the problem: In 1948 the UN gave better than half of Palestine to the ‘State of Israel’. But it was not the UN’s to give. Of course the Arabs of the region will never accept that, nor should they. ‘This aggression shall not stand’, said George H. W. Bush of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 that accelerated the illegal and immoral immigration of the Zionist Jews into Palestine was the most dreadful decision of the last century.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".

The UN partition of 1947 that enabled the establishment of the ‘State of Israel’ was the next disastrous decision. Truman new better but caved in to pressure in an election year to public opinion and the political attacks from the Republican candidate Dewey. So much for: “The buck stops here”.

These dreadful decisions are only rivaled by the disastrous decision of this century to invade and occupy Iraq. All for our unquenchable thirst for Middle East oil, and the Neocon Israeli lobby pulling the strings of our government.

Can you imagine how much better off would be our economy and national security, if we had spent the trillion dollars squandered on these dastardly deeds, on our infrastructure and alternative energy sources instead?

As for covering hundreds of square miles with solar panels, I imagine that is not cost effective or feasible. Else we would be doing that, wouldn’t we? Maybe not, those dastardly lobbyists at work again!

I consider myself a practicing Christian who tries to stay open minded and who is rather liberal in a lot of ways. However, I am seeing an unattractive pattern in atheist blog-logic. The default positions seem to often 1. Blame God for deaths of children. 2. Point to some horrible act committed by people who happen to be Christian. (Roman Catholic sex scandle, etc.) It is almost assured that any antheist writing will contain one or both of these extremes.

Dr. Spick

I might believe if..

If God arranged the clouds,against a bright blue sky one day,to form his whispy face with white moustaches and flowing white beard,and winked down from above,and said,
"Hello down there.I'm God.I just want you to know that I am in my heaven and all is well with the world.Jesus says Hi,and keep the Faith".

--that would be pretty cool.

Well that would be kinda persuasive,unless it turned out to be a new kind of virtual reality trick developed by scientists.
I'd believe if God arranged the stars one night to spell out "Greetings from God and the gang,everyone up here is enjoying their death.Wish you were here."
---yeah that would convert millions.

For a God that should be no problem.
Or if God showed up on CNN,being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer.Or if God and a bunch of Angels came flying through the sky one day just to wave and prove he was real.

--I guess God would reveal himself totally to Wolf, but how exactly could he offer us satisfactory answers to why children die in cancer wards of hospitals. I don't know if he could ever give us a better answer than inspired scripture.

Or if God beamed himself into my living room,or magically appeared in Times Square.
Because we are humans,we have to imagine that the answer to the great riddle of existence and the cosmos is a godperson, kinda like us.Who thinks and feels and listens to prayers etc.How simple minded!
God is just as likely to be a great lump of rock as in 2001,Space Odyssey.But is even more likely to be simply a word for the great mystery of existence;a word for that which we cannot know.

--I certainly can't prove the existence of God to you. However, I would tell you that the God of the bible reflects our deepest desires as human beings (Word of God or fairytale). Christ shows us that all we really want deep down is to love completely and be loved completely. Psychologists 2000 years after Christ's death would tell us this is the deepest yearning of the human heart. And yet Christ tells us this perfectly through the parables and through his complete giving of himself. Its worth thinking about that the complete and total love given by Christ, and commanded of us to do for others is exactly what modern pyschology now tells us we want...? Coincidence?

PS. To those of you who demand evidence, be aware that evidence (of any kind) is unlikely to grab you by the lapels and compel your attention. You have to look for it, it's not going to come to you; that's a lazy and complacent stance.

If these questions are important to you (and they must be, or else you wouldn't be reading this board) then go looking for answers. Use your mind; it's your greatest asset. Even if you don't necessarily find the answers you're looking for, you're sure to find other rewards along the way.

This same advice applies equally to those who already believe in God.

Anonymous writes,

"I'd like to ask it back of the theists: What would it take for you to reconsider your belief in God?"

It's a good question, isn't it?

I would characterize my position as theist: I believe there are higher intelligences than human, that consciousness survives physical death, and that reincarnation is possible either in this world or in other realities. I believe that consciousness shapes the material world in ways that science can never fully appreciate, and that consciousness is an intrinsic property of the cosmos. (I'm not sure this qualifies the cosmos as "alive", because that would presuppose the possibility of it being "dead". I don't believe in death, only change.) I do not believe that the cosmos as a whole will act on my behalf, and thus I do not believe in a personal God; however, I do believe that there are countless noncorporeal sentient beings which are capable of acting as agents to influence my life and those around me. The religion which comes closest to my belief system is Tibetan Buddhism, but my personal philosophy came first; I did not arrive at these beliefs due to a professed allegiance with any particular religion.

My reasons for this belief are drawn from many sources.

First, I have made a deep philosophical study of the problem of intentionality, and concluded that it is difficult to account for intentionality in purely materialist terms. In a nutshell, it's the First Cause problem: for reality to exist, it requires an observer.

Second, there is the argument by analogy: if spiders are smarter than bacteria, and lizards are smarter than spiders, and baboons are smarter than lizards, and we are smarter than baboons, then why should we suppose that humans are the highest form of intelligence? It stands to reason that there may be meta-intelligences which we are no more aware of than a single blood cell is aware of our emergent whole. The whole meta- problem is that we cannot appreciate larger systems we may be a part of.

I do not believe in the "supernatural". I believe that all of existence is governed by emergent natural laws which cannot be superceded by miracles. However, I do believe that these laws are far beyond our comprehension, and many of them are unresearchable using scientific methods because they involve the actions of sentient agents, and are therefore not repeatable or measurable. (If you believe science is the answer to everything, then you need to take a closer look at Godel's Paradox and its philosophical implications.)

I don't trace my beliefs to one single life-changing event; rather, this is a philosophical position I arrived at after a lifetime of seeking and constantly questioning what I believe. I am always open to the possibility of being mistaken in my beliefs. But for me to ascribe to atheism I would have to hear a cogent philosophical argument as to how materialism can account for the many internal contradictions it faces. The more I look into it the more it seems to me that materialism just doesn't add up. Materialism alone can't account for many processes which operate in the natural world.

Convictions beat even sensory (visual, auditive) evidence. That is the basis for "belief" religions. Therefore there is no evidence conceivable which could convince somebody to give up his faith.

I teach a musical instrument. I have had several instances where a student of another professor "believed" something that was physically illogical and avowedly untenable.

I showed and explaned to him the simple facts, which he could perform easily himself.

Yet, at the end, he said that I must be wrong because his beloved teacher told him otherwise. He insinuated that I conjured up something.

That is faith, isn't it? And it wasn't even about religion!

I also have to say that the comments here are instructive to me to read other people who also want to understand.And do not need a god to be happy.It is good that so many free people are allowed to think in a free manner about Islam and other religions. It helps me very much.

I was once very religious.I prayed five times every day.I loved the Mosque.But I was troubled by the terrorism.It made me ill.I knew it was sinful.I had to look deeper into my religion.I compared it with other religions.I read books.I shaved off my beard.
I read philosophy.I read the existentialists.
I read Hume and John Stuart Mill.I began to understand.The more I read the more I changed.Now I see things more clearly.
Either there are dozens of gods or no gods.Wherever you go,people have different ideas about such things.This makes me distrust them all.
I am beginning to think there is no real god,and I have stopped praying.I feel free and happy to live my life in a new and interesting way trying to learn and grow,but my friends are not all pleased with me too much.That is the hard part.It is sometimes difficult.But I follow my head.

"What evidence would it take for you to believe in a loving God?"

I think this is an excellent question. I'd like to ask it back of the theists: What would it take for you to reconsider your belief in God?

But back to your question. I want some kind of evidence. Right now, the evidence against God as I see it is this: First, there's no proof that God has ever intervened in human affairs. There are a number of historical events that I think are just too difficult to explain if you believe in God. Why would a loving God allow Europe to lose a third of its population in the Hundred Years War? Why would He allow Rome to fall, setting back Western civilization a thousand years? How could he allow the plague, the Holocaust, or the deaths caused by Mao Zedong's failed experiment in communist agriculture?

Second, there's no scientific evidence of any spiritual force. We have scientific proof of a ton of things that aren't easy to observe, like the four fundamental forces of the universe, or that time is relative. If God exists, why do we have no measurements of him?

As I see it, there's no evidence that God has ever intervened in human affairs, and there's no evidence that God is doing anything in the world currently. Thus, the only way God could exist would be if he never intervenes in the world, and is invisible to us despite the fact that our scientific instruments are so advanced that we can measure things like the weak nuclear force. I just don't understand why I'm supposed to believe in something that has never affected the world, and that we cannot measure.

Look, I want to believe. I really wish that there were an all powerful, benevolent deity who watches out for us, plans our lives, and knows what's best. I hope there's some sort of afterlife, and that it's a happy one. But I just don't see any evidence for it, and see a lot of evidence to the contrary. But hey, enlighten me.

I might believe if..

If God arranged the clouds,against a bright blue sky one day,to form his whispy face with white moustaches and flowing white beard,and winked down from above,and said,
"Hello down there.I'm God.I just want you to know that I am in my heaven and all is well with the world.Jesus says Hi,and keep the Faith".
Well that would be kinda persuasive,unless it turned out to be a new kind of virtual reality trick developed by scientists.
I'd believe if God arranged the stars one night to spell out "Greetings from God and the gang,everyone up here is enjoying their death.Wish you were here."
For a God that should be no problem.
Or if God showed up on CNN,being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer.Or if God and a bunch of Angels came flying through the sky one day just to wave and prove he was real.
Or if God beamed himself into my living room,or magically appeared in Times Square.
Because we are humans,we have to imagine that the answer to the great riddle of existence and the cosmos is a godperson, kinda like us.Who thinks and feels and listens to prayers etc.How simple minded!
God is just as likely to be a great lump of rock as in 2001,Space Odyssey.But is even more likely to be simply a word for the great mystery of existence;a word for that which we cannot know.

Darn, considering the amount of commenting being done by The Jihadist, she must have feasted well during the feasting and fasting of Ramadan.

Again, nothing about the flaws of Islam to include those of the terror theocracy of Iran, the flaws which on a 24/7 basis are sending many Iraqis to a pre-mature trip to the afterlife.

I believe in death after life.
Its my experience that everything that lives dies.
No exceptions.Death is death.Get over it.

"My father's rejection of all that is called religious belief was not,as
many might suppose,primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds for
it were moral, more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe
that a world so full of evil was the work of a God combining infinite
power with perfect goodness and righteousness.
His aversion to religion,in the sense usually attached to the term,was of
the same kind with that of Lucretius; he regarded it with the feelings due
not to mere mental delusion but to a great moral evil.
It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty to
allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings
respecting religion;and he impressed on me from the first that the manner in
which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was
known."
John Stuart Mill. Quoted in Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not A
Christian",pp118

I guess no one can answer the question without an ad hominem attack, so I'll try again:

To the Atheists:

What evidence would it take for you to believe in a loving God?

Interesting essay Susan.

Of course there is no life after death.Just death.
If there was no death,there would be no religion.
The fear of death,for oneself as well as for loved ones,
is religion's bread and butter.
The church and the mosque and the synagogue offer eternal life for believers only.
Hell for everyone else.
Like other posters,I find this transparently ludicrous,
and I'm continually amazed that people actually believe it.I can only attribute it to fear.

Actually,the phrase "loving God"makes me wanna gag.
It's so cloyingly schmaltzy;so Hallmark;so sentimentally sick.

HEAVEN;

What would it take for me to believe in a loving God?
That's easy. I'd say about 15 years of indoctrination,then I would believe in God.

Bur which God I'd believe in would depend on where I get my indoctrination.
If I get it in Utah,I will believe in the Mormon God.
If I get it in Iran,I will believe in the Muslim God.
If I get it in Ireland,I will believe in the Catholic God.
If,in India,I will believe in a Hindu God.
If in the deep south,I will believe the southern baptist God,and so on and so on.
But as I was never indoctrinated into believing in a God,I naturally reject that hypothesis.

Heaven: you ask...

"How about some of these agnostics here tell me what it would take for them to believe? What would you need to believe in a loving God? What proof would you need?
"I mean you are highly critical of those with faith but what would change your mind?"

Well...speaking for myself,to believe in anykind of god,I'd need a little evidence,if not proof.
Even if something showed that there was a supernatural world,it would make it easier to make the stretch that a god existed.But there's not even that.
To anyone looking for the truth about existence and the cosmos,religion really offers nothing,
except some ancient hocus pocus passed down to us by our cavemen ancestors. We know so much more than the ancients ever dreamed of.
Anyone seeking that kind of information looks to the great thinkers,the philosophers,the scientists;certainly not to religion.

Uh, which god is that Heaven?
Ra? Zeus? Yahweh, Allah, Ganesha, Arinna ... and on and on and on and on.
Which god are you talking about, which one is your god? What about people who believe in the wrong god, are they worse off than someone who doesn't believe in any of them?
Were you just lucky to be born in a country that believes in the right god, those other-believers are just screwed?

I'll tell you this, I'm not highly critical of the believer so much as I'm astounded at the gullibility and credulity of the believers I encounter. I ask again: why is your god the right god and everybody else's god the wrong god? And which god would you believe in if you were born in another part of the world?

just incredible.

That should have read "I SWEAR I'm coming up there and hunting you down." But that gives me another idea. Make my headstone say "Here lies Chip Matthews, Ded at the age of 87" and add "It's D E A D you morons!" to the tape player.

I don't believe in life after death, but I wouldn't mind being pleasantly surprised. Truly it's not something I spend any time thinking about or even hoping for. Why bother? I can't think of anything that could possibly be less stressful than no longer existing. That has to be the least frightening thing I could possibly imagine. Now dying is another story. No one wants pain and suffering, but death? I'm quite alright with that. I think life is more meaningful when you know there are no cosmic do-overs.

While we're on the subject of death, I have to say that we really need to get over our bizarre dead body fetish. When I die, do whatever the hell you want with my body. It's not like I'm going to know. Fill it full of candy and let children hit it with sticks for all I care. I'm dead! Wasting perfectly good land so we can fill it full of human carcasses like some bizarre cadaver farm should be illegal. Make food out of me and feed me to starving people. Whatever. If I go down in a plane crash to the bottom of the ocean don't let anyone waste time or money trying to retrieve my remains. Leave me there. I'm of more use to the fish. If you do retrieve my body, at least make a lamp out of it or something, and if you insist on burying me then please try and do something more creative than a patch of grass with a headstone. A par four miniature golf hole with a windmill might be nice, or maybe an animatronic arm activated by motion sensors that pops out of the dirt and grabs the ankles of passers by, or maybe a solar powered tape player that plays random snippets like "Did I leave the iron on?" or "If you let that dog pee on my grave one more time I sear I'm coming up there and hunting you down!"

How about some of these agnostics here tell me what it would take for them to believe? What would you need to believe in a loving God? What proof would you need?

I mean you are highly critical of those with faith but what would change your mind?

I can understand having doubts, especially about an experience as controversial as the afterlife. But the fact that you have not experienced something does not prove its non-existence. Science is, in general, a very poor measure of any kind of spiritual belief.

But, what would happen if you talked to people who believe in the afterlife as the result of a near-death experience? Are they delusional because their experience-derived beliefs do not fit into your understanding of the world? Do you dismiss the experiences they had outside of the lab without having clear, scientific reasons for doing so? Should we start killing people in a neutral environment and then trying to revive them in a search for evidence of the afterlife?

Skepticism should not be mistaken for science. By parading your beliefs around as absolute, you are no better than the most zealot evangelical. Perhaps that is why you attract so much attention in this forum. You belong here – but then again, that is just my opinion.

By the way, nice transition from the Afterlife to homeless nuns. I especially like the indignation you have that the church did not fire all the leadership; that each and every one of the bastards above janitor-rank just HAD to know what was going on. Skip the Inquisition and take ALL their heads. I am also amazed that you think that the millions being paid out to victims would only affect the guilty. The guilty do not have anything close to the millions being demanded in reparations. And so we make the innocent pay for the guilty.

Daniel writes,

"These are just books people have written on the subjects. Even if they are scholarly and well-thought out, that is not the same as science."

You were better off with your earlier argument, that you were simply unaware of the evidence. Now you've strayed into dangerous new territory: dismissing out of hand any evidence that does not fit your preexisting beliefs. You simply refuse to look.

This has been a consistent hurdle facing researchers on the survival of consciousness: the refusal of supposedly scientific people to look at the evidence, no matter how carefully it has been gathered. When confronted with data which threaten their belief system, such people will simply retreat into their ideological shell and refuse to acknowledge the existence of the data -- which is precisely what they accuse people of faith of doing.

A good example of this tendency can be found in the writings of philosopher John Searle:

"Our problem is not that somehow we have failed to come up with a convincing proof of the existence of God or that the hypothesis of an afterlife remains in serious doubt, it is rather that in our deepest reflections we cannot take such opinions seriously. When we encounter people who claim to believe such things, we may envy them the comfort and security they claim to derive from these beliefs, but at bottom we remain convinced that either they have not heard the news or they are in the grip of faith" (Searle, J. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, pp. 90-91.)

I hold up Searle as an example because he is no ordinary scientist. He is a leading philosopher and a major contributor to cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Searle visited India and delivered a lecture on the mind-body problem in philosophy. Several people told him that his theory of the mind was invalid because they "personally had existed in their earlier lives as frogs or elephants, etc. I did not think, 'Here is evidence for an alternative world view,' or even 'Who knows, perhaps they are right.' And my insensitivity was much more than mere cultural provincialism: Given what I know about how the world works, I could not regard their views as serious candidates for truth." (Ibid, pg. 91)

This is an astonishing position for any philosopher to take, let alone a leading figure such as Searle: he is actually stating that certain views just cannot be taken seriously, and that therefore no response is required. This is not a *scientific* argument; is it *scientistic* argument. Scientism is not science; it is a belief system which cloaks itself in the mantle of science to intimidate its opponents. Scientism uses the language of science as a kind of touchstone to conceal what is essentially an argument from belief, making it sound convincing as if it were a real scientific argument. This has been typical of the kind of response directed toward any investigator who dares to take survival of consciousness seriously and subject it to real scientific scrutiny: if the investigator concludes that there may be something to the hypothesis, then suddently that person becomes a pseudoscientific lunatic whose views can be safely discounted.

I rejected the groupthink of fundamentalist Christianity when I was a young man. I equally reject the scientistic groupthink of skepticism. The latter groupthink may be even worse, in its way: one might say that the Christian fundamentalists simply don't know any better, and are responding to the mores they've grown up with. The advocates of science claim to be better than this, and hence commit the additional sin of hypocrisy.

Having been through and seen a number of deaths among my family, friends, colleagues and strangers, like Ms. Jacoby said, it is how we live and remember the dead. As for the afterlife, if one fears it, one must be lving in a way one knows one should not.

Lepidopteryx

Merry meet. Like you, I like best buffet style, free seating entertaining - eat what you want and whatever amount you want. Very stress free. :)

Daniel

Hello again. That post was for Norrie Hoyt. He posed some points and I responded to him. We've been bandying with one another on and off. I learn a lot from and have great respect for him. He has a very good sense of humour and give as good as he got in our mutual joshings.

Surely by now you would have known that I am an insufferable, righteous, jingoistic, moralistic, arrogant, blinkered believer and religious supremacist of the Invisible Friend, and..... the Champion of the Supernatural! The Sword of Islam! The Defender of the Faith! The Scourge of God! The Islamic Menace! Former member of Ladies Against Women! Current Member of Flat Earth Society!

Is "lighten up" a load too heavy for anyone to bear?

RB-Freedom-For-All and Dr. R.P

Hello. I share what Ms Susan Jacoby said about nuns and emphatise with them. I had my primary and secondary school education in a convent. The nuns don't seem to be dysfunctional. They seem to know what they are doing and why, and did everything with vim and passion. The nuns were very committed educators and an all girl convent school can be hell for teachers. No boys to modify the girls' behaviors to be "feminine" or "ladylike" and the competition among girls in class and in sports are ruthless and relentless. So, kudos to the nuns.

God bless the nuns who handled their Muslim charges with raging hormones such peppy songs like "When the Saints Comes Marching In", and tell jokes like:

A Mother Superior was entertaining the Pope to tea. In her state of excitement mixed with reverence, she asked the Pope his preference on sugar - "How many lords my lump?"

Surely that is not merely a verbal fluffing, but Mother Superior could also be asking the Pope a serious philosophical and theological question.

The nuns seems to be at the bottom of the church hierachical chain. I do feel for my former teachers and their plight. They, ironically, made this Muslim more aware of the plight of others by their examples.

We send our only daughter to a convent school. She's fine, enjoyed classwork and relish sports. But we did not send our two sons to a Catholic run boy's school. My husband has some reservations about priests and boys that Ms. Jacoby spoke about that cost the church hundreds of millions and the nuns their places.

I honestly can't say I know what goes on in the private lives of nuns, or what they are really thinking of and about. What Mother Teresa went through in life and how she was flogged for her personal doubts on her faith after her death made me think about the nuns who taught me, and in some ways, raised me after my parents.

The instance of Mother Teresa was the first time I realised that those who don't believe in the afterlife can certainly make or raise "hell" on the departed that stinks to high heaven. What a hellish "afterlife" Mother Teresa has had to endure in the media and the blogs inflicted by the still living.

And non-believers wonder why believers need an afterlife where they will be judged by a God that is not as petty, as unforgiving, and as small-minded as man.

Terry

Thanks for that bit on Jack Kerouc. I never knew that. I love Kerouc's "On the Road" I stole from my father. My parents are "baby boomers" with quite "psychedelic" tie-dyed t-shirts and deliberately ragged bell bottoms jeans they had on in the photos of their youth. My dad the Deadhead, my mum the Joni Mitchell fan, even in the other side of the world. Ewww..! LOL

Baby boomers are the same the world over in their taste for clothes, music and being anti-Vietnam war. Makes their offsprings seem and look really boring, eh? In some ways, I envy them and their Age of Aquarius generation - hang out, be loose and all that:)

Thank you and best regards

J

People that post anonymously have no credibility - are you a famous person, afraid of your own name, or just doubtful of your particular position on the topic?? Go ahead, take a chance and stand up for once - own it!!!

An early (1940) and classic work representing 'channeling' (much like the Seth books) is worth a read -'The Unobstructed Universe' by Stewart Edward White - the author communicated with his deceased wife Betty through a noted voice medium - from 'the afterworld'.

She exclaimed that she would not be happy there without her beloved dogs - who were very much themselves even in the ethereal realm. Curiously, whenever I dream of animals, it's with great affection and attachment - although I haven't had a pet in over 30 years. It does seem like a reunion whenever I run into critters.

Communicating with the dead really started in the USA in earnest with the Fox sisters back in the 1830's - the 'poltergeist' phenomena that these girls experienced in turn gave rise to Spiritualism and a wide-spread, deep-seated interest in communicating with the dead.

Of course this has recently turned into a TV seance & book phenomenon that Opra herself couldn't have marketed with greater success.

This certainly tends to cast doubt & discredit interest in the field, but makes a hell of a lot of money for those entertainers so 'engaged' as mediums. It's all show business - both here and the hereafter.

Anon (Rick?),

First, I am waiting for the Saudis:

"And if Saudi Arabia covered ~20% of the their deserts with solar panels, they could make a heaven on earth by supplying almost all the electricity needs for all of the Mideast and do it cheaply. (National Geographic Solar Power project reviews). One wonders why they don't. Hmmm, the old Sunni-Shiite conflict?? One can do the same thing in the USA by covering 10% of Nevada.

"At present levels of efficiency, it would take about 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) of solar panels—an area bigger than Vermont—to satisfy all of the United States' electricity needs. But the land requirement sounds more daunting than it is: Open country wouldn't have to be covered. All those panels could fit on less than a quarter of the roof and pavement space in cities and suburbs."

http://green.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/powering-the-future.html?nav=FEATURES

With respect to an afterlife, I, in general, side with Professors Borg and Crossan (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo) and Schillebeeckx (Hell). They have looked for scriptural evidence and found none.

No one can truly understand the supernatural unless they themselves have experienced such horror! There is NO experience as horrifying as an encounter with the dead! For those who have encountered this life changing event understands that there is much more to life then what we presume to know!!!

I largely became a Catholic after witnessing first hand demonic episodes, which is enough to drive anyone to repent and seek refuge in the Lord! Death is the last of our worries.

Most atheists believe that Catholics are fearful of death! That is simply untrue. I fear not death, nor man. 1 John 4:18-19 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 19We love because he first loved us.

Proof? I can’t give physical proof of my experiences because unfortunately the proof is in the eye of the beholder! I will never forget the day evil had shown it's face.

- Jon Matthew

BZ

These are just books people have written on the subjects. Even if they are scholarly and well-thought out, that is not the same as science.

I get a kick out of the people who think their beliefs or non-beliefs make them superior to other people.

Daniel writes:

"I do not know of any valid scientific research regarding the survival of the consciousness after death."

That's a better formulation than flatly stating that no such evidence exists. But be honest with yourself: have you really looked? Because I have. Here are some good scientific sources on the topic.

Case studies: (all collected by Dr. Ian Stevenson and his various collaborators around the world)

Stevenson, I. (1974). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (2nd ed.). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Stevenson, I. (1975). Cases of the Reincarnation Type: Ten Cases in India (Vol. 1). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Stevenson, I. (1977). Cases of the Reincarnation Type: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka (Vol. 2). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Stevenson, I. (1980). Cases of the Reincarnation Type: Twelve Cases in Lebanon and Turkey (Vol. 3). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Stevenson, I. (1983). Cases of the Reincarnation Type: Twelve Cases in Thailand and Burma (Vol. 4). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Stevenson, I. (1984). Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. [Xenoglossy refers to languages that children are able to speak, even though they never experienced the normal learning process.]

Review articles and books:

Becker, C. B. (1993). Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death. Albany, NY.: State University of New York Press. [one of the best books on the subject]

Cranston, S., & Williams, C. (1984). Reincarnation: A New Horizon in Science, Religion, and Society. Pasadena, CA.: Theosophical University Press.

Fontana, D. (2005). Is There an Afterlife? A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence. Ropley, UK.: O Books.

Goswami, A. (2001). Physics of the Soul. Charlottesville, VA.: Hampton Roads Publishing Co.

Stevenson, I. (1987). Children Who Remember Past Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Tipler, F. J. (1994). The Physics of Immortality. New York: Doubleday.

Journals which have featured articles on various aspects of survival of consciousness after death:

International Journal of Parapsychology
International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion
Journal of the American Medical Association
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Journal of Parapsychology
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (London)
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

Popular works and introductions to the topic:

Shroder, T. (1999). Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives: Simon and Schuster. [Shroder is a journalist who accompanied Ian Stevenson on one of his last field research trips. He began with skepticism, and ended up awestruck.]

Roach, M. (2006). Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife: Norton.

Critical/skeptical viewpoints:

Edwards, P. (1996). Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.

Finally, while the following book does not deal directly with survival of consciousness after death, an excellent source on the problems and controversies of doing 'anomalistic' science is Bauer, H. H. (2001). Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic Phenomena, and other Heterodoxies. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. This book is particularly good at pointing out how skeptics are not practicing science, but rather scientism: the belief that only science is authoritative when it comes to knowledge.

Anyone looking for conclusive answers to this mystery is going to be disappointed, no matter what method of inquiry they use. You are going to have to judge for yourself based on the balance of the evidence. But don't assume that no valid evidence exists when you haven't really looked properly.

BZ - nice post. As you said, there is a fair amount of research these days on the nature of consciousness and the possibility of survival after death and reincarnation - of course this isn't new at all, but more and more the subject seems to be fair game for interested researchers - I suppose the research will always remain 'soft' as opposed to 'hard' until physics can weigh in with anything remotely collaborative in the way of support.

On the other hand, my best understanding of quantum physics is that it does not attempt to describe 'reality' at all...what is does say is simply that 'reality' is nothing like we imagine it to be eg. as a universe of independently existing objects (if you're remotely Buddhistic this begins to sound like Nagarjuna and his dialetic on the fallacy of an imagined independently existing material universe - a man way before his time it would seem!).

Physics apparently perceives wave equations as the most fundamental representation of the 'real' world - this is truly the door to metaphysics. I don't necessarily proclaim support of any particular religion or any religious world view, but can support the possibility of continuing life and reincarnation based on my own studies. In fact, we may be in a limitless multi-verse with an infinity of universes - all according to quantum mechanics - and string theory. We seem to think we live in Newton's world when in fact we live Schrodinger's world after all (and the world of quantum cats - what you see is what you get - literally).

As Nagarjuna says, if it were not for Emptiness as the ultimate nature of reality, nothing whatsoever would be possible. I don't practice religion and don't buy into most of it, but like William James (in many ways superior in thought to his progenitor and our fellow poster Henry James) I've found great beauty and significance in the best parts of it - one man's truth is another man's fiction.

Many people don't need religion and don't need any kind of belief in an afterlife to get along splendidly - this is preferrable to being obsessed with either (or both). Be here now! (Richard Alpert - you old hippies/baby boomers will remember.

Jihadist - Jack Kerouac was a Buddhist - sort of.
Sadly, he liked booze more than Buddhism.

Concerned The Christian Now Liberated said:

"And in 1948, the UN established the State of Israel. Had the Arabs been accepted the deal as mature nations, we would not be in this "blame Israel" for everything game. But "terror" keeps the price of oil high so the Arabs need a convenient scapegoat."

We know you hate Mohammed, and you wish everyone believed like you. We all get it. Yada-Yada-Yada.

But do you belief in life after death?

(By the way, I can guess, in advance, that you don't).

Rick,

And I assume that the Israeli lobby is the only one in Washington, DC??

Hmmm, one wonders then how the Saudi's just "bought" $20 billion dollars of "defense" weapons from the US? And how our foreign aid to Egypt is almost as large as the Israeli aid? And why oh why do we protect the Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Kuwait???

And in 1948, the UN established the State of Israel. Had the Arabs been accepted the deal as mature nations, we would not be in this "blame Israel" for everything game. But "terror" keeps the price of oil high so the Arabs need a convenient scapegoat.

And why is there so little monetary support from "fellow" Muslim countries for the Palestinians? Hmmm, the old Sunni-Shiite conflict?

And if Saudi Arabia covered ~20% of the their deserts with solar panels, they could make a heave on earth by supplying almost all the electricity needs for all of the Mideast and do it cheaply. (National Geographic Solar Power project reviews). One wonders why they don't. Hmmm, the old Sunni-Shiite conflict??

RB-FREEDOM-FOR-ALL:

Not sure if your statement regarding why nuns went into their profession is correct, but it would explain some of my nun-teacher's behaviour I experienced while going to catholic school all those years!

"Arrogance" wrote: "Maybe arrogance also lies with the emphatic declarations by agnostics and atheists who strongly declare there is no afterlife. What do they base that belief on? Personal opinion? At least those that believe that we are eternal beings have documents, such as the Bible, to base our beliefs on."
So faith in an afterlife can be based on the reliability of the Bible as a "document". O.K., if this document is so reliable, perhaps you could tell us who wrote it? No? Nobody knows? It is written by Anonymous, is contains blatant errors of fact (saying, for example, that bats are birds), and it repeatedly contradicts itself. How does this make your book of fairy tales reliable?
What "Arrogance" and other believers in an afterlife are saying, is that death isn't what it looks like. It is not the permanent end it appears to be, but is instead the opposite of what it appears to be. And there is no evidence whatsoever to support this assertion.
How is it arrogant to say that death is exactly what it looks like, given no evidence to the contrary? It is not arrogant, of course, but merely rational.
Rather, it is truly arrogant to assert that the magical, invisible part of yourself goes to a magical, invisible place to be with your magical, invisible friend. Well, maybe not arrogant is the right word; infantile describes it more accurately.

Jihadist:
Merry meet!

Joe:
There's a quotation from James Thurber that I really like. It goes something like this: If there is a heaven, I think there will be a great many dogs there - and very few humans.

Like many, I adored my grandparents. And I do feel their presence sometimes, even though they are long dead. My grandmother was a wonderful cook, and she taught me to view cooking, not as a chore that had to be done in order to avoid starvation, but as a creative outlet, an art form. In "Autumn in New York," Winona Ryder's character asks Richard Gere's character why he became a chef. His answer "Because food is the only hting that is both truly beautiful and truly nourishing" could have been spoken by my grandmother. I feel her presence every time I go into the kitchen to prepare a meal, and I smell her perfume when I decide to try experiment with a new dish. My grandfather was a carpenter, and always smelled like sawdust, even after he bathed. When I'm upset or stressed, the smell of sawdust often fills my nostrils, even if there is no wood for miles around, and I am instantly calmer. Is it my imagination? Olfactory memory? Perhaps. Does it matter if no one else can smell it? Not really.

My old dog died a few years ago and I buried him behind the barn. I was very mournfull until one day I walked out there behind the barn and a large red hawk flew out of the field and I knew that the hawk was taking my dog Fritz's spirit away to a better place. After that I felt that my dog would be OK and he was in a good place. Most people say animal spirits aren't allowed in heaven, only people. If there is a heaven, I don't want to go there unless there are dogs and other animals.

Jihadist:

I don't believe you have known many nuns in real life.

For most of the nuns I have met, it was less of a rational decision to give their lives to god and more of a case of disfunctional people who did not know what else to do with their lives and were pushed into being a nun by their families, who did not want to take care of them for the rest of their lives.

In short, not the kind of people you want to expose children to for long periods of time as either teachers or role models.

Susan, what a beautiful post.

The Catholic Church proves nicely once again that, by their actions, they clearly do not believe there is an afterlife where they await judgement.

It is also so much more meaningful to think of our loved ones as living on in our memories of them and our actions that are inspired by them than to merely delude oneself to think that they are in some state of eternal bliss.

Thank you!

I remember my Grandma going out and killing a groundhog with a stick after the dog cornered it on the farm when she was in her eighties. She made great apple dumblings, cream peach pie like no other (good), and gooseberry pie which was uncommon. Great memories. She had a great feel for life and a strong constitution. And she was a Christian who actually lived it- helping others.

Dear Susan

I, too, had a grandmother who lived to be 99. And my grandmother was, also, the dearest person I will ever meet. As she aged more and more, she became like an old philosopher. I have a fairly easy time in life, becaue I have all of her advice to guide me, whenever I have a problem or need help, figuring something out.

Bin Laden sends out ten and eleven year olds boys to blow themselves up with suicide bombs. That must take quite a lot of guts and compassion by Bin Laden. But there are more five and six year olds he could use for the same job. That way they would get to heaven quicker. What a guy.

The phenomenon of consiousness is not well understood. I do not know of any valid scientific research regarding the survival of the consciousness after death. The question was "do you believe in life after death?" Presently, we must all guess, in order to give an answer, and not depend on science to tell us.

So far, there is no particular finding in quantum physics that tells how consciousness arises and exists. We only have clues from the seeming physical paradoxes that quantum physics suggests. This is a sort of philosophical generallity, but not a scientific finding.

Anyone may have their opinion, just don't cite science to support it.

Regardig Jihadist's comments

Why are you posting, what amounts to, a personal newsletter on this forum, and chit-chatting with strangers, as though you know them and are friends with them? You don't know any of them any better than you know the rest of us, whom you exclude.

And why do you look down on other people so? It is unbecoming, and I don't get it. You are just a person, too, are't you, like everyone else.

And then, your name "Jihadist." Why that name? In the current American English idiom, it has a very rude and ugly connotation. I am not sure the name "Jihadist" is conveying the meaning, in English, that you think it is.

I remember what that Army officer said to Pat Tillman's mother after Tillman's death, "he's just worm food now since he didn't believe in God". I thought that was quite a classy thing to say. God bless the God-fearing US Army and God bless the military-industrial complex.

I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, and was a strong believer until I attended college and majored in astrophysics. At that time I concluded that the 'handwriting' was different between the God of Christianity and whatever entity was responsible for the laws of physics; I ceased to call myself a Christian and resolved that in future I would only believe something when some evidence existed in support of that belief.

But I have never been an atheist, and I do believe in survival of consciousness after death. For one thing, I have memories of having been killed in the Pacific in World War II. I don't entirely trust these memories, which I have had since earliest childhood; I know how the mind can fool itself. But I'm not prepared to dismiss them out of hand, either. Instead, I dug deeper in search of understanding: are my memories real?

For over 40 years I have read what scientific literature does exist on the survival of consciousness. Independently, I am in the final stages of doctoral research on an unrelated cognitive science topic, and have had ample opportunity to review the literature on consciousness and intentionality.

The scientific literature on the survival of consciousness after death is not well publicized. Partly, this is because reincarnation is not widely accepted in Western culture, and partly it is because the topic is professional suicide in academia, where a strong bias exists against anyone using scientific methods to study anomalistic topics like survival of consciousness. What we know is largely due to the efforts of one scientist, Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia; it would be better if others also worked in this area, but given the realities of the situation this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Stevenson and his colleagues have amassed tens of thousands of documented cases where children have related specific, verifiable memories of past life experiences, and where careful investigation has ruled out alternative explanations like hoaxes or accidental exposure that may account for this knowledge. I am very familiar with the standards of validity for qualitative research like this, and am satisfied that this research is not junk.

In other words, there exists careful scientific research in support of the hypothesis that consciousness survives death. We do not have a good theory of what natural laws might account for these findings, but quantum physics does suggest that our interactions with our surroundings are more subtle that we suppose. Reality as we know it literally could not exist without the presence of an observer to collapse the wave function (the famous "Schroedinger's Cat" paradox.)

If you are interested, I encourage you to dig deeper for yourself. These topics are far from resolved among scientists. Some cognitive scientists like Daniel Dennett argue the materialist viewpoint that matter gives rise to consciousness; however, one can make a perfectly admissible scientific argument that the truth is the other way around: that consciousness gives rise to matter, and that higher levels of consciousness exist in the cosmos than Man.

ARROGANCE, get your terms straight. Agnostics don't strongly declare that there is no afterlife, they choose not to have an opinion on the subject. Are you one of those "your either for us or against us" kind of people?

Also, many people who call themselves "atheists" are in fact "defacto atheists", meaning that they do not believe in things unless they see proof of their existence. Hence they don't believe in the afterlife, since proof does not exist. That is not logically equivalent to the statement "I know the afterlife does not exist". Are you able to understand the difference?

Even atheists consider the idea of an afterlife. Who wouldn't? When you lose someone you love dearly, or consider your own pending death, the mere possibility of an afterlife is an inviting thought and can provide some solace. It's exactly what a human would consider when faced with such loss.

The big difference is that those of us who look to evidence to inform us on what is likely to be real or unreal have to consider the complete lack of evidence for an afterlife. It would be wonderful if there were one, and there perhaps is a chance that there is one, but... I think we really have to focus on the one life we know we have and leave the afterlife as a mostly harmless fantasy.

Arrogance's Inside Out Thinking

"Arrogance" asks:

What do atheists (like Henry James) base their belief that there is no afterlife on?

"NOT believing" in something is the opposite of Believing in something.

One should have *some* proof to believe in something (say, an Afterlife or a Heaven).

One requires NO proof to NOT believe in something.

When you present us with Proof that there is an afterlife, we will decide whether your *proof* is reliable.

You can next ask me what I base my Non-belief in Unicorns on.

An arrogant species? Maybe arrogance also lies with the emphatic declarations by agnostics and atheists who strongly declare there is no afterlife. What do they base that belief on? Personal opinion? At least those that believe that we are eternal beings have documents, such as the Bible, to base our beliefs on. Jesus told the Sadducees, who also didn't believe in the afterlife, that long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had physically died, Moses referred to God as the 'God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob'. Why? Jesus said, 'because God is the God of the living and not the dead. They are alive to Him'.

Re: pedophile Catholic priests.

There's no god, so let's strip away the cover that god/faith gives the Catholic Church and evaluate them and their actions as we would any normal business. Is there any reason that they shouldn't be bankrupted? Would society offer special pleading to any other business that encouraged and protected pedophiles the way the Catholic Church has? Didn't think so.

An absolute scourge on mankind. Susan is correct to take them to task.

Another good column, Susan. Too bad the religious posters here can't understand the obvious clarity you bring to bear to On Faith.

The Anon 10/10/07 10:42 AM post was mine.

Yes, let's concentrate more on getting it straight in this life.

CTCNL and other Islamaphobes,

Here is a good article that highlights what should be the focus of the Islamaphobes: the Israeli Lobby that is pushing us over the edge of the abyss. Here are some excerpts:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=26308§ionid=3510302

‘In my analysis, which is shared, for example, by Ilan Pappe, Israel's leading “revisionist” (which means honest) historian, the answer is that it's mainly the Zionist tail that wags the American dog. As I demonstrate in my epic, two-volume book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of The Jews, it is a fact that, with the arguable exception of Lyndon Johnson, every American President, including the idiot in the White House at present, tried to draw red lines that Israel should not cross; and on most occasions Israel put two fingers up and crossed them. There is no mystery about why the Zionist lobby (AIPAC plus) has such power. What passes for democracy in America is for sale to the highest bidder, and one of the highest bidders, and certainly the best organized and the most effective, is the Zionist lobby, now in association with Christian evangelical fundamentalism and parts if not all of the MIC (Military Industrial Complex). The Zionist lobby has three main weapons of influence:

- money, apparently unlimited, to fund election campaigns (candidates who offend Zionism can be and are destroyed - outspent);

- the organized Jewish vote in close election races (in half a dozen critical constituencies); and

- the use of the obscenity of the Nazi Holocaust as a blackmail card to silence criticism of Israel and suppress informed and honest debate. (On this front the Zionist lobby is assisted by the fact that, out of fear of offending Zionism, the mainstream media in America and throughout the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world is complicit in Zionism's suppression of the truth of history. What, really, does the media fear? Punishment by the withdrawal of advertising revenue).’

The Choice:
Keep Believing in Heaven
or
Grow Up

and come to terms in a mature way with the fact that we are all going to die.

Religion is largely a denial of death mechanism. And a way of displacing the sufferings of this life into a fairy tale afterlife where everything will be peachy.

Read the Pulitzer winnng The Denial of Death (e Becker) for some practical and spirtual guidance
to accepting the reality of this life, and finding meaning without believing in fairy tales.

In a global religious climate where too many "believers" of differing faiths look forward to a reward in the "afterlife", I urge people to experience the peace and joy of the "kingdom of heaven" , “nirvana” , “paradise” NOW.
In my opinion, the central question to the inquiry into an "afterlife" is the determination of the nature of eternity. It appears that most people who are discuss this topic are presuming a "Newtonian" view of absolute time and excluding from the discussion the theory of absolute space-time as espoused by Einstein and Minkowski. While I will not attempt to explain the intricacies of the theories of relativity, suffice it to say that Einstein thought that the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion. While most of us continue to interpret our existence in the universe by perceiving the material manifested world around us by employing the skills we inherited through biological evolution, modern theoretical physics has, of course, extended our manner of interpreting the universe to forever alter our understanding of reality. Albert Einstein stated that “since there exists in the four dimensional structure (space-time) no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.” Einstein went on to state that there is not a true division between past and future, but rather a single existence. In other words, the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion.
Every moment of spacetime is a timeless entity in and of itself.
Eternity may not be endless time but, instead, eternity may be the timelessness of each moment which never "passes away" from the overall existence within absolute spacetime. Therefore, if eternity is timelessness and our conscious experiences are eternal, then our actions and thoughts exist in this timeless eternity.
We have evolved to psychologically misinterpret much of "true" physical reality as Einstein and his progeny have expressed in not only the theories of relativity but also in quantum mechanics.
If all of our conscious moments are timeless and, therefore, part of the great timeless whole or oneness, then how do our thoughts and actions affect our own "heaven" or "hell"? Do our selfish thoughts and actions "send" us to "hell" for that eternal timeless moment? Do our selfless, altruistic thoughts and actions "send" us to "heaven" for that eternal timeless moment?
These questions cannot be fully answered in this lifetime by someone like me. However, if you look at the essence of the teachings of all of the great spiritual teachers throughout history, you will find the answer to the question of how to act and think in every moment of your life to touch a part of the "kingdom of heaven" “nirvana”, “paradise” NOW.

Darn, Ramadan is over and now we have to again deal with the "we are perfect" Islamic wishy wash of The Jihadist. Note how she never says anything about the Islamic terror theocracy of Iran!!!

With respect to the topic:

It is good to dream. It helps get through the tough times.

Along with Professor Borg, Professor Crossan is another in the "don't know and don't care" afterlife club. And both professors have reviewed the scriptural texts thoroughly putting them in a class above most of us.

With respect to Hell:

Father Edward Schillebeeckx, the famous contemporary theologian, has a different take on Hell. He reasons that the Singularity does not tolerate imperfection in its spiritual realm. Therefore, any soul dying in mortal sin will simply disappear since Hell, the imperfect state, does not exist.

Dear Norrie Hoyt,

A friend told me about Terry's and your observations re my observations on Buddhism and Buddhists in Ms. Susan Jacoby's previous thread.

You'll be here in this "neutral ground" thread to read my gripes and whines about baby boomers, non-believers and pornography:)

I'll respond to a cyberfriend whom I'll hurl over a grenade to save in a foxhole. People don't die for mom's apple pie. People die for their "band of brothers" and "comrades in arms".

Is Maurie Beck still around? My fellow pasta and noodle dishes lover? You, Maurie, Paganplace, Lepidtoteryx, Wiccan and Terra Gazelle would love the Ramadan Iftar buffets here.

Family, cats and Ramadan:

The family is fine all through Ramadan so far, the best of months. These are the last few days before Eid El Fitr this Saturday. Of course there is fasting, prayers, contemplation, reflection and resolution.

And uhh...there are too much joviality for some after Iftar and prayers right up to Sahur (the breakfast before fasting commence again) with family, friends, colleagues and strangers who ceased being so.

On the first day of Ramadan, we forgot to feed the two cats, Manggis and Embun, in the morning. So the cats fasted too for one day. These felines could use a few more days of fasting. They are getting chubby and sluggish. Both used to proudly and loudly bring into the house gifts for my alternately squermish, appalled and impressed children - dead birds, even a rat and a pet goldfish. Either they don't love their human cohabitants anymore, don't want to impress us anymore, or are just overfed.

Weekdays are a cinch but weekends are more difficult to fill up when one is trying not to engage in activities that may defeat the purpose of Ramadan, including cheating at golf, lying about the fish that got away, complaining to God about the size and price of lobsters in the fresh seafood market.

Reincarnation and Afterlife:

Are your sure you want to be reincarnated for further Enlightenment? Not as an ant or a rodent, and not as an Aghan woman, or someone like Janis Joplin for an really Enlightening experience. Ants got stomped on. Rodents are as cuddly as pandas. An Aghan woman is swathed in burqa, has a chance of either being maimed or killed by a landmine or friendly fire. Janis Joplin you know.

Pornography:

And... are you sure pornography is not boring at all? I take it you would rather watch "Womb Raider" rather than "Tomb Raider". And prefers to watch "Shaving Private Ryan" rather than "Saving Private Ryan." Surely pornography is for those without imagination who can't tell it from erotica (ahem!), have no willing partner, or need guidance on how it's done?

Deep Throat, Behind Green Doors, Emmanuelle are high art and great movie classics that elevated culture to new heights and push the boundaries of human possibilities at the risk of whiplash. If only all who do, would admit to watching pornography, the greatly misunderstood art form no doubt, and to articulate its merits.

Non-believers:

And why are atheists surprised that believers are moralistic, dogmatic and judgemental? Our Holy Texts implored and reminded us to strive for this higher ground. As if they don't know that. Besides, it's such a yawn to read atheists, anti-theists and secular humanists posters telling believers and each other how nice, rational, charming, informed, moral, ethical and lovely people they are. How I long for the Devil, even one wearing Prada. The non-believers have only a sometime a bit tipply and woozy Hitchens to scare believers.

One do hope the shrivel of critics on belief would read more of Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre et al, and not just Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins - the recommended required reading for believers to see the light of lights in Enlightenment and humanism.

Buddists and Buddhism:

Back to Buddhism and Buddhists and a just a little bit on "organised" and "institutionalised" Buddhism as opposed to what you and Henry James thought of and practice as Buddhists and Buddhist partialists - ever wondered and know what really goes on in Buddhist temples and monasteries? What is going one with monks and nuns in Buddhist majority countries such as Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Loas, Myanmar, Vietnam?

For one, alms, in the form of food and money, are for Buddhist monks and nuns while they undergo time in the temple, as permanent nuns and monks or temporary stints. Giving alms to nuns and monks will get one "merits" as do gooders. This is a form of subsidising Enlightenment, or "finding oneself." This would be like me giving charities to the Sufi orders in Islam.

Finding Oneself/Enlightenment:

Of course one must encourage people going off and secluding themselves for God, or to find themselves, have a gap year, or to seek and attain Enlightenment. It's more noble than saying one is really bumming around, being a slacker eh?. Nothing wrong except it's always on someone else's dime and very worthy if one truly is a better and more self and socially aware person after a stint as a monk and nun or as a deliriously estactic or quietist, contemplative Sufi. Or as a slacker with a backpack.

Baby Boomers:

It all seems so self-absorbed and self-centred to me, but perhaps would not seem so strange to a "baby boomer' - that seemingly most self-indulgent generation born in the last century - who gave the English language, whole sentences perfectly understandable to them such as, "Like, I mean, you know, right?"

And there's, 'groovy" and "far out" and Woodstock and Altamont and Mark Rudd and Jerry Rubin and Peter Marx and Andy Warhol and Jack Kerouc and Velvet Underground and Dr. Beefheart and the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. It goes on and on....

.....and at 50 years old, the baby boomer still dress in jeans and T-shirt as he would at 20, and say things like, "I smoke but don't inhale" back when. The baby boomers want to change the world and change themselves. Yes, well, but they morphed from hippies to yuppies to maccies (middle age curmudgeons).

Catholic laity:

As for the Catholic laity and the Catholic Church, I can imagine how angry some lay Catholics would be on the over US $ 600 million being forked out for the acts of a few priests in California. That is a significant sum which nuns and priests can better use to start at least a 100 schools in any given third world country.

Nuns:

Why would anyone be nuns? I really don't know, but it sounds like a good idea to give oneself fully to God and to help fellow men whether as personal repentence or just to help and give others altruistically.

Are nuns really giving up responsibility for their own life in giving themselves to God or Jesus? Are nuns members of a "cult"? Better the "cult" of Jesus than, say, the cult of Madonna (the one with a limited vocal range, chameleonic stylists and poseur, and terrible actor).

Can't imagine the Madonna who sang "Like a Virgin" would drive nuns to go to the slums of Calcutta and help the lepers there. Only to inspire some to go and waste themselves in, say, Ibiza - little clothing, bad dancing, casual sex, bountiful booze and varieties of drugs as the ultimate communion with self and others whom you and they will forget or regret he morning after. If only there is no morning after for some.

Promoting Vermont as tourist destination:

You did not tell me that Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was born in Vermont.

Best regards as ever to your family and you.

J

Why do you think they are called "nuns"? Because they have no rights and no status in the church - none at all.

Most of the orders of nuns (if not all), take a vow of poverty. Should we really castigate the church for holding them to the vows they were dum enough to take?

Why would anyone be a nun? The nuns I knew and was taught by when I was young have plenty of sins and crimes to pay for themselves. They were absolutely crazy!!! Only one I knew was sane, kind, and a competent teacher.

And once again, the catholic laity has no power to effect change. "This is not a Democracy, its a religion!" is the common retort when the laity seeks to affect the outcome of a decision made by the official male hierarchy. The laity are just barely above the nuns in power and common sense.

When you give up responsibility for your own life totally and completely to some other entity, you usually get a really raw deal. (Isn't that the definition of a cult, by the way?) Everyone should learn a lesson from nuns and laity and take responsibility for yourselves -- be self-reliant, and do not join cults!