All Comments (27)

BAAL; your anger betrays an ego that feels it
must protect itself. If you are confident in
your NON belief, why the knee jerk reaction?
No one has tied you to a stake. I merely invite
you to prove the non existence of God. Your
arguments are tired and juvenile. Smile...take
yourself less seriously. There ARE things more
important than you and what you believe. You
think...therefore, you are...aren't you? Even
Albert Einstein conceded, when speaking of his
theory of Quantum physics, that taken to its most
logical conclusion, "...we'll be looking at the
face of God." Does that prospect worry you so
much?

It is amazing to me how many can talk about how wrong and myopic it is for anyone to believe in God, based on x, y, and z, and then seek to annihilate anyone who doesn't believe what they believe. If I don't agree with you then I am any number of things namely, uneducated, deluded, a con artist, or just plainly unintelligent. Are you free from hypocrisy yourself? Do you live fully by the standards and ethics that you have set for yourself? You accuse others of being arrogant and insulting, yet somehow it doesn’t matter if you are arrogant and insulting with respect to your beliefs and views against organized religion, specifically Christianity. You have already chosen who is worth more or more valuable, when you can so easily disrespect the humanity of the people who believe in God. You rail on and on about how hateful, deluded, and destructive Christianity is, yet your own hatred towards Christians and the destruction that ensues is over-looked. Your refusal to acknowledge that you are really close-minded when it comes to religion gets overlooked when you accuse those with religious beliefs of being close-minded or unintelligent. You find yourself standing on a pedestal and looking down on those who profess to be Christians, pointing your finger as though you are some how superior to them. Yet this is the very thing of which you accuse Christians. When you mock and ridicule Christians with no regard to their humanity, you are doing the very thing that you have accused them of doing. When will you stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and how wrong they are and start focusing on how you can be all of the things that you are saying others should be?

Arthur:

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

You said:

“My Reason has lead me away from just having Faith in my convictions, I also seek proof and validity.

You say your Reason has lead you to Faith. That to me is a depowering statement. I see the mystery as something to understand not something to just accept.”

As you might anticipate, I see the issues of faith and mystery quite differently. While I have made a concerted effort to study science and nearly every other intellectual discipline, I am still left with the mystery of creation. I am all for study and research, scientific and otherwise. I do not propose that humans ever stop trying to understand themselves or the universe in which they live. I personally have no intention of doing so. But the more I study and the more I ponder the complexities of life the more humble I become.

Personally, I believe that much of the current tension between science and religion is mostly about sex. There are few critics of science, religious or other, that protest advances in the engineering of ever taller buildings, new plastics, space exploration or even new and more effective ways to kill people. Almost all the critics of science focus on biology, evolution, genetics and medicine, where science is probing the origins of life, the reproduction of our species and potential cures for disease. And from my perspective these areas of inquiry have only the common thread of being related to our sexual natures. For me personally, most of these concerns are misplaced. Frankly the whole science vs. religion debate is not one I find to be very interesting.

Regarding Joseph Campbell, I am a great fan. I think he would be quite comfortable with my embracing the mystery of life. He might not have been a Christian, but his lifelong study of mythology brought him to a profoundly mystical/spiritual view of life. And like Campbell, I think the world needs a new mythology better suited to the 21st century. Our popular culture discounts mythology as “myth” in a way that is indicative of a misunderstanding of what mythology is all about. Mythology is not something that people do without. We may not be conscious of it, but we all live within some kind of mythological construct, which for me brings me back to faith.

When I use the word faith, I use it more in the context of what Paul Tillich called “ultimate concern”. Tillich defined faith as “that with which one is ultimately concerned”. In this use of the word, faith can, and frequently is, vary different than what is meant by most people. Faith can, for example, be placed in money, sex, power, reason and science (all of which from a Christian theological perspective would be idolatrous). My own paraphrasing would sound more like this: faith is what gets us up in the morning. It’s what we orientate our day around. It’s what we would hold dear in the face of life and death decisions. And it almost always becomes ritualized in some way, even if unconsciously done.

As I have posted elsewhere on this forum, for me the difficult issues in life have to do with how we choose to live with one another and our environment. And this is where my Christian faith calls me to be loving, kind, compassionate and peaceful. As I’ve said previously, I see more hope for humankind in leaning into the winds of our mysterious personal natures, than in defending even my own transformative spiritual experiences. I’d hope to be more Christ-like than to be right about anything. I’d hope to be more loving, kind and compassionate than to justify my religion, my beliefs or even my most formative religious experiences.

And I continue to find hope in dialogue with folks like yourself.

EMM wrote:
"the universal human need to grapple with its origins, and our individual and collective suffering and death, is so much richer than so simple a proposition would suggest."

I agree with the Universal need, even though we both may have encountered those who do not seem to care. I do not however feel it is a Simple Proposition.

We all because of the power of our ability to reason and see connections tend to fill in the gaps of our knowledge with sometimes wild propositions. We use the gaps in our knowledge and make intuitive and imaginative leaps of faith. Many times they bear fruit and become proven true. But I do see a problem with stopping there and not finishing the thought process. Verification and testing.

My point is those who fill the gaps with mythical and arbitrary concepts should not stop with what they filled it in with.

Joseph Cambell once told a woman that there was no Science versus Religion battle, it was really 2000 year old science versus 20th century science.

When we stop with "Why is the sky blue?" and say "Because God made it so." this does an injustice to our capabilities as a human being. We learn nothing about it and merely exist for the sake of existing.

My Reason has lead me away from just having Faith in my convictions, I also seek proof and validity.

You say your Reason has lead you to Faith. That to me is a depowering statement. I see the mystery as something to understand not something to just accept.

There are many truths. In the eighteen hundreds it was a known truth that man will never be able to fly. There was a statement some two weeks after the Wright brothers completed their first flight in 1903 by a group of learned Scientists who in full faith of their convictions reiterated that "truth".

Even scientists can be wrong and stop with faith. When they do Science stops.

Arthur C. Clarke a famous Science and Science Fiction writer wrote three laws to govern his works and his life.

1) "When a distinguished but elderly scientist (learned person period) states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

2) "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

3)"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Clarke used his imagination in the real world as well as fiction.

C.S. Lewis a contemporary of Arthur C. Clarke is a marveleous writer as is Clarke. But they had strong disagreements with regard to man's potential. Lewis Knew that this talk of Space exploration by Clarke and his band of fellow weirdos was preposterous. Man was not meant by God to leave the confines of the Earth and consequently will not.

Clarke invented the Geo sychronos orbit satellite used for communication and other things while an officer in the British Military during the end of WWII. He was a communication technician and much had been done that had damaged the cables and other systems. He proposed this idea when he made the intuitive leap of faith and imagination and thought that a Radio or microwave wave beam could be bounced off of a reflector in orbit.

Trinity Broadcasting Network owes much more to an atheist thinker such as Clarke than they do to the great christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

Clarke, Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison and visionaries in general are the real true "Spiritual Leaders" of man. Not Billy Graham, despite my belief that Billy Graham is a good man.

Arthur said:

“We should be able to reason and think. I feel that most often in regards to "Spiritual or Religious" concepts we throw out any ability to reason, the ability to think things through. I see no difference between taking Drugs and taking Religion. I choose neither.”

I, as a Christian, would not argue most of your points. And it might surprise you to know that I feel no inclination whatever to abandon my rational senses to justify my own or anyone’s faith or religion. My reason is what led me to faith, not the other way around. I am however, a bit surprised that the issues of faith, spirituality and religion are nearly always framed in such an either/or construct as you present. Life and especially the universal human need to grapple with its origins, and our individual and collective suffering and death, is so much richer than so simple a proposition would suggest.

I have no fear of the rational. I do not anticipate a day when I abandon my rational senses to my faith. I live my life in the tension between what I know “rationally” and what I know “spiritually”. As I stated previously in my January 9, 2007 8:49 AM posting:

“I do not portend that my personal experiences provide proof that even my own experiences are objectively or rationally or scientifically verifiable. Having said this, I do not dismiss or discount these profound experiences either. Rather I see them as invitations, a window into the mysteries of my own life and that of all creation.”

My Christian faith invites me to wrestle with the mystery of creation. Others engage this mystery in their own ways. But, it seems to me, our human experience necessitates that, however we choose to do so, we all engage the mystery of our existence.

Frozen1, you must not listen to Pat Robertson and a whole bunch of his fellow television preachers.

Why is it neccesary to prove that something does not exist? Why is it that because no one can prove something does not exist it must therefore actually exist.

If this is true then Thor does exist and is the God of Storms.

So does the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and etc.

No. It is not the burden of the negative claimant but the burden of the postive claimant. The default position is the negative, at least in a healthy way.

Having an open mind is Okay, just so long as you do not open it so far that your Brain falls out.

We should be able to reason and think. I feel that most often in regards to "Spiritual or Religious" concepts we throw out any ability to reason, the ability to think things through. I see no difference between taking Drugs and taking Religion. I choose neither.

Just because it feels good does not make it right. Do people become religious because it feels good? I had a Christian tell me that I should become a Christian and believe in his "god" because if doesn't hurt anyone. It might save my soul. So long as it doesn't hurt anyone and feels good who should care?

Sounds like the same arguments that christians have against Humanists, that live and let live or anything goes so long as it doesn't hurt anyone is morally wrong. The shoe fits their foot too I see.

I get a "spiritual" awakening when I wake up and recognise the grandness of the Universe. When I see into more deeply a secret of the Universe. I do not get a spiritual awaking by shutting down my brain and accepting what some Minister, Priest, Guru or other mystic shyster tells me.

Shutting down your brain? Reminds me of the frying egg in the anti-drug commercials 15 years or so ago.

There is more wonder in understanding which can only come through critical thinking than having divinely inspired bull filtered through a spiritual leader that does not even understand it himself.

But he does I'll bet understand how much worldly, material goods, you have to renounce to his church and god.

OK BA'AL, James. That does it. I'm going with the hoax buster who claims the oldest profession is NOT prostitution but rather the ministry.

Which came first the convient woman or the con man? Can't help but notice, both are still doing a land office business. Good things come in pairs is almost always so.

James

There is evidence for Ba'al worship going back even to the late Bronze age. Of course, some of the attributes of Ba'al were later found in stories about YHWH. In spite of that, many of the more admirable characters in the Old Testament, such as Jezebel, were badly maligned for believing in Ba'al.

One of the other names for Ba'al was El. Some argue that that name is etymologically related to Allah.

Canaanite fertility deities, unfortunately, never drink beer.

Ba'al

Aren't you an IRON Age myth yourself!!!!

I have always found you a fascinating god, totally seriously. want to have a beer later?

God's Proof for Mitchell

Mitchell

Not even Dawkins says he can *prove* the non-existence of God. He says he believes it is highly improbable.

he can not prove the non-existence of Santa Claus either (not trying to be disrespectful - it is a vivid example).

I am an atheist and have a very rich spiritual life. Hundreds of my friends and acquaintances do too.

I don't need to add an illusory supernatural god to the mix in order to love my daughter, appreciate beauty, care for the sufferings of my fellow humans, be awed by nature and the stars.

I don't care what kind of God people do or don't believe in. I do care when they persecute Gay people, prevent stem cell research, fly planes into buildings, and prevent the use of condoms to fight aids in africa.

I fail to see how not believing in God means that instead I must be worshiping myself. I fail to see why it is hubris to not believe in Iron Age legends replete with stories of avenging deities, talking snakes, virgin births and a Personified Son of God.

I would argue that Mitchell Eales is the one with the enormous ego when he claims that his life has purpose but mine doesn't. The shear disgust in his comment is palpable. Of course, this is the kind of thinking that got witches and heretics burned at the stake.

From early childhood, through my teenage years and into adulthood, I have experienced, like many people I know, transformative moments of spiritual awareness and insight. Unlike many people, I do not portend that my personal experiences provide proof that even my own experiences are objectively or rationally or scientifically verifiable. Having said this, I do not dismiss or discount these profound experiences either. Rather I see them as invitations, a window into the mysteries of my own life and that of all creation.

I, for one, do not expect answers to all my questions. I do not anticipate that I will resolve the “questions of the ages”. I do read and study almost every subject there is out of an insatiable appetite for knowledge. And while I enjoy science and philosophy as well as theology, my personal quest for answers has led me to accept that, while the pursuit of knowledge is indeed a worthy one, the wisest people I know have reconciled themselves to the mysteries of creation. I’ve said for many years that “wisdom is comfortable with ambiguity”. The more I’m willing to step into the mysterious ambiguities of life, the more I find myself able to live in harmony with nature and other people.

I truly believe that when we individually or collectively conclude that we have a lock on the truth, we quickly move to judgment, intolerance and worse. Unacknowledged doubts, fears and anxieties are, I believe, at the root of our judgments and intolerance. And I see more hope for humankind in leaning into the winds of our mysterious personal natures, than in defending even my own transformative spiritual experiences. I’d hope to be more Christ-like than to be right about anything. I’d hope to be more loving, kind and compassionate than to justify my religion, my beliefs or even my most formative religious experiences.

How anyone could feel God in the presence of that outrageous crook, Billy Graham, is beyond me.

I am constantly amazed (I should be over this
by now) at the HUBRIS and myopic views of those
who believe they can prove the NON-existence of
GOD. I can only think that this leaves you to
worship yourself...and this will ultimately leave
you empty and disillusioned. The ego is so strong
and decieving that some cannot overcome it. I am
very sorry for you if that is your case. You are
missing the wonder, the joy and the ENTIRE POINT
of your being here. What then, IS your purpose?
Society is filled with so many purposes...most
transient and temporal. And so many, at the end
of life, are abysmally disappointed. Defeat your
ego first. THAT is the ILLUSION. Your purpose is
so much MORE than yourself and your thoughts.

It strikes me as odd that Richard Mouw, president of Fuller, offers this particular story out of his life. What does this teen-age experience mean? At this time and in this society, where individualism is rampant, what does one more - and teen-age, at that - individual thing matter?

I have not heard Mr. Graham speak. I do know that God often speaks from the mouths of Babes. I have yet to hear my God speak from the mouths of Adults.

Canyon,
you have nothing to offer but insults and arrogance.

Perhaps you found Christ via this method.
10 years of arrogance and insults and you wonder why you were left with , wait....which sect of Christians? I bet it wasn't Quaker or Presb/, huh?

Mr Whalen,

I am just curious and this is a sincere question.

Why does the pope ride around surrounded by bullet proof glass?

Dear Dick:

It's too bad you did not catch the Pope when he came to NYC. You woold be a RC now and on your way to eteranal salvaton.
Join us before it's too late.

James Whalen
Presient
Irish Catholic Existetntial Society

Canyon, you just explained it. BA'AL he had a crash course in Christian upbringing, the shame of not belonging to a church when everyone else belonged to one. 10 year olds feel a lot of "left outs" no doubt.

Canyon, how did you feel about the kids that had other things your parents couldn't afford or get for you at that age? Feel left out, not one of the gang, some kind of misfit?

Why does the psychitrist say, "now lay down here on my nice soft couch and tell me all about your childhood?" There's a lot of mind hay to be made of a 4th grade teacher asking a student what religion he/she belongs to in an enviornment where to not belong is to be left out making one a social outcast.

How does a child in a Muslim nation fare without a religion at age 10? This is a Christian nation isn't it? Canyon, you're on board. Why are you so paniced about everyone being on board? We don't want to be in the inner circle. Is it us or you that concerns you?

Ba'al, you are welcome to your delusion and to thinking that way...

But I was raised without a shred of Christianity, the closest thing I can remember is in fourth-grade, my teacher asked me which church I went to. I remember thinking, that's a weird question, and I remember my conscience screaming, "You should go to church!" But in fourth grade, the decision wasn't up to me.

It took a long, critical look at all of the worlds (major) religions, spanning almost a decade, before I finally realized that Christianity is the one true religion. I thank God that I never believed myself to be so critical or arrogant as to disprove creation, or the conscience. Albeit I did desperately try to disprove the Bible.

Self-actualization is an important concept in most of the worlds religions (even the small ones) and it is imperative that a Christian realize that nothing should be accepted on blind-faith.

Someday I hope all agnostics and 'atheists' could become so self-aware.

You write "My life had long been shaped by a Christian upbringing."

I am convinced that belief in Christianity is very difficult without that upbringing.

Interesting book Bob. Can't read it all right now but scanned it quickly and noticed he's found "out of body experiences" to be real, happens under a given set of conditions.

Now how real is what people see having out of body experiences experience? A person "see's himself as though he was on the ceiling" while he is actually laying on the opoerating table being operated on. The "mind's eye" must be looking into a "mind's mirror" located near or on the ceiling.

I was operated on back in the stone age and put under with ether. I had some rather strange "mind's eye" visions none of which could be called out of body. I knew I was me looking into what I identified at the time as another world, not this earth. I also saw an awful lot of static before the picture cleared which leads me to assume I was "fictionalizing" based upon random brain activity. I say assume because I can't give it any other explaination.

I am a firm believer in mental communication and a frim believer that no one knows anything about it, just that it exists. I stupified a group once by saying so and so is calling a few seconds before the phone rang. I just felt it. Can't explain or do it on demand but more than once a year I get ahead of a phone call and have been doing that a long time. I'll read the book.

Wow. Taken in by a bible salesman at age 12. Is the Fuller Theology Institute founded by the Fuller Brush Institute by chance? What a shmuck this guy is.

How about this for something real:

"What is the self? How does the activity of neurons give rise to the sense of being a conscious human being? Even this most ancient of philosophical problems, I believe, will yield to the methods of empirical science. It now seems increasingly likely that the self is not a holistic property of the entire brain; it arises from the activity of specific sets of interlinked brain circuits. But we need to know which circuits are critically involved and what their functions might be. It is the "turning inward" aspect of the self — its recursiveness — that gives it its peculiar paradoxical quality."

V.S. RAMACHANDRAN, a neuroscientist, is Director, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego; Author, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, and coauthor, Phantoms in the Brain.

Check it out:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran07/ramachandran07_index.html

The song, "Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me" sounds barborous to me. But then it must sound real good to many. Have you ever considered:

Sacrifices have been made to the gods since before recorded history. There's the recorded case of the "believing" Inca chief that sacrificed his daughter to the volcano god, crushed her little head with a mace. The volcano stopped errupting alright proving that sacrifices work.

The sacrifice thing requires, a god, someone to sacrifice and a pressing reason. Let's look at the most significant sacrifice of human life to god ever, the curcifixion.

The son of God was sacrificed to God by people in desperate straights. Their violations of God's rules, sins had to be forgiven. Without the death of Jesus father God would hold us responsible for violations of His law. The sacrificer was us. The child was Father God's child. It was sacrificed to Father God so the breaking of his rules could be overlooked by Him. If we don't kill His kid in His name then He won't forgive us for breaking His rules. Got it.

I believe, have faith I understand that. Arthur may not understand that but he knows there's something terribly worng with the whole scheme. I wonder if you, President Richard understand how ridiculous the notion that God would want His son sacrificed to Him so people could break His rules and He could forgive them for it. I'm having just the slightest amount of difficulty with that logic. Father God is certainly not human.

Now Devil, unlike God wants anyone he can get sacrificed to him including his wife and kids. Breaking rules is his favorite thing for you to do. That's why I've bought the story that the Bible is a proved hoax. That way I can say that people of faith are one of the following, stupid, ignorant, greedy, or have faith in Devil. So killing Jesus and then saying that gets your sins forgiven makes all the sense in the world given the mental condition of those with great faith.

Most formative Religious Experience.

Note I am an Atheist, and a Critical Thinker by nature, so I fully expect what I say here to be disregarded, derided and misunderstood by those who are of a Faith that presumes a supernatural world.

There is a a Saying that I think goes back to Will Rogers. "I'm from Missouri, show me."

This is my faith if I have one. The greatest feeling of any religious nature that I can think of is suddenly grasping a concept that I did not before. The Eureka experience, that momment when your mind says "AHAH!!" This usually at least in my case comes from a lot of thought.

It fills me with delight, and sometimes I will burst into laughter, or cry out in triumph.

But the basis of this is an understanding that I can not get this feeling, and it is intense for me, if I merely accept something without knowing it. It has to come from an understanding and it has to coincide with observed reality. If a concept comes my way from the outside or from myself and I can not reconcile it with the world I do not get that feeling.

I think that knowledge is man's true greatest pleasure. A rational thinking and imaginitive mind is the one true thing that separates us from the animals. Excercising that ability gets us so much more than inforced ignorance.

Most men may lament a flood or disaster or death of any sort. But I think that the best men do not pray for something else, the government, Jesus, or Allah to fix it or protect them. The best of man or woman strive to make it better themselves.

We can build a levy to hold back the floods. We can Build EarthQuake resistant houses. We can find a cure for a disease. We can overcome a financial setback. We can come to terms with a loss of a loved one. We can figure out how to overcome some physical disability.

Faith healing does not work. I have yet to see any miraculous healings of amputees. But I have seen people overcome the limitations through their determination and advances in medical science.

Do many who try fail? Yes. But I strongly suspect that those who try do better than those who wallow in their self pity entirely. I have had many boughts of my own self pity, it is human nature. But I usually try to get past that and move on. Will I always succeed? No. I can not know everything but it does not matter.

The more I learn, about myself, life and the world in general the greater my connection to the cosmos becomes and the more I love my life and what I have however modest. It does not require a belief in the supernatural, but to me it is as "spiritual and religious" an experience as anything could be.

But as will be pointed out after this I am an Evil Atheist, or misguided and still condemned to some place to be tortured for all eternity with no possibility of parole. Nice world view that. I prefer mine.

Arthur