Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. She was president of CTS from 1998-2008. Her area of expertise is contextual theologies of liberation, specializing in issues of violence and violation. An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ since 1974, the “On Faith” panelist is the author or editor of thirteen books and has been a translator for two translations of the Bible. Her works include Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States (1996) and The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Translation (1995). She edited and contributed to Adam, Eve and the Genome: Theology in Dialogue with the Human Genome Project (2003).
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Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary
Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. She was president of CTS from 1998-2008.
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In Re: "Interesting conversation--but not all Christians believe that Christianity is the ONLY way--it is their way, often by accident of birth, but also often by choice based on experience. Not all Christians have an overwhelming desire to beat others over the head with their convictions nor to insist that theirs is the only way."
Where did that come from??? Did you get the wrong blog? We were having a discussion of ontology, epistemology, some interesting (and somewhat controversial) issues in physics, and how those relate to a Creator. Some aggressive Atheists and one aggressive former Atheist were having an essentially good natured argument thrashing out some ideas. There is no suggestion I can remember that any of this implies intolerance, or Christianity as the only true religion. There was certainly none by me. In fact, I said a couple of times that none of that implies religious denominations like Christianity or Islam at all.
Also, you should read the book by Philip Jenkins titled:
"The New Anti-Catholicism - The Last Acceptable Prejudice"
I am not a Catholic, and Jenkins is not either, but this kind of knee-jerk stuff spun up out of thin air should be dropped.
BTW, what did you think of the Anthropic Principle?
Interesting conversation--but not all Christians believe that Christianity is the ONLY way--it is their way, often by accident of birth, but also often by choice based on experience. Not all Christians have an overwhelming desire to beat others over the head with their convictions nor to insist that theirs is the only way. And not all Christians take the position that propositional logic is the only possible truth (let alone that the Bible is propositional at all). There are, in fact, some Christians whose approach to their trusting relationship with deity actually takes the form of a remark at the end of Peter DeVries' novel, *The Mackeral Plaza,* where the heroine tells the liberal pastor that theologians tend to go around Robin Hood's barn, and that her mother had the answer when she said, "The point is to be as humane as humanly possible." You can cut the metaphors as finely as possible, you can dice the logic and cite the authorities, but in the end whatever the tradition, Christianity or any other belief system that can't come down to that is not one I'd have much to do with.
The citation in Penrose' The Emperor's New Mind is Chapter 7 Cosmology and the Arrow of Time. Pages 302-347. As Penrose is a polymath of major scope, the chapter covers a lot of ground. It starts with a discussion of thermodynamic entropy and the fact that it is always increasing. Cosmology of the Big Bang, in and of itself, fails to necessitate the low entropy initial conditions that a universe with our thermodynamics needed to exist.
“Recall the the primordial fireball was thermal state - a hot gas in expanding thermal equilibrium. Recall, also, that the term 'thermal equilibrium' refers to a state of maximum entropy. However, the second law demands that in its initial state, the entropy was at some sort of minimum, not a maximum! What has gone wrong?” (p328-329)
After a lengthy discussion of how much entropy is available to the Universe as we observe it and making some phase space calculations and citing some physics due to Hawking and Beckenstein on the entropy of black holes. Starts using the therm “Creator”, and uses it for the latter part of the chapter.
Then he hits the punchline:
“But in order to start off with the universe in state of low entropy - so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics - the Creator must aim for for a much tinier volume of phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?” (p340)
After more detailed analyses he states:
“This tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of
one part in 10^10^123.
This is an extraordinary figure.” (p344)
Now if anybody ever said a mouthful, that was it. Being in the sciences and hard engineering disciplines, this result set me back my heels. I use hypothesis testing all the time, and modern scientific method rests on precision measurements and calculations of probability from those measurements to test hypotheses. “This guy just showed that the Universe is no accident.” I thought when I read that. Penrose posits a Creator to explain it.
The infinitely many universes hypothesis requires multiplying Creation times infinity. That does not simplify the problem, it makes it infinitely harder. Moreover, there is no evidence of it. There may never be any evidence of it. So both the Creator and infinitely many universes hypotheses are beyond the scope of science at this point. Believing either is an act of Faith. Personally, I view the Creator as a more parsimonious explanation. At least you need only one Uncaused Cause in stead of infinitely many.
Clearly this issue is far from settled, and it is not just reviled Fundamentalists who think that.
The track record of science so far suggests that the Creator (the Uncaused Cause, God, or what ever you call it) made the Universe comprehensible to us. As Einstein put it: God is Subtle, but not malicious.” Maybe in the next millennium we will learn more. Maybe sooner. We can hope.
I read "The Emperor's New Mind" but I don't remember the calculation you present. I don't know what assumptions he makes in coming to such a number.
Where does that take me?
I don't come to any conclusion as to the "First Cause" or "Preceeding Cause" because the probability of the creation of the creator must be an exponentially higher number than the one Penrose presents.
There is also the lack of evidence of the direct physical influence of a personal diety in the universe. I can't call a probability direct evidence.
Certainly, whatever the conclusion of Penrose, I know you realize I could produce authoritative figures that make compelling arguements for a universe that always existed and nothing for a creator to do.
I don't want to get into an "Arguement by authority" though.
Ultimatly, I cannot explain why there is order in the natural laws of the Universe that allow us to exsist or why there is a universe at all.
Religion (all religions), literature, and science together help me understand or relate to this absurd situation we find ourselves in on Earth.
"Uncaused Cause is defined as God".
I'll accept that as part of the definition of god.
GaryD: **If there was a big bang who or what lit the fuse?**
It is not necessary to have an alternate explanation for a phenomenon in order to lack belief in a specific one.
For example, if I were asked to describe your undergarments, I could not do so, having no verifiable information on which to base a description. However, having read your posts on this and other subjects,and having inferred certain ideas about your personality from them, I would feel confident in saying that I don't believe you are wearing a fuschia lace thong with a Tinkerbell applique on the front.
Penrose, I think bravely, dares to come to grips with the issues raised by his science and reasoning.
The Universe in which we live is not an accident.
Where does that take you?
One ancient philosophical conclusion is to define Uncaused Cause is defined as God. Quantum mechanics shows that at very small levels, things are random, but the whole Universe is way, way, beyond Heisenberg's uncertainty limit for tiny particles, so the earlier causal thinking does apply.
Can we do better today? I am not sure.
BTW, Cosmologist Frank Tipler in his book The Physics of Immortality proposes a really beautiful thought poem about where the Universe is going, and how that relates to where it came from. Basically returns to the idea that God causes herself (itself). Great read.
See previous post. The present Universe is all we have to observe. It forces us to the conclusion that the present Universe is not an accident. What do you make of that? Do you take the Multiverse on Faith as PAGANPLACE does?
Nice try, but no cigar. In order to take the Multiverse hypothesis YOU have to posit the existence of infinitely many universes which you have no evidence actually exist. Infinitely many universes that no observations support or confirm. So you are take them on Faith in the unseen, because it suits your (unsupported) belief system. By the way, there is presently not even a theory of how we might come to observe this infinitude of universes you place your Faith in. And there may never be.
Penrose, by contrast argues from only from THIS universe, which is the only one that can be seen, touched, breathed, and walked through. The configuration of THIS universe is absurdly improbable if it is accidental. Yes, that insane number:
1/(10^10^128)
If you tried to write this number decimal notation as
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000...
You would run out of atoms in the Universe using each one to represent a zero before you got to the end. Therefore we confidently reject the hypothesis that this Universe is an accident. To make that conclusion Penrose, unlike you, confines himself to the observable Universe. Conclusion: the Universe is not an accident. This rests on the foundation of a scientific epistemology that is the most successful edifice for discerning new knowledge in human history.
As GARYD put his question: “... If there was a big bang who ro what lit the fuse?” To this I add: how did our Universe Bomb get this way even before that?
Bottom line: You take more on Faith than I do, and with less confirmation.
It is not an insult. It's what I do for fun. (which tells you I probably don't get out enough. :-) But honestly I don't think there is enough intellectual depth to these discussions.
As for Hitchins, I have listened to him at length in interviews. Perhaps more importantly, I have heard many people on these blogs say that Hitchins has nothing to say that isn't leftovers from Dawkins. What do you think on that comment? Does Hitchins add anything new? He is a bit of a show man who loves to promote himself.
I may read this Dawkins book, but I will be surprised if I find anything that Rand didn't cover. Her analyses are quite cogent and resolutely anti religious. Have you read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, The Virtue of Selfishness, We the Living, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and For the New Intellectual?
I am not asking you this because I hold you in low regard. I am just trying to get your perspective and contrast this new material with some of the old in the same discussion. Any thoughts on comparing these writers?
The problem with the Christian thinking on theism is that most of the premises and arguments are constructed to allow no other answer, I'd say: complexity doesn't mean the universe was created as artifice from outside... in fact, believing in Gods isn't as *dependent* on this idea as it's presumed to be.
Certainly, my own religion is happy enough to see the universe as arising organically, yet being alive and even conscious. (Not such an uncommon idea, really)
One can apply a great deal of intellectual vigor to faulty or incomplete premises: (lots of Jesuits in my family, myself) ...the idea there must be an 'uncaused first cause as artificer' really says more about our consciousness than it necessarily does about the 'actual' universe.
Moderate - I'm surprised you continue to urge me to read books - you seem to have a low opinion of my mental capacity.
Meanwhile, I feel strongly that I don't need to read 2,000 years of Catholic thought to reach an understanding about God anymore than I need to read the complete literature on fairies to realize that they are make-believe or complete graduate-level study on textiles to know that the emporor has no clothes.
Just a few lines of some of the horrors in Deuteronomy is all it takes to know the Bible is not a Holy book or a reliable book of morals.
How about this – you read a few lines of Dawkins, “The God delusion” or Hitchens’ “God is not Great” or Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell.” Just a few lines – then read on if you think it’s worth it.
Relax. I am not Solomon R. Whoever he is. I can be candid, yes even blunt, at times when I am getting what I perceive as BS, but I think there is value in communicating with other people. But by all means do lighten up on your worries about why people would express opinions here or respond to your comments.
The issues of Theism versus Atheism are really not as simple as you guys here seem to think. There really is a dialog that has been going on for more than twenty-five centuries that has a lot more IQ points embedded in it than we will ever have here. The ancient Greek Skeptics two and a half millennia ago sound a lot like the breathless postmodernists of today who think they invented these ideas. Machiavelli discusses an ethics that has no need of Theism. Nietzsche is of course the original “God is Dead” guy. The logical positivists like Hume have their own views. Jean Paul Sartre and his Existential School has thought things through on the Atheist side, but seems terribly unhappy (Nausia, and No Exit being among his fictional works explaining his ideas.) Plato's Republic explores the relationship of Theism/Atheism to ethics. Very deep that one. As a teen, I found Ayn Rand fascinating and her speech on Original Sin given by the character of John Gault in “Atlas Shrugged” started my Atheist phase that lasted close to thirty years. She's mad as hell, though, so it is hard work to plow through the stuff now.
However, there is a lot more to the Theist side of the argument than its opponents like to think. I would recommend Peter Kreeft who is an excellent philosopher/logician for his Socrates Meets ... series and Socratic Logic, and others. Rodney Stark is and first rate scientific sociologist who writes on the topic of how religions work in society.
Then there is Roger Penrose, who is one of the most brilliant mathematicians now living who discusses foundations of mathematical physics and implications for understanding our world, and how it came to be. One of his results is that the Universe is no accident. Think about that.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, is an amazingly deep thinker the implications of Theism in general, and of course Christianity (Is the Pope a Catholic?) in general. He also has telling points on the foundations of science. As was John Paul II who found time to write on the sanctity life and dignity of women of after decades of opposing Nazis and Communists. He got an eyeful of two Atheist societies gone mad and wanted no part of them. They are a cautionary tale to anyone who wants to conclude that religion causes all the wars. The religious wars were really quite restrained compared to the doctrine of Total War prosecuted by the Twentieth Century atheists.
I have to say that a lot of the comments on these blogs are from the shallow end of the pool. Maybe even from the kiddie pool. The waters run really deep in the sophisticated Theist and Atheist schools of thought.
Moreover, no Atheist is worth his salt until he has actually engages in serious dialog with the two thousand years of Catholic thought on the topic. These people are not stupid, and only fools dismiss them as such. The Society of Jesus (also known as the Jesuits) is of particular interest for their intellectual, spiritual, and philosophical rigor, and for social justice advocacy. Amazing thinkers have been and are in their ranks.
Try a swim in the deep end. It is more interesting than the Nya, Nya, Nya, Boo Boo, and Sez who? Sez me! kind of “thinking” common here.
"He presents a formula derived from the Hawking-Beckenstein bound for the entropy of black holes to quantify the size of the state space of the Universe that we are able to observe. He points out that the existence of thermodynamics as we have it (things progress from more orderly to less orderly states as time progresses) indicates that the initial conditions of any universe remotely resembling ours are absurdly improbable. He gives a very nice discussion in “The Emperor's New Mind” and in “The Road to Reality”, and I recommend that you read them.
"The probability he obtains is approximately one part in 10^10^128. "
Only problem with using this to argue any deliberate creation is, well, current physics are postulating that this is one of a near-infinite number of universes (Talking M-theory, here.)
With a big enough sample, (and it'd appear we have one, even if we can't precisely 'sample' it right now,) even what's extremely improbable (from the standpoint of any one universe) becomes a statistical inevitability... and that's presuming there's no mechanisms that might tend to reinforce each other when it comes to forming such a relatively-stable universe as we now enjoy.
Basically, however big your multiverse gets, there's *still* nothing that 'proves' anything like 'artifice,' (especially not according to any particular book) ...even if it just so happens to be mind-bogglingly big.
Still plenty of room for a lot of darn interesting stuff. :)
Sorry, Solomon R, but it isn't just a matter of semantics.
To follow your illogic, there are no non-believers in anything, be it religion, politics or any other endeavor. In fact, any word in the dictionary that carries the prefix "non" doesn't mean the absence or opposite of the root word being modified! It carries the same meaning as the root word we all thoguht was having its meaning changed by the addition of the "non" prefix!
To whit:
Non-abrasive cleaners are...abrasive.
Non-invasive surgery is...invasive.
Non-degreed positions at the university are...degreed.
Non-credentialed journalists are...credentialed.
Non-elected presidents are...president (oh wait...that one actually happened!).
Let's cut to the chase, shall we? You are a believer, and it is imperative to your worldview that everyone else be designated as the same, even if to do so means to throw out the dictionary and common sense along with it.
Unbelieveable.
Then, in your last post, you ask me to prove a negative. What is this? Second grade?
BTW - you're welcome to your god delusion. Just do me a favor - when you get over your delusion (and there's a good chance you will some day), remember who told you it was a delusion in the first place. You can then buy me a Guinness at my local pub.
Can you prove to me that God does not exist? Let us try the other way round, for a change, as some post above suggests. You prove to me and till such time as you cannot, we will accept otherwise. How about that!
Do you belive that there is no God? So, that is a belief indeed. If someone with an opposite belief says: I do not believe in the absence of God, that could be defined as a non-belief. It is all semantics, dude! And do not start with two negatives, two positives etc. In this case, not having "faith" is a belief too...accept it!
"Also, contrary to your post, to assert that there is no Zeus is to assert a belief. Possibly not an unreasonable one, but a belief none the less."
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.
The dictionary says that the prefix "non" means "absence of." Ergo, non-belief is the absence of belief. It is not a form or type of belief.
And, to be technical, non-belief in Zeus is not the same as your words, "asserting there is no Zeus." I didn't assert there was no Zeus. What I actually wrote was, "Is it a "belief" that you don't believe in Zeus?" You're asserting something I didn't say, assert or intend.
If you wish to play word games, then you owe it to me and others to not change the words - my words - with which you're playing.
I think The Moderate makes some really excellent points. And when it comes to discussion on theology, why is it that believers have to prove the existence of God? Do atheists or non-believers have any hard evidence to prove otherwise? Other than use "ad hominem" arguments, as Moderate points out? Why do some (not ALL) atheists think of believers as fundamentalists?
Clearly, you are much more a fundamentalist than I am because you apparently have an live by an unexamined dogma. You clearly get upset when it is challenged because you reflexively drop into the old Argumentum Ad Hominem (by the way, that's Latin for “name calling”), or paranoid fantasies. Read your own comment:
“Moderate, before continuing this conversation, I feel obliged to say that I suspect you are a fraud. I suspect you are a Christian troll who is here to discourage wavering Christians from further questioning their beliefs. ...
I bring up my suspicions here for a couple of reasons:
- to ask other readers to consider that your words should not necessarily be taken at face value
- to discourage you and others from this type of deceptive practice and to remind you that bearing false witness is against the laws of your God and general morality and thus (presumably) is not an honorable way to attempt to win or keep followers.”
Would that Christian pursuer by any chance be from Area 51 in Roswell New Mexico, be about four feet tall, and have very large eyes? Do you have recurrent nightmares about him? :-)))
By contrast I am open to logical and reasoned discussions about any aspect of theology or atheism, and I go where the logic takes me. That is about as far from Fundamentalism as one can get.
If you want to think instead of call names, your next assignment is to read up on Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem and the implications for Platonic archetypes in mathematics. By showing that there are unprovable truths Godel believed that he showed that there is truth in the Universe that is independent of Man. If so, then how did it get there?
Persiflage aside the real point here, dude, is that you are not the first one to think up the Atheist vs Theist debate, and you are surly not the best of the thinkers on the subject. When faced with this problem myself, I did extensive reading on what the various geniuses on both sides of the argument for the last twenty-five hundred years have said. You might find this quite mind expanding. I recommend it to you.
Moderate - you don't sound moderate; you sound fundamentalist - misrepresenting information, disregarding questions you can't answer and making snide remarks when confronted.
Modern science uses statistical tests of hypothesis as its basis of knowing, its epistemology if you will. If a hypothesis is sufficiently improbable given a set of observations, it is taken to be falsified. For example in a clinical trial of a new drug we compare, say death rates, in treatment and control groups. We make the null hypothesis that the two groups have the same death rate from the disease. We are able to compute a probability of seeing the observed difference or greater under the null hypothesis that the medicine makes no difference. In medical studies we us one part in a hundred or 10^2 as the rejection threshold. Thus, modern science uses statistical tests and probability computations as its epistemology. Sufficiently small probability of an event under a null hypothesis falsifies that hypothesis.
Roger Penrose, who worked with Stephen Hawking on the hard parts of the math and so is no theoretical lightweight, observes that the existence of the laws of thermodynamics tells us that the Universe proceeds from more orderly to less orderly states with passing time. This implies that the Universe at the time of the moment of creation (The Big Bang) was very orderly.
He presents a formula derived from the Hawking-Beckenstein bound for the entropy of black holes to quantify the size of the state space of the Universe that we are able to observe. He points out that the existence of thermodynamics as we have it (things progress from more orderly to less orderly states as time progresses) indicates that the initial conditions of any universe remotely resembling ours are absurdly improbable. He gives a very nice discussion in “The Emperor's New Mind” and in “The Road to Reality”, and I recommend that you read them.
The probability he obtains is approximately one part in 10^10^128.
Note that modern computers are overwhelmed by
"exponentially hard problems", and that this is a double exponential.
This amazing number represents perhaps the most confident rejection of a null hypothesis in human history. What null hypothesis would that be? That the universe as we live in it is an accident. Penrose posits a creator in response to this computation. He carefully notes that religious denominations such as Islam, or Christianity, do not follow from this.
The only viable counter claim that there must be an infinite number of universes so we would get this one inevitably. This unproven assumption of the Anthropomorphic Principle (we are here to see the Universe because it is so perfect) is a leap of faith as great as positing a Creator for this single universe.
Please note that there are no observations to support the existence of these other Universes and there may never be any evidence accessible from this universe to settle the matter. Moreover, multiplying the problem of creation by infinity does not make the question any easier. That is the context of the story about the tomato garden.
So MR MARK, Creation itself does provide evidence to ponder.
Also, contrary to your post, to assert that there is no Zeus is to assert a belief. Possibly not an unreasonable one, but a belief none the less.
So Mr. Mark do you believe in Dark Matter or Dark energy or variable gravity and if it is delusional to believe in one thing you cannot see, touch, feel taste or here why is believing in another any better?
Why don't you call them delusional psychotics? The choices are 1. liars, 2. delusional, or 3. touched by God. You take your your pick, and I'll take mine. Sometimes delusional, or delusional once, is still delusional. So this must be considered as a real possibility when conducting an analysis of the possibilities.
Hitchens does not bear comparison with Newton. But from the amount of alcohol he is said to consume he may well be delusional at times. :-)))
Moderate - There are other possibilities for Paul, besides being a delusional psychotic or an ancient Jim Jones. He could have had a single delusional episode associated with a physical illness. Or maybe it was just a garden-variety biblical vision. They happened a lot back then - to Moses, for instance, and didn't the virgin Mary have one? and Joseph, too? No one calls them delusional psychotics.
Regarding Newton – vast knowledge of the scriptures is not the same thing as deep belief in God. Christopher Hitchens, famous atheist writer, also knows a lot about the Bible from his early religious training and the same holds for many former fundamentalists who have stopped believing. Regarding Einstein, I know he said he didn’t believe in the biblical God, so I don’t see how he figures into a discussion about regaining Christianity.
Oh, yes, one last thing. As to whether I misrepresent Newton and Einstein, I recommend two books: Newton's “The Prophecies of Daniel”, Einstein's “Out of My Later Years. You will have to read them to find out. Newton shows biblical scholarship the puts modern university professors to shame. Perhaps not surprising considering that he had twice the IQ of the average college professor.
If you want to have a serious discussion of religion, it will take more work than the sloppy polemics that pass for reason on these blogs. Suspicion and ignorance just won't cut it.
Wow. A little paranoid are we? I assure you that you have misjudged me. What I have said a glimpse into my unfinished spiritual journey.
As to the historicity of the Bible, it is a complex and often contradictory library of human experience and shortfalls. It is also an account of the experiences that people thought they had with God. After two decades of study of the Ancient World generally, and the Judeo-Christian world in particular, my conclusion is that the Gospel writers related their experiences as best they could. What to make of that is the conundrum.
For example, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus from a Pharisaic death squad member to the Apostle Paul who planted Christian churches where ever he went in the ancient world, and most probably gave his life to the work. He describes an experience of a vision of Jesus saying to him “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He was then blind for three days. What do you make of that?
There are three, and only three, possibilities. First, he may have lied about the whole thing. Second, he may have been delusional and suffered an episode of hysterical blindness. Third and most difficult for the scientifically trained modern mind he was visited by the spirit of Jesus. He was so consistent, I don't think the first possibility holds water. He was too well placed and successful in his society to do that on a lark.
That leaves us with the possibilities of insanity, or the direct experience of Jesus. I find them both hard to swallow. If he was a delusional psychotic one would see disorganization in other aspects of his life. The delusional Jim Jones and David Koresh types lead their followers to isolation from the broader community to maintain and increase control over them, and then to slaughter. Recordings we have of Jones shows paranoid man sinking into madness. The History Channel has a chilling documentary on the progression from a San Francisco to purple Cool Aid in Jonestown that is worth the discomfort it causes to watch.
By contrast, In Paul we see an incisive and very sane mind in his letters, and a man who organized churches that went into the world instead of isolating themselves. For an interesting view how the early Christian church and how it actually took over the Roman Empire I recommend Rodney Stark's excellent quantitative sociology study “The Rise of Christianity”. He advances the hypothesis that in repeated plagues, the Christians nursed each other even at risk to themselves. The pagans abandoned each other. The physicians he consulted indicated that this may have made the difference between a twenty percent death rate, and an eighty percent one. That doesn't sound like Jim Jones to me.
Still, as a modern skeptic, it is hard to believe option three. But that leaves us with no satisfactory explanation of this pivotal figure in the foundation of the Christian Church. Go figure.
By the way, I am not looking for followers. I keep a busy schedule I don't have time for that kind of crap.
Moderate, before continuing this conversation, I feel obliged to say that I suspect you are a fraud. I suspect you are a Christian troll who is here to discourage wavering Christians from further questioning their beliefs. I realize I could be wrong and apologize if that’s the case. I suspect it because you misrepresent or obfuscate famous scientists’ positions on God and your posts reveal typical Christian misconceptions of atheism rather than typical experiences of it. You use descriptors such as “cold” and “empty,” “having faith in nothing,” being convinced by atheist writers that you lived in a “deterministic and uncaring universe.”
Then you assert reclaiming belief in God an the antidote for this sterile existence. You assert that the Gospels are an “historical account of the life, death, and resurrection of the one known as Jesus Christ.” Not mentioning that any unbiased “extensive research” would raise questions about the historicity of the Gospels and other parts of the Bible (unless you’ve gone from atheism to Fundamentalism). Your posts seem more like sermons to shore up the faithful than a personal testimony.
I bring up my suspicions here for a couple of reasons:
- to ask other readers to consider that your words should not necessarily be taken at face value
- to discourage you and others from this type of deceptive practice and to remind you that bearing false witness is against the laws of your God and general morality and thus (presumably) is not an honorable way to attempt to win or keep followers.
For me, your question involves scientific epistomology. Fundamental issues of "How do we know things?" A decent answer will take some thought, and it is late now, and I need to sleep. Tomorrow, I will give you my best try at an answer to your thoughtful (though implicit) question embodied in the statement:
"Personally, I think the wonders of your garden tomato don't *require* a God-as-ruler-and-architect as some people leap to presume."
Meanwhile, I assure you that I did not leap to assume this most difficult conclusion. I have ceased being an Atheist only reluctantly and after two decades of reflection.
Thank you for your thoughtful question: “Tell me, Moderate, when you refound faith in God, did that also include renewed faith in Jesus as your savior who died for your sins and was miraculously resurrected from the dead?”
Not at first. The rediscovery of faith was very incremental and tentative for me. I took two things on Faith:
1.In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.
2.She did this to create an abode for life.
From these two assumptions our religious denominations, like Catholic and Protestant and Jewish and Muslim do not follow. But the study of history is another matter. The New Testament offers an historical account of the life, death, and resurrection of the one known as Jesus Christ. After an extended study of those documents, and everything else I could find on the topic I believe that, at a minimum, something extraordinary happened the first Easter Morning. Those who knew Jesus thought that they saw him again after his death on the Cross. The idea that he really did not die is insufficient. He would have been a physical wreck that would not have matched the descriptions of his appearances. Then too, there is the remarkable Pentecost incident. I conclude that we must credit this community with reporting what it thought it saw. Given that, we must ask why they thought they saw that.
This was not the result of a simple journey, or a short one. Nor do I feel complete, or perfected. Still, it feels better to fill the God Shaped Hole in my psyche than it did when it was empty. This is a work in progress, and if you are interested I will keep you posted.
Tell me, Moderate, when you refound faith in God, did that also include renewed faith in Jesus as your savior who died for your sins and was miraculously resurrected from the dead? (For instance, Einstein did not believe in Jesus or in the God of Abraham) If so, I'm sincerely curious how that grew out of your fascination with the intricacies of a tomato.
By the way, although I don't have faith in God, I have faith in other things - the ultimate potential for the goodness of humanity, for instance. I find my life to be full and rich and not at all cold and empty.
E-Fave
You are absolutely right. I didn't mean that my example was the only way that an atheist could reach that conclusion, only to give an example of religious faith that is easily abandoned.
Paganplace
It's always nice to have you around. Your consistent testimony is proof in and of itself, that virtue is a river reached by many different tributaries, and that lip service to the "correct" or majoritarian doctrines has nothing to do with Christ or any other positive spirit.
Moderate
Great testimony. I've always thought it would be little things that made the difference.
When I was an Atheist I had Faith in Nothing. I had faith in the cold and empty space that we can see in our telescopes. I had faith that no God could exist, and no God could care. Newton, Nietzsche, Sartre, Rand, and a host of others convinced me that I lived in an deterministic and uncaring Universe. Later, I was startled to find out that Newton was a theologian, and that he thought that his theology would be more important than his science. I was perplexed that this greatest of all scientific geniuses, the very soul of modern rational thought, could have believed in those ancient superstitions. Then I found out that Einstein was also tainted, and even said: “Religion without Science is blind. Science without Religion is lame.” It shook my Faith that these pillars of modern scientific thought could have believed in God. I began to question my Faith in Nothingness.
Over succeding decades small theophanies began to creep into my technological life. Growing tomatoes one year, I cut one open in the garden to eat it because they were so sweet and beautiful that year. In the bright sunlight I saw a seemlingly infinitely fine network of capillaries in the perfection of the ruby red glistening fruit exposed to my gaze. I could not help but question my Faith that Universe was an accident. As I started to think about God as a possibility, I realized that I was not the first to think about this subject, and I began to read the works of some of the great theologians and philosophy in history including Aquinas, Augustine, on God, and Plato on ethics. I lost my Faith in Nothing, and found Faith in God.
I think, also, Vie, that when religious authorities overreach, and say, 'Faith and reason are at war, you must choose faith,' then *humanism becomes somehow *bad.** And, conveniently for some, anything *associated* with 'humanism' can be dismissed as 'Anti-God,'
Which is funny, cause Jesus sure looked like a humanist to me.
I always say, 'Belief is thinking you know something: Faith is not needing to.'
Too often this gets turned around into saying, 'Faith is believing something so vehemently that I think I know it.'
Soon the belief becomes more important than the practice that's supposed to justify it, not to mention utterly detached from what we *can* know.
Becomes about 'rival authorities.'
For me, 'Faith' isn't about my particular beliefs, as such. It's a bond of trust between myself and my world, and, yes, my Goddess, ...my Gods in general. Not that, say, 'I'm equivalent-to-factually right about what I believe I'll experience in the next life or between,' ...but that it's part of something, what I experience as the connection between all this stuff...
(way to generalize)
Point being, my faith isn't, strictly, that spirit will be experienced according to certain mental beliefs, (Gods forbid we should figure we're *allowed* a few functional illusions in this world, eh? *gasp.*)
Real faith, to me, can *accept* new information, new possibilities, new experiences.
No one *told* me about the Goddess, She was just *there* when people who tend to be afraid of the 'humanism' of life were so terrified that without certain belief, horrible things would happen to me, and them, that, well, they did some rather horrible things.
Didn't even *say,* "Hey, I'm yer Goddess."
She, and experience, did teach me, though, that you can't 'defend the faith.' You're just defending the fear that faith is beliefs or books or systems or all the other things certain 'defenders of the faith' thought they'd destroyed.
You can't. Not if they burned every temple or holy book ever.
Gods know it's been tried.
'Humanism' isn't just a potential common ground for people of all beliefs, ...it's the only real one there can ever be, in some ways. While we're being humans, anyway.
Faith is something else. Unless maybe faith says, 'We're allowed to be humans, right now.'
GaryD - a clarification -- when I said "everyone" I meant every Christian, as in, it may be that not every Christian shares your path and your commitment to Christianity.
Viejita, you say, “Too many…seek comfort in glib answers and when their circumstances don't conform to their expectations they conclude…that (1) There is no G-d….[which] leads to atheism and humanism….” I’d add that some atheists conclude there is no God in other circumstances:
1) after deep thought and extensive research
2) after an insight that all religions are man-made (like my friend who realized, after hearing the Mormon story, that people were willing to believe the most fantastic things if it gave them special status and happened long enough ago to be difficult to prove)
3) Because an oppressive experience with religion convinces them that God is a human construct to control people.
4) because they’re born that way and see no evidence to the contrary. These people usually learn to keep this awareness to themselves once realizing the society at large doesn’t share their awareness.
I suppose there are other reasons, too. Seems like it’s just recently that people are starting to talk about it openly.
I think the editors have come up with a question that is worth asking, and the answer will be different for everyone. Personally I think everyone questions, but seem people have been trained (or have trained themselves) to keep quiet and go along with the authorities.
Too many Christians (and others) seek comfort in glib answers, and when their circumstances don't conform to their expectations they conclude either that (1) There is no G-d, or (2) They are approaching Him wrong (not vehemently enough, or using the wrong prayers). Option one leads to atheism and humanism, while option two can result in fundamentalism or conversion to a different sect or religion...
In this equation I'll take the non-Christian or atheist any day.
Bomb is the way that you pronounce my last name but it comes from the german and it means tree. I am very serious, God sure is not like what a lot of people that call themselves christians think that He is. Yes I know that God is not a He or a She, and God definitely is not an it. God is Pure Love, God Incarnate was a male member of the human race and His earthly name was Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The Jews are the chosen people for the simple reason that God chose and formed them to make this place safe enough for even God to come down here into this place where we have free will and be able to grow up and do what He came to do. As God said "My ways are not your ways and My thoughts are not your thoughts", well God is a searcher of hearts and minds not of religious affiliations or lack thereof, a lot of people will try to hide behind their religion. God's Plan is for all of His children, that is what the "Good News" is, which actually is what the word gospel means. That is what proclaiming the gospel to all the world like Jesus told us to do is all about, not being some of the most arrogant, judgemental, condemning people on the planet. Thank You. Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
"If you're raised to believe
in the supernatural
a whole part of us
is lost to reason for ever"
Not believing in God is also a belief. If you believe that you don't believe in God, a whole part of you is also lost to reason for ever. If we have an open mind, whether you are believer in God or not, not a single part of us is lost to reason.
I find Christianity the most logical of views. Without the presence of the Holy spirit that would not be so of course.
My wife for whatever it is worth has in the past frequently accused me of being too driven by logic.
The problem really comes down to this. If you have not the Holy spirit as a guide explaining the inherent logic of Christianity to you is a lot like trying to explain the vibrant colors of a Matisse or a Rembrandt master piece to one born blind. He might get someting of your passion for the work of these men, but he can't quite grasp it for he cannot truly experience it first hand.
All Comments (94)
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Attitude is Everything
http://www.snow.co.nz/Areas/15.asp?skiArea=15
December 19, 2007 4:48 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 19, 2007 04:48
DRJAY:
In Re: "Interesting conversation--but not all Christians believe that Christianity is the ONLY way--it is their way, often by accident of birth, but also often by choice based on experience. Not all Christians have an overwhelming desire to beat others over the head with their convictions nor to insist that theirs is the only way."
Where did that come from??? Did you get the wrong blog? We were having a discussion of ontology, epistemology, some interesting (and somewhat controversial) issues in physics, and how those relate to a Creator. Some aggressive Atheists and one aggressive former Atheist were having an essentially good natured argument thrashing out some ideas. There is no suggestion I can remember that any of this implies intolerance, or Christianity as the only true religion. There was certainly none by me. In fact, I said a couple of times that none of that implies religious denominations like Christianity or Islam at all.
Also, you should read the book by Philip Jenkins titled:
"The New Anti-Catholicism - The Last Acceptable Prejudice"
I am not a Catholic, and Jenkins is not either, but this kind of knee-jerk stuff spun up out of thin air should be dropped.
BTW, what did you think of the Anthropic Principle?
June 21, 2007 9:33 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 21, 2007 21:33
Interesting conversation--but not all Christians believe that Christianity is the ONLY way--it is their way, often by accident of birth, but also often by choice based on experience. Not all Christians have an overwhelming desire to beat others over the head with their convictions nor to insist that theirs is the only way. And not all Christians take the position that propositional logic is the only possible truth (let alone that the Bible is propositional at all). There are, in fact, some Christians whose approach to their trusting relationship with deity actually takes the form of a remark at the end of Peter DeVries' novel, *The Mackeral Plaza,* where the heroine tells the liberal pastor that theologians tend to go around Robin Hood's barn, and that her mother had the answer when she said, "The point is to be as humane as humanly possible." You can cut the metaphors as finely as possible, you can dice the logic and cite the authorities, but in the end whatever the tradition, Christianity or any other belief system that can't come down to that is not one I'd have much to do with.
June 21, 2007 4:34 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 21, 2007 16:34
I guess that brings full-circle to Dr. Thistlethwaite's exhortation:
"God gave you a brain - now use it!"
Lovely.
June 21, 2007 6:50 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 21, 2007 06:50
I guess that brings full-circle to Dr. Thistlethwaite's exhortation:
"God gave you a brain - now use it!"
Lovely.
June 21, 2007 6:50 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 21, 2007 06:50
Dear FREND:
The citation in Penrose' The Emperor's New Mind is Chapter 7 Cosmology and the Arrow of Time. Pages 302-347. As Penrose is a polymath of major scope, the chapter covers a lot of ground. It starts with a discussion of thermodynamic entropy and the fact that it is always increasing. Cosmology of the Big Bang, in and of itself, fails to necessitate the low entropy initial conditions that a universe with our thermodynamics needed to exist.
“Recall the the primordial fireball was thermal state - a hot gas in expanding thermal equilibrium. Recall, also, that the term 'thermal equilibrium' refers to a state of maximum entropy. However, the second law demands that in its initial state, the entropy was at some sort of minimum, not a maximum! What has gone wrong?” (p328-329)
After a lengthy discussion of how much entropy is available to the Universe as we observe it and making some phase space calculations and citing some physics due to Hawking and Beckenstein on the entropy of black holes. Starts using the therm “Creator”, and uses it for the latter part of the chapter.
Then he hits the punchline:
“But in order to start off with the universe in state of low entropy - so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics - the Creator must aim for for a much tinier volume of phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?” (p340)
After more detailed analyses he states:
“This tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of
one part in 10^10^123.
This is an extraordinary figure.” (p344)
Now if anybody ever said a mouthful, that was it. Being in the sciences and hard engineering disciplines, this result set me back my heels. I use hypothesis testing all the time, and modern scientific method rests on precision measurements and calculations of probability from those measurements to test hypotheses. “This guy just showed that the Universe is no accident.” I thought when I read that. Penrose posits a Creator to explain it.
The infinitely many universes hypothesis requires multiplying Creation times infinity. That does not simplify the problem, it makes it infinitely harder. Moreover, there is no evidence of it. There may never be any evidence of it. So both the Creator and infinitely many universes hypotheses are beyond the scope of science at this point. Believing either is an act of Faith. Personally, I view the Creator as a more parsimonious explanation. At least you need only one Uncaused Cause in stead of infinitely many.
Clearly this issue is far from settled, and it is not just reviled Fundamentalists who think that.
The track record of science so far suggests that the Creator (the Uncaused Cause, God, or what ever you call it) made the Universe comprehensible to us. As Einstein put it: God is Subtle, but not malicious.” Maybe in the next millennium we will learn more. Maybe sooner. We can hope.
June 20, 2007 10:54 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 20, 2007 22:54
literature
arts
June 20, 2007 5:40 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 20, 2007 17:40
I read "The Emperor's New Mind" but I don't remember the calculation you present. I don't know what assumptions he makes in coming to such a number.
Where does that take me?
I don't come to any conclusion as to the "First Cause" or "Preceeding Cause" because the probability of the creation of the creator must be an exponentially higher number than the one Penrose presents.
There is also the lack of evidence of the direct physical influence of a personal diety in the universe. I can't call a probability direct evidence.
Certainly, whatever the conclusion of Penrose, I know you realize I could produce authoritative figures that make compelling arguements for a universe that always existed and nothing for a creator to do.
I don't want to get into an "Arguement by authority" though.
Ultimatly, I cannot explain why there is order in the natural laws of the Universe that allow us to exsist or why there is a universe at all.
Religion (all religions), literature, and science together help me understand or relate to this absurd situation we find ourselves in on Earth.
"Uncaused Cause is defined as God".
I'll accept that as part of the definition of god.
June 20, 2007 12:41 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 20, 2007 12:41
GaryD: **If there was a big bang who or what lit the fuse?**
It is not necessary to have an alternate explanation for a phenomenon in order to lack belief in a specific one.
For example, if I were asked to describe your undergarments, I could not do so, having no verifiable information on which to base a description. However, having read your posts on this and other subjects,and having inferred certain ideas about your personality from them, I would feel confident in saying that I don't believe you are wearing a fuschia lace thong with a Tinkerbell applique on the front.
June 20, 2007 9:49 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 20, 2007 09:49
FRIEND:
Penrose, I think bravely, dares to come to grips with the issues raised by his science and reasoning.
The Universe in which we live is not an accident.
Where does that take you?
One ancient philosophical conclusion is to define Uncaused Cause is defined as God. Quantum mechanics shows that at very small levels, things are random, but the whole Universe is way, way, beyond Heisenberg's uncertainty limit for tiny particles, so the earlier causal thinking does apply.
Can we do better today? I am not sure.
BTW, Cosmologist Frank Tipler in his book The Physics of Immortality proposes a really beautiful thought poem about where the Universe is going, and how that relates to where it came from. Basically returns to the idea that God causes herself (itself). Great read.
June 20, 2007 9:03 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 20, 2007 09:03
I see no forced conclusion of any kind from anyone.
Any probability calculations on an omnipotent god spontaniously being created?
If the present universe exists, that's one thing I'm sure of...
June 19, 2007 10:32 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 22:32
FRIEND:
See previous post. The present Universe is all we have to observe. It forces us to the conclusion that the present Universe is not an accident. What do you make of that? Do you take the Multiverse on Faith as PAGANPLACE does?
June 19, 2007 10:25 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 22:25
Dear PAGANPLACE:
Nice try, but no cigar. In order to take the Multiverse hypothesis YOU have to posit the existence of infinitely many universes which you have no evidence actually exist. Infinitely many universes that no observations support or confirm. So you are take them on Faith in the unseen, because it suits your (unsupported) belief system. By the way, there is presently not even a theory of how we might come to observe this infinitude of universes you place your Faith in. And there may never be.
Penrose, by contrast argues from only from THIS universe, which is the only one that can be seen, touched, breathed, and walked through. The configuration of THIS universe is absurdly improbable if it is accidental. Yes, that insane number:
1/(10^10^128)
If you tried to write this number decimal notation as
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000...
You would run out of atoms in the Universe using each one to represent a zero before you got to the end. Therefore we confidently reject the hypothesis that this Universe is an accident. To make that conclusion Penrose, unlike you, confines himself to the observable Universe. Conclusion: the Universe is not an accident. This rests on the foundation of a scientific epistemology that is the most successful edifice for discerning new knowledge in human history.
As GARYD put his question: “... If there was a big bang who ro what lit the fuse?” To this I add: how did our Universe Bomb get this way even before that?
Bottom line: You take more on Faith than I do, and with less confirmation.
June 19, 2007 10:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 22:18
And who and what lit the fuse of who or what lit the fuse?
Any probability calculations on an omnipotent god spontaniously being created?
June 19, 2007 10:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 22:18
E Favorite:
It is not an insult. It's what I do for fun. (which tells you I probably don't get out enough. :-) But honestly I don't think there is enough intellectual depth to these discussions.
As for Hitchins, I have listened to him at length in interviews. Perhaps more importantly, I have heard many people on these blogs say that Hitchins has nothing to say that isn't leftovers from Dawkins. What do you think on that comment? Does Hitchins add anything new? He is a bit of a show man who loves to promote himself.
I may read this Dawkins book, but I will be surprised if I find anything that Rand didn't cover. Her analyses are quite cogent and resolutely anti religious. Have you read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, The Virtue of Selfishness, We the Living, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and For the New Intellectual?
I am not asking you this because I hold you in low regard. I am just trying to get your perspective and contrast this new material with some of the old in the same discussion. Any thoughts on comparing these writers?
June 19, 2007 9:17 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 21:17
Yet the universe was not and now is. In terms of reductio absurdum If there was a big bang who or what lit the fuse?
June 19, 2007 3:50 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 15:50
The problem with the Christian thinking on theism is that most of the premises and arguments are constructed to allow no other answer, I'd say: complexity doesn't mean the universe was created as artifice from outside... in fact, believing in Gods isn't as *dependent* on this idea as it's presumed to be.
Certainly, my own religion is happy enough to see the universe as arising organically, yet being alive and even conscious. (Not such an uncommon idea, really)
One can apply a great deal of intellectual vigor to faulty or incomplete premises: (lots of Jesuits in my family, myself) ...the idea there must be an 'uncaused first cause as artificer' really says more about our consciousness than it necessarily does about the 'actual' universe.
June 19, 2007 1:07 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 13:07
Moderate - I'm surprised you continue to urge me to read books - you seem to have a low opinion of my mental capacity.
Meanwhile, I feel strongly that I don't need to read 2,000 years of Catholic thought to reach an understanding about God anymore than I need to read the complete literature on fairies to realize that they are make-believe or complete graduate-level study on textiles to know that the emporor has no clothes.
Just a few lines of some of the horrors in Deuteronomy is all it takes to know the Bible is not a Holy book or a reliable book of morals.
How about this – you read a few lines of Dawkins, “The God delusion” or Hitchens’ “God is not Great” or Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell.” Just a few lines – then read on if you think it’s worth it.
June 19, 2007 11:14 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 11:14
Dear E FAVORITE:
Relax. I am not Solomon R. Whoever he is. I can be candid, yes even blunt, at times when I am getting what I perceive as BS, but I think there is value in communicating with other people. But by all means do lighten up on your worries about why people would express opinions here or respond to your comments.
The issues of Theism versus Atheism are really not as simple as you guys here seem to think. There really is a dialog that has been going on for more than twenty-five centuries that has a lot more IQ points embedded in it than we will ever have here. The ancient Greek Skeptics two and a half millennia ago sound a lot like the breathless postmodernists of today who think they invented these ideas. Machiavelli discusses an ethics that has no need of Theism. Nietzsche is of course the original “God is Dead” guy. The logical positivists like Hume have their own views. Jean Paul Sartre and his Existential School has thought things through on the Atheist side, but seems terribly unhappy (Nausia, and No Exit being among his fictional works explaining his ideas.) Plato's Republic explores the relationship of Theism/Atheism to ethics. Very deep that one. As a teen, I found Ayn Rand fascinating and her speech on Original Sin given by the character of John Gault in “Atlas Shrugged” started my Atheist phase that lasted close to thirty years. She's mad as hell, though, so it is hard work to plow through the stuff now.
However, there is a lot more to the Theist side of the argument than its opponents like to think. I would recommend Peter Kreeft who is an excellent philosopher/logician for his Socrates Meets ... series and Socratic Logic, and others. Rodney Stark is and first rate scientific sociologist who writes on the topic of how religions work in society.
Then there is Roger Penrose, who is one of the most brilliant mathematicians now living who discusses foundations of mathematical physics and implications for understanding our world, and how it came to be. One of his results is that the Universe is no accident. Think about that.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, is an amazingly deep thinker the implications of Theism in general, and of course Christianity (Is the Pope a Catholic?) in general. He also has telling points on the foundations of science. As was John Paul II who found time to write on the sanctity life and dignity of women of after decades of opposing Nazis and Communists. He got an eyeful of two Atheist societies gone mad and wanted no part of them. They are a cautionary tale to anyone who wants to conclude that religion causes all the wars. The religious wars were really quite restrained compared to the doctrine of Total War prosecuted by the Twentieth Century atheists.
I have to say that a lot of the comments on these blogs are from the shallow end of the pool. Maybe even from the kiddie pool. The waters run really deep in the sophisticated Theist and Atheist schools of thought.
Moreover, no Atheist is worth his salt until he has actually engages in serious dialog with the two thousand years of Catholic thought on the topic. These people are not stupid, and only fools dismiss them as such. The Society of Jesus (also known as the Jesuits) is of particular interest for their intellectual, spiritual, and philosophical rigor, and for social justice advocacy. Amazing thinkers have been and are in their ranks.
Try a swim in the deep end. It is more interesting than the Nya, Nya, Nya, Boo Boo, and Sez who? Sez me! kind of “thinking” common here.
June 19, 2007 9:03 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 09:03
Hey, The Moderate:
Just on this:
"He presents a formula derived from the Hawking-Beckenstein bound for the entropy of black holes to quantify the size of the state space of the Universe that we are able to observe. He points out that the existence of thermodynamics as we have it (things progress from more orderly to less orderly states as time progresses) indicates that the initial conditions of any universe remotely resembling ours are absurdly improbable. He gives a very nice discussion in “The Emperor's New Mind” and in “The Road to Reality”, and I recommend that you read them.
"The probability he obtains is approximately one part in 10^10^128. "
Only problem with using this to argue any deliberate creation is, well, current physics are postulating that this is one of a near-infinite number of universes (Talking M-theory, here.)
With a big enough sample, (and it'd appear we have one, even if we can't precisely 'sample' it right now,) even what's extremely improbable (from the standpoint of any one universe) becomes a statistical inevitability... and that's presuming there's no mechanisms that might tend to reinforce each other when it comes to forming such a relatively-stable universe as we now enjoy.
Basically, however big your multiverse gets, there's *still* nothing that 'proves' anything like 'artifice,' (especially not according to any particular book) ...even if it just so happens to be mind-bogglingly big.
Still plenty of room for a lot of darn interesting stuff. :)
June 19, 2007 12:41 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 19, 2007 00:41
Solomon R - Hey, Dude, are you also "Moderate" or am I being paranoid again?
June 18, 2007 6:20 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 18:20
Sorry, Solomon R, but it isn't just a matter of semantics.
To follow your illogic, there are no non-believers in anything, be it religion, politics or any other endeavor. In fact, any word in the dictionary that carries the prefix "non" doesn't mean the absence or opposite of the root word being modified! It carries the same meaning as the root word we all thoguht was having its meaning changed by the addition of the "non" prefix!
To whit:
Non-abrasive cleaners are...abrasive.
Non-invasive surgery is...invasive.
Non-degreed positions at the university are...degreed.
Non-credentialed journalists are...credentialed.
Non-elected presidents are...president (oh wait...that one actually happened!).
Let's cut to the chase, shall we? You are a believer, and it is imperative to your worldview that everyone else be designated as the same, even if to do so means to throw out the dictionary and common sense along with it.
Unbelieveable.
Then, in your last post, you ask me to prove a negative. What is this? Second grade?
BTW - you're welcome to your god delusion. Just do me a favor - when you get over your delusion (and there's a good chance you will some day), remember who told you it was a delusion in the first place. You can then buy me a Guinness at my local pub.
June 18, 2007 5:47 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 17:47
Can you prove to me that God does not exist? Let us try the other way round, for a change, as some post above suggests. You prove to me and till such time as you cannot, we will accept otherwise. How about that!
June 18, 2007 5:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 17:01
The dictionary also defines belief as "conviction or opinion"...so that makes your opinion a BELIEF, dude!
June 18, 2007 4:59 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 16:59
Do you belive that there is no God? So, that is a belief indeed. If someone with an opposite belief says: I do not believe in the absence of God, that could be defined as a non-belief. It is all semantics, dude! And do not start with two negatives, two positives etc. In this case, not having "faith" is a belief too...accept it!
June 18, 2007 4:57 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 16:57
Moderate writes:
"Also, contrary to your post, to assert that there is no Zeus is to assert a belief. Possibly not an unreasonable one, but a belief none the less."
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.
The dictionary says that the prefix "non" means "absence of." Ergo, non-belief is the absence of belief. It is not a form or type of belief.
And, to be technical, non-belief in Zeus is not the same as your words, "asserting there is no Zeus." I didn't assert there was no Zeus. What I actually wrote was, "Is it a "belief" that you don't believe in Zeus?" You're asserting something I didn't say, assert or intend.
If you wish to play word games, then you owe it to me and others to not change the words - my words - with which you're playing.
June 18, 2007 4:44 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 16:44
Mr Mark
I believe there is a God. That is my belief
You believe there is no God. That is your belief.
I believe in God and you believe otherwise. We both have beliefs that are contrary to each other.
I stand on my belief. You stand on your belief
I think my belief is true. You think your belief is true.
June 18, 2007 3:30 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 15:30
I think The Moderate makes some really excellent points. And when it comes to discussion on theology, why is it that believers have to prove the existence of God? Do atheists or non-believers have any hard evidence to prove otherwise? Other than use "ad hominem" arguments, as Moderate points out? Why do some (not ALL) atheists think of believers as fundamentalists?
June 18, 2007 12:51 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 12:51
E FAVORITE:
Clearly, you are much more a fundamentalist than I am because you apparently have an live by an unexamined dogma. You clearly get upset when it is challenged because you reflexively drop into the old Argumentum Ad Hominem (by the way, that's Latin for “name calling”), or paranoid fantasies. Read your own comment:
“Moderate, before continuing this conversation, I feel obliged to say that I suspect you are a fraud. I suspect you are a Christian troll who is here to discourage wavering Christians from further questioning their beliefs. ...
I bring up my suspicions here for a couple of reasons:
- to ask other readers to consider that your words should not necessarily be taken at face value
- to discourage you and others from this type of deceptive practice and to remind you that bearing false witness is against the laws of your God and general morality and thus (presumably) is not an honorable way to attempt to win or keep followers.”
Would that Christian pursuer by any chance be from Area 51 in Roswell New Mexico, be about four feet tall, and have very large eyes? Do you have recurrent nightmares about him? :-)))
By contrast I am open to logical and reasoned discussions about any aspect of theology or atheism, and I go where the logic takes me. That is about as far from Fundamentalism as one can get.
If you want to think instead of call names, your next assignment is to read up on Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem and the implications for Platonic archetypes in mathematics. By showing that there are unprovable truths Godel believed that he showed that there is truth in the Universe that is independent of Man. If so, then how did it get there?
Persiflage aside the real point here, dude, is that you are not the first one to think up the Atheist vs Theist debate, and you are surly not the best of the thinkers on the subject. When faced with this problem myself, I did extensive reading on what the various geniuses on both sides of the argument for the last twenty-five hundred years have said. You might find this quite mind expanding. I recommend it to you.
June 18, 2007 9:26 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 18, 2007 09:26
Moderate - you don't sound moderate; you sound fundamentalist - misrepresenting information, disregarding questions you can't answer and making snide remarks when confronted.
June 17, 2007 11:40 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 23:40
Dear PAGANPLACE and MR MARK:
About the scientific epistemology thing:
Modern science uses statistical tests of hypothesis as its basis of knowing, its epistemology if you will. If a hypothesis is sufficiently improbable given a set of observations, it is taken to be falsified. For example in a clinical trial of a new drug we compare, say death rates, in treatment and control groups. We make the null hypothesis that the two groups have the same death rate from the disease. We are able to compute a probability of seeing the observed difference or greater under the null hypothesis that the medicine makes no difference. In medical studies we us one part in a hundred or 10^2 as the rejection threshold. Thus, modern science uses statistical tests and probability computations as its epistemology. Sufficiently small probability of an event under a null hypothesis falsifies that hypothesis.
Roger Penrose, who worked with Stephen Hawking on the hard parts of the math and so is no theoretical lightweight, observes that the existence of the laws of thermodynamics tells us that the Universe proceeds from more orderly to less orderly states with passing time. This implies that the Universe at the time of the moment of creation (The Big Bang) was very orderly.
He presents a formula derived from the Hawking-Beckenstein bound for the entropy of black holes to quantify the size of the state space of the Universe that we are able to observe. He points out that the existence of thermodynamics as we have it (things progress from more orderly to less orderly states as time progresses) indicates that the initial conditions of any universe remotely resembling ours are absurdly improbable. He gives a very nice discussion in “The Emperor's New Mind” and in “The Road to Reality”, and I recommend that you read them.
The probability he obtains is approximately one part in 10^10^128.
Note that modern computers are overwhelmed by
"exponentially hard problems", and that this is a double exponential.
This amazing number represents perhaps the most confident rejection of a null hypothesis in human history. What null hypothesis would that be? That the universe as we live in it is an accident. Penrose posits a creator in response to this computation. He carefully notes that religious denominations such as Islam, or Christianity, do not follow from this.
The only viable counter claim that there must be an infinite number of universes so we would get this one inevitably. This unproven assumption of the Anthropomorphic Principle (we are here to see the Universe because it is so perfect) is a leap of faith as great as positing a Creator for this single universe.
Please note that there are no observations to support the existence of these other Universes and there may never be any evidence accessible from this universe to settle the matter. Moreover, multiplying the problem of creation by infinity does not make the question any easier. That is the context of the story about the tomato garden.
So MR MARK, Creation itself does provide evidence to ponder.
Also, contrary to your post, to assert that there is no Zeus is to assert a belief. Possibly not an unreasonable one, but a belief none the less.
June 17, 2007 9:24 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 21:24
So Mr. Mark do you believe in Dark Matter or Dark energy or variable gravity and if it is delusional to believe in one thing you cannot see, touch, feel taste or here why is believing in another any better?
June 17, 2007 8:24 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 20:24
E Favorite:
Why don't you call them delusional psychotics? The choices are 1. liars, 2. delusional, or 3. touched by God. You take your your pick, and I'll take mine. Sometimes delusional, or delusional once, is still delusional. So this must be considered as a real possibility when conducting an analysis of the possibilities.
Hitchens does not bear comparison with Newton. But from the amount of alcohol he is said to consume he may well be delusional at times. :-)))
June 17, 2007 6:28 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 18:28
Moderate - There are other possibilities for Paul, besides being a delusional psychotic or an ancient Jim Jones. He could have had a single delusional episode associated with a physical illness. Or maybe it was just a garden-variety biblical vision. They happened a lot back then - to Moses, for instance, and didn't the virgin Mary have one? and Joseph, too? No one calls them delusional psychotics.
Regarding Newton – vast knowledge of the scriptures is not the same thing as deep belief in God. Christopher Hitchens, famous atheist writer, also knows a lot about the Bible from his early religious training and the same holds for many former fundamentalists who have stopped believing. Regarding Einstein, I know he said he didn’t believe in the biblical God, so I don’t see how he figures into a discussion about regaining Christianity.
June 17, 2007 3:59 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 15:59
Mel writes:
"Not believing in God is also a belief."
No, it isn't.
Is it a "belief" that you don't believe in Zeus? Is it a "belief" that you don't believe in werewolves.
Non-belief is a belief as bald is a hair color or not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Why don't you religionists get that?
June 17, 2007 1:31 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 13:31
Dear E FAVORITE:
Oh, yes, one last thing. As to whether I misrepresent Newton and Einstein, I recommend two books: Newton's “The Prophecies of Daniel”, Einstein's “Out of My Later Years. You will have to read them to find out. Newton shows biblical scholarship the puts modern university professors to shame. Perhaps not surprising considering that he had twice the IQ of the average college professor.
If you want to have a serious discussion of religion, it will take more work than the sloppy polemics that pass for reason on these blogs. Suspicion and ignorance just won't cut it.
June 17, 2007 1:17 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 13:17
Dear E FAVORITE:
Wow. A little paranoid are we? I assure you that you have misjudged me. What I have said a glimpse into my unfinished spiritual journey.
As to the historicity of the Bible, it is a complex and often contradictory library of human experience and shortfalls. It is also an account of the experiences that people thought they had with God. After two decades of study of the Ancient World generally, and the Judeo-Christian world in particular, my conclusion is that the Gospel writers related their experiences as best they could. What to make of that is the conundrum.
For example, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus from a Pharisaic death squad member to the Apostle Paul who planted Christian churches where ever he went in the ancient world, and most probably gave his life to the work. He describes an experience of a vision of Jesus saying to him “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He was then blind for three days. What do you make of that?
There are three, and only three, possibilities. First, he may have lied about the whole thing. Second, he may have been delusional and suffered an episode of hysterical blindness. Third and most difficult for the scientifically trained modern mind he was visited by the spirit of Jesus. He was so consistent, I don't think the first possibility holds water. He was too well placed and successful in his society to do that on a lark.
That leaves us with the possibilities of insanity, or the direct experience of Jesus. I find them both hard to swallow. If he was a delusional psychotic one would see disorganization in other aspects of his life. The delusional Jim Jones and David Koresh types lead their followers to isolation from the broader community to maintain and increase control over them, and then to slaughter. Recordings we have of Jones shows paranoid man sinking into madness. The History Channel has a chilling documentary on the progression from a San Francisco to purple Cool Aid in Jonestown that is worth the discomfort it causes to watch.
By contrast, In Paul we see an incisive and very sane mind in his letters, and a man who organized churches that went into the world instead of isolating themselves. For an interesting view how the early Christian church and how it actually took over the Roman Empire I recommend Rodney Stark's excellent quantitative sociology study “The Rise of Christianity”. He advances the hypothesis that in repeated plagues, the Christians nursed each other even at risk to themselves. The pagans abandoned each other. The physicians he consulted indicated that this may have made the difference between a twenty percent death rate, and an eighty percent one. That doesn't sound like Jim Jones to me.
Still, as a modern skeptic, it is hard to believe option three. But that leaves us with no satisfactory explanation of this pivotal figure in the foundation of the Christian Church. Go figure.
By the way, I am not looking for followers. I keep a busy schedule I don't have time for that kind of crap.
June 17, 2007 12:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 12:18
Moderate, before continuing this conversation, I feel obliged to say that I suspect you are a fraud. I suspect you are a Christian troll who is here to discourage wavering Christians from further questioning their beliefs. I realize I could be wrong and apologize if that’s the case. I suspect it because you misrepresent or obfuscate famous scientists’ positions on God and your posts reveal typical Christian misconceptions of atheism rather than typical experiences of it. You use descriptors such as “cold” and “empty,” “having faith in nothing,” being convinced by atheist writers that you lived in a “deterministic and uncaring universe.”
Then you assert reclaiming belief in God an the antidote for this sterile existence. You assert that the Gospels are an “historical account of the life, death, and resurrection of the one known as Jesus Christ.” Not mentioning that any unbiased “extensive research” would raise questions about the historicity of the Gospels and other parts of the Bible (unless you’ve gone from atheism to Fundamentalism). Your posts seem more like sermons to shore up the faithful than a personal testimony.
I bring up my suspicions here for a couple of reasons:
- to ask other readers to consider that your words should not necessarily be taken at face value
- to discourage you and others from this type of deceptive practice and to remind you that bearing false witness is against the laws of your God and general morality and thus (presumably) is not an honorable way to attempt to win or keep followers.
Again, if I’ve misjudged you, I apologize.
June 17, 2007 10:15 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 10:15
Dear PAGANPLCE:
For me, your question involves scientific epistomology. Fundamental issues of "How do we know things?" A decent answer will take some thought, and it is late now, and I need to sleep. Tomorrow, I will give you my best try at an answer to your thoughtful (though implicit) question embodied in the statement:
"Personally, I think the wonders of your garden tomato don't *require* a God-as-ruler-and-architect as some people leap to presume."
Meanwhile, I assure you that I did not leap to assume this most difficult conclusion. I have ceased being an Atheist only reluctantly and after two decades of reflection.
June 17, 2007 12:09 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 17, 2007 00:09
Dear E Favorite,
Thank you for your thoughtful question: “Tell me, Moderate, when you refound faith in God, did that also include renewed faith in Jesus as your savior who died for your sins and was miraculously resurrected from the dead?”
Not at first. The rediscovery of faith was very incremental and tentative for me. I took two things on Faith:
1.In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.
2.She did this to create an abode for life.
From these two assumptions our religious denominations, like Catholic and Protestant and Jewish and Muslim do not follow. But the study of history is another matter. The New Testament offers an historical account of the life, death, and resurrection of the one known as Jesus Christ. After an extended study of those documents, and everything else I could find on the topic I believe that, at a minimum, something extraordinary happened the first Easter Morning. Those who knew Jesus thought that they saw him again after his death on the Cross. The idea that he really did not die is insufficient. He would have been a physical wreck that would not have matched the descriptions of his appearances. Then too, there is the remarkable Pentecost incident. I conclude that we must credit this community with reporting what it thought it saw. Given that, we must ask why they thought they saw that.
This was not the result of a simple journey, or a short one. Nor do I feel complete, or perfected. Still, it feels better to fill the God Shaped Hole in my psyche than it did when it was empty. This is a work in progress, and if you are interested I will keep you posted.
June 16, 2007 11:57 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 23:57
Personally, I think the wonders of your garden tomato don't *require* a God-as-ruler-and-architect as some people leap to presume.
It's as well to say, 'It's alive.'
And 'We love it.'
This is human. And sacred. Don't fuss over the copyright. :)
(and, *blush,* hi, Vie. :) )
June 16, 2007 9:16 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 21:16
Tell me, Moderate, when you refound faith in God, did that also include renewed faith in Jesus as your savior who died for your sins and was miraculously resurrected from the dead? (For instance, Einstein did not believe in Jesus or in the God of Abraham) If so, I'm sincerely curious how that grew out of your fascination with the intricacies of a tomato.
By the way, although I don't have faith in God, I have faith in other things - the ultimate potential for the goodness of humanity, for instance. I find my life to be full and rich and not at all cold and empty.
June 16, 2007 7:34 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 19:34
E-Fave
You are absolutely right. I didn't mean that my example was the only way that an atheist could reach that conclusion, only to give an example of religious faith that is easily abandoned.
Paganplace
It's always nice to have you around. Your consistent testimony is proof in and of itself, that virtue is a river reached by many different tributaries, and that lip service to the "correct" or majoritarian doctrines has nothing to do with Christ or any other positive spirit.
Moderate
Great testimony. I've always thought it would be little things that made the difference.
June 16, 2007 5:52 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 17:52
When I was an Atheist I had Faith in Nothing. I had faith in the cold and empty space that we can see in our telescopes. I had faith that no God could exist, and no God could care. Newton, Nietzsche, Sartre, Rand, and a host of others convinced me that I lived in an deterministic and uncaring Universe. Later, I was startled to find out that Newton was a theologian, and that he thought that his theology would be more important than his science. I was perplexed that this greatest of all scientific geniuses, the very soul of modern rational thought, could have believed in those ancient superstitions. Then I found out that Einstein was also tainted, and even said: “Religion without Science is blind. Science without Religion is lame.” It shook my Faith that these pillars of modern scientific thought could have believed in God. I began to question my Faith in Nothingness.
Over succeding decades small theophanies began to creep into my technological life. Growing tomatoes one year, I cut one open in the garden to eat it because they were so sweet and beautiful that year. In the bright sunlight I saw a seemlingly infinitely fine network of capillaries in the perfection of the ruby red glistening fruit exposed to my gaze. I could not help but question my Faith that Universe was an accident. As I started to think about God as a possibility, I realized that I was not the first to think about this subject, and I began to read the works of some of the great theologians and philosophy in history including Aquinas, Augustine, on God, and Plato on ethics. I lost my Faith in Nothing, and found Faith in God.
It was like coming home.
June 16, 2007 4:52 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 16:52
I think, also, Vie, that when religious authorities overreach, and say, 'Faith and reason are at war, you must choose faith,' then *humanism becomes somehow *bad.** And, conveniently for some, anything *associated* with 'humanism' can be dismissed as 'Anti-God,'
Which is funny, cause Jesus sure looked like a humanist to me.
I always say, 'Belief is thinking you know something: Faith is not needing to.'
Too often this gets turned around into saying, 'Faith is believing something so vehemently that I think I know it.'
Soon the belief becomes more important than the practice that's supposed to justify it, not to mention utterly detached from what we *can* know.
Becomes about 'rival authorities.'
For me, 'Faith' isn't about my particular beliefs, as such. It's a bond of trust between myself and my world, and, yes, my Goddess, ...my Gods in general. Not that, say, 'I'm equivalent-to-factually right about what I believe I'll experience in the next life or between,' ...but that it's part of something, what I experience as the connection between all this stuff...
(way to generalize)
Point being, my faith isn't, strictly, that spirit will be experienced according to certain mental beliefs, (Gods forbid we should figure we're *allowed* a few functional illusions in this world, eh? *gasp.*)
Real faith, to me, can *accept* new information, new possibilities, new experiences.
No one *told* me about the Goddess, She was just *there* when people who tend to be afraid of the 'humanism' of life were so terrified that without certain belief, horrible things would happen to me, and them, that, well, they did some rather horrible things.
Didn't even *say,* "Hey, I'm yer Goddess."
She, and experience, did teach me, though, that you can't 'defend the faith.' You're just defending the fear that faith is beliefs or books or systems or all the other things certain 'defenders of the faith' thought they'd destroyed.
You can't. Not if they burned every temple or holy book ever.
Gods know it's been tried.
'Humanism' isn't just a potential common ground for people of all beliefs, ...it's the only real one there can ever be, in some ways. While we're being humans, anyway.
Faith is something else. Unless maybe faith says, 'We're allowed to be humans, right now.'
June 16, 2007 4:12 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 16:12
GaryD - a clarification -- when I said "everyone" I meant every Christian, as in, it may be that not every Christian shares your path and your commitment to Christianity.
Viejita, you say, “Too many…seek comfort in glib answers and when their circumstances don't conform to their expectations they conclude…that (1) There is no G-d….[which] leads to atheism and humanism….” I’d add that some atheists conclude there is no God in other circumstances:
1) after deep thought and extensive research
2) after an insight that all religions are man-made (like my friend who realized, after hearing the Mormon story, that people were willing to believe the most fantastic things if it gave them special status and happened long enough ago to be difficult to prove)
3) Because an oppressive experience with religion convinces them that God is a human construct to control people.
4) because they’re born that way and see no evidence to the contrary. These people usually learn to keep this awareness to themselves once realizing the society at large doesn’t share their awareness.
I suppose there are other reasons, too. Seems like it’s just recently that people are starting to talk about it openly.
June 16, 2007 9:53 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 09:53
I think the editors have come up with a question that is worth asking, and the answer will be different for everyone. Personally I think everyone questions, but seem people have been trained (or have trained themselves) to keep quiet and go along with the authorities.
Too many Christians (and others) seek comfort in glib answers, and when their circumstances don't conform to their expectations they conclude either that (1) There is no G-d, or (2) They are approaching Him wrong (not vehemently enough, or using the wrong prayers). Option one leads to atheism and humanism, while option two can result in fundamentalism or conversion to a different sect or religion...
In this equation I'll take the non-Christian or atheist any day.
June 16, 2007 4:43 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 16, 2007 04:43
Bomb is the way that you pronounce my last name but it comes from the german and it means tree. I am very serious, God sure is not like what a lot of people that call themselves christians think that He is. Yes I know that God is not a He or a She, and God definitely is not an it. God is Pure Love, God Incarnate was a male member of the human race and His earthly name was Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The Jews are the chosen people for the simple reason that God chose and formed them to make this place safe enough for even God to come down here into this place where we have free will and be able to grow up and do what He came to do. As God said "My ways are not your ways and My thoughts are not your thoughts", well God is a searcher of hearts and minds not of religious affiliations or lack thereof, a lot of people will try to hide behind their religion. God's Plan is for all of His children, that is what the "Good News" is, which actually is what the word gospel means. That is what proclaiming the gospel to all the world like Jesus told us to do is all about, not being some of the most arrogant, judgemental, condemning people on the planet. Thank You. Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
June 15, 2007 4:24 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 15, 2007 16:24
Did my last post not inherently assume that the experience of the Holy spirit does not indeed apply to everyone?
June 15, 2007 3:27 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 15, 2007 15:27
GaryD - As I've asked in other discussions, please don't assume that your experience with the holy spirit applies to everyone.
June 15, 2007 2:48 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 15, 2007 14:48
Y0-YO said:
"If you're raised to believe
in the supernatural
a whole part of us
is lost to reason for ever"
Not believing in God is also a belief. If you believe that you don't believe in God, a whole part of you is also lost to reason for ever. If we have an open mind, whether you are believer in God or not, not a single part of us is lost to reason.
June 15, 2007 2:45 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 15, 2007 14:45
I find Christianity the most logical of views. Without the presence of the Holy spirit that would not be so of course.
My wife for whatever it is worth has in the past frequently accused me of being too driven by logic.
The problem really comes down to this. If you have not the Holy spirit as a guide explaining the inherent logic of Christianity to you is a lot like trying to explain the vibrant colors of a Matisse or a Rembrandt master piece to one born blind. He might get someting of your passion for the work of these men, but he can't quite grasp it for he cannot truly experience it first hand.
June 15, 2007 1:57 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 15, 2007 13:57