Zone1 A christian-atheist compromise?

[john54]

From someone who has had an atheist grandfather, uncle, in-laws and husband: You are not only disrespectful, but incredibly disrespectful. Such disrespect cannot be hidden behind slap-stick comedy. The only saving grace is that it comes across as immature--which may be the deeper reason for the ex-girlfriend saying adieu.

Seriously, its like a not very good checker player thinking with the small skill he has in checkers, it qualifies him to not only coach a chess master, but to change the board and the rules. Hubris.

Well I don't mind being called a bad chess player of Bible study any more than I minded her calling me a baby of Bible study, really. I'd just question you what I questioned her, whether there's such a need to take it personally if your beliefs are challenged...perhaps there are good and bad ways to go about challenging it, I'll concede that, but if it can't withstand challenge how deep a faith can it really be?

 

[john54]

From someone who has had an atheist grandfather, uncle, in-laws and husband: You are not only disrespectful, but incredibly disrespectful. Such disrespect cannot be hidden behind slap-stick comedy. The only saving grace is that it comes across as immature--which may be the deeper reason for the ex-girlfriend saying adieu.

Seriously, its like a not very good checker player thinking with the small skill he has in checkers, it qualifies him to not only coach a chess master, but to change the board and the rules. Hubris.

And this is a fundamental difference between science-based and evidence-based, critically thought-out atheism and Christianity- anyone can challenge my atheism to their heart's content. Come one, come all, and its not this fragile thing that will crumble, or this tender thing that will get hurt. That doesn't make it less deep, or less meaningful. It feels respectful to me, to be an atheist.

 

[Meriweather]

Well I don't mind being called a bad chess player of Bible study any more than I minded her calling me a baby of Bible study, really. I'd just question you what I questioned her, whether there's such a need to take it personally if your beliefs are challenged...perhaps there are good and bad ways to go about challenging it, I'll concede that, but if it can't withstand challenge how deep a faith can it really be?

John, that's the problem. You are not the challenge you seem to think you are. You know nothing about the Bible other than your own opinions based on your own feelings, being presented in a way a middle school class clown might try. The reason I am not taking it personally is that there is no substance to take personally. You are at the level of someone who knows the story of The Little Red Caboose trying to advise a train engineer.

Here is where we differ: You are telling someone who has experienced God that there is no God to experience. How am I going to see that either as a challenge or as someone who knows what he is talking about? Second, your selection of Bible verses that you seem to think proves your points are laughable.

I have been around atheists all my life. I am not even convinced you are an atheist. I don't see you as knowing enough to even be at that level.

Have my experiences changed the mind of any atheist? No--even though there is no doubt they believed my experiences. The two things that are the same about all 'my' atheists is that even so, they want to make it through this life on their own. The second reason, they have seen first hand that seeking God takes time and effort (and no that time and effort is not spent in church, which is a place to relax and rejuvenate).

 

[Meriweather]

And this is a fundamental difference between science-based and evidence-based, critically thought-out atheism and Christianity- anyone can challenge my atheism to their heart's content. Come one, come all, and its not this fragile thing that will crumble, or this tender thing that will get hurt. That doesn't make it less deep, or less meaningful. It feels respectful to me, to be an atheist.

You don't know enough about the Bible and the difference between a literary presentation of an account and a science based account. Didn't your science and English instructors teach you the difference between allegory and a writing a paper using the scientific method?

Shrug. Perhaps you have only been around those who take every word of the Bible literally? Somehow you missed knowing all of us who can distinguish between allegory and hypothesis?

 

[john54]

John, that's the problem. You are not the challenge you seem to think you are. You know nothing about the Bible other than your own opinions based on your own feelings, being presented in a way a middle school class clown might try. The reason I am not taking it personally is that there is no substance to take personally. You are at the level of someone who knows the story of The Little Red Caboose trying to advise a train engineer.

Well sometimes comedy breaks the ice and gets people saying the things that actually need to be said about what matters. I think Christianity needs to be challenged so maybe I'll read up more in the future.

Here is where we differ: You are telling someone who has experienced God that there is no God to experience. How am I going to see that either as a challenge or as someone who knows what he is talking about? Second, your selection of Bible verses that you seem to think proves your points are laughable.

I believed in Santa - really believed in him - until i was 7 or eight. My dad stomped around and took bites out of cookies.and left notes and that was all great but i believed in him year round and almost felt him. I once made another kid cry after I thoroughly convinced them their mom was wrong and Santa was real.

I had experienced him. Not just on christmas but throughout the year. This bearded, kind, understanding old man who was busy, so busy with important things, but still had the time to keep his eyes on me. He was real to me in a deep, deep way.

And I have to wonder what it would be like to still have him keeping his eye on me. There would probably be a feeling of security, and that wondrous sense of magic, and of there being this pure presence watching over the world in his own way.

I don't expect believing in the male God figure you've experienced is identical, but I wonder if you've questioned why the most complicated thing in the known universe, the human brain, couldn't produce and experience a presence that makes a God seem real. It doesn't exactly nullify the meaningfulness of the experience and might even point to something deep within as to what it means to be human...but I'll need more than just, "I experience him" if you want to make a point at least, and I suspect most atheists are the same way. Experiences can be powerful and meaningful - why do they also have to be divine or supernatural to retain that meaning?

 

[john54]

You don't know enough about the Bible and the difference between a literary presentation of an account and a science based account. Didn't your science and English instructors teach you the difference between allegory and a writing a paper using the scientific method?

Shrug. Perhaps you have only been around those who take every word of the Bible literally? Somehow you missed knowing all of us who can distinguish between allegory and hypothesis?

You have entire sects of your religion saying the others aren't Christian because of their different interpretations...seems there's a wide range to interpret God and play God as people decide what to take literally and what to make mean what they want it to mean.

 

[badger2]

Atheists need not do a thing. Xianity is #1 religion for creating atheists. Shults, Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism.

 

[Meriweather]

I don't expect believing in the male God figure you've experienced is identical, but I wonder if you've questioned why the most complicated thing in the known universe, the human brain, couldn't produce and experience a presence that makes a God seem real. It doesn't exactly nullify the meaningfulness of the experience and might even point to something deep within as to what it means to be human...but I'll need more than just, "I experience him" if you want to make a point at least, and I suspect most atheists are the same way. Experiences can be powerful and meaningful - why do they also have to be divine or supernatural to retain that meaning?

First, my experiences are mine. You can search out and seek your own. God is nothing like a sad mother or a father stomping around taking bites of cookies. People tend to look for God where they think He should be instead of where He is. They look for a being they imagine might be instead of who He is. Believe me, that part cannot be imagined.

All you need is what is in the Bible, "Seek and you shall find." That's all I had, and that's all anyone needs.

Physical experiences have loads of meaning. Why do you think those are the only types of experiences?

 

[Meriweather]

You have entire sects of your religion saying the others aren't Christian because of their different interpretations...seems there's a wide range to interpret God and play God as people decide what to take literally and what to make mean what they want it to mean.

So what? They are not even the majority.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Harry Potter falls into the realm of literature, and therefore more correctly classified as fairy tale than myth. Doesn't bother me if people think Harry Potter truly exists. They probably saw him in the movies, too.

And people feel the same about God. A fairy tale.

 

[ding]

Well I just did tell you...Considering the most basic God, an intelligent designer who set the universe in motion with the purpose of humans eventually coming about, I considered first the obvious fact that there's no evidence of a God anywhere IN the universe, so if we're pushing God back then to having just made the universe and not guided things since, I considered that there are possibilities extremely more likely that could have given the universe its auspicious-seeming properties, with one top-ranking candidate being just that there are a lot of universes making one like ours probablistically likely, and a lot of stars and planets in our universe, making our ideal galactic environment likely. Such a possibility would fall neatly in line with other probabilistic effects we can view in our own universe. There's simply no need for something as unlikely as a God. To the point where it's a question why one is even brought up.

The universe itself is the evidence. A universe hardwired to produce life is unnatural. The creation of the universe was unnatural.

It should be obvious that if the material world were not created by spirit that everything that has unfolded in the evolution of space and time would have no intentional purpose. That it is just matter and energy doing what matter and energy do. Conversely, if the material world were created by spirit it should be obvious that the creation of the material world was intentional. After all in my perception of God, God is no thing and the closest thing I can relate to is a mind with no body. Using our own experiences as creators as a proxy, we know that when we create things we create them for a reason and that reason is to serve some purpose. So it would be no great leap of logic to believe that something like a mind with no body would do the same. We also know from our experiences that intelligence tends to create intelligence. We are obsessed with making smart things. So what better thing for a mind with no body to do than create a universe where beings with bodies can create smart things too.

We have good reason to believe that we find ourselves in a universe permeated with life, in which life arises inevitably, given enough time, wherever the conditions exist that make it possible. Yet were any one of a number of the physical properties of our universe otherwise - some of them basic, others seemingly trivial, almost accidental - that life, which seems now to be so prevalent, would become impossible, here or anywhere. It takes no great imagination to conceive of other possible universes, each stable and workable in itself, yet lifeless. How is it that, with so many other apparent options, we are in a universe that possesses just that peculiar nexus of properties that breeds beings that know and create.

The biological laws are such that life is programmed to survive and multiply which is a requisite for intelligence to arise. If the purpose of the universe was to create intelligence then a preference in nature for it had to exist. The Laws of Nature are such that the potential for intelligence to existed the moment space and time were created. One can argue that given the laws of nature and the size of the universe that intelligence arising was inevitable. One can also argue that creating intelligence from nothing defies the Second Law of Entropy. That creating intelligence from nothing increases order within the universe. It actually doesn't because usable energy was lost along the way as a cost of creating order from disorder. But it is nature overriding it's tendency for ever increasing disorder that interests me and raises my suspicions to look deeper and to take seriously the proposition that a mind without a body created the material world so that minds with bodies could create too.

If we examine the physical laws we discover that we live in a logical universe governed by rules, laws and information. Rules laws and information are a signs of intelligence. Intentionality and purpose are signs of intelligence. The definition of reason is a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. The definition of purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. The consequence of a logical universe is that every cause has an effect. Which means that everything happens for a reason and serves a purpose. The very nature of our physical laws point to reason and purpose.

All we have done so far is to make a logical argument for spirit creating the material world. Certainly not an argument built of fairy tales that's for sure. So going back to the two possibilities; spirit creating the material world versus everything proceeding from the material, the key distinction is no thing versus thing. So if we assume that everything I have described was just an accidental coincidence of the properties of matter, the logical conclusion is that matter and energy are just doing what matter and energy do which makes sense. The problem is that for matter and energy to do what matter and energy do, there has to be rules in place for matter and energy to obey. The formation of space and time followed rules. Specifically the law of conservation and quantum mechanics. These laws existed before space and time and defined the potential of everything which was possible. These laws are no thing. So we literally have an example of no thing existing before the material world. The creation of space and time from nothing is literally correct. Space and time were created from no thing. Spirit is no thing. No thing created space and time.

And then there's the moral law...

 

[ding]

If we have free will, which is a question, then it would be we ourselves who are the guiding hand, at least in as far as we can influence our own environments.

How does our actions having consequences imply a guiding hand? I mean, I guess if you dropped a rock on your own foot there was a guiding hand involved, but, you know, it was your own hand....

That's incorrect. We aren't the guiding hand. Consequences are the guiding hand. Actions having consequences is an artifact of truth and logic. So Truth is the guiding hand and Logic is the guiding hand. God is Truth and God is Logic. God isn't a "thing." That's how actions having consequences implies a guiding hand. Everyone is being pruned. God's power isn't put forth to achieve certain results. God's power is put forth to achieve certain results under certain conditions and to affect changes in the lives of those living them. It's the evolution of consciousness. Consciousness will continue to evolve and make the leap to the next level (Christ consciousness) just like every other evolutionary stage of the evolution of space and time before it.

 

[Meriweather]

And people feel the same about God. A fairy tale.

So?

 

[frigidweirdo]

So?

You said God wasn't a myth, maybe it's a fairy tale, either way you're never going to get atheists (I'm not an atheist, I'm non-religious) and Christians to accept the same thing.
Christians are willing to BELIEVE (that's accepting without knowing) that there is some fairy tale/mythical creature somewhere and atheists BELIEVE there isn't.

Non-religious accept that it is possible there could be some kind of God, but probably your version is wrong in many ways because you just made it up, rather than base it on actual knowing.

 

[Meriweather]

You said God wasn't a myth, maybe it's a fairy tale, either way you're never going to get atheists (I'm not an atheist, I'm non-religious) and Christians to accept the same thing.

There is no need for everyone to accept the same thing. Why, do you want everyone to?

 

[Meriweather]

Christians are willing to BELIEVE (that's accepting without knowing) that there is some fairy tale/mythical creature somewhere and atheists BELIEVE there isn't.

Some of us do know. So what. It's balanced by those who do not believe some know.

 

[Meriweather]

Non-religious accept that it is possible there could be some kind of God, but probably your version is wrong in many ways because you just made it up, rather than base it on actual knowing.

Those who actually know are fully aware God is beyond description. The Bible records through the lenses of human eyes and perception. It's the best we can do. And that is barely a fraction of all there is to know. Those are our constraints. It is why we need everyone to weigh in and to pay attention when they do.

 

[frigidweirdo]

There is no need for everyone to accept the same thing. Why, do you want everyone to?

It's the point of the OP.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Some of us do know. So what. It's balanced by those who do not believe some know.

No, you don't know. You might say you do, but how can you?

Unless of course God is talking directly to you. An ex's friend talked to God once, God told him he'd pass all his exams, so he didn't study, and failed them all.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Those who actually know are fully aware God is beyond description. The Bible records through the lenses of human eyes and perception. It's the best we can do. And that is barely a fraction of all there is to know. Those are our constraints. It is why we need everyone to weigh in and to pay attention when they do.

There are people who believe the Earth is flat too....

What can I say, making a fantasy world to hide reality seems to be a human trait.