That's because I'm awesome. I did the whole logic thing myself...conscience I looked up.




Actually, it's easily tested...we're just not sure exactly what it is...but it exerts measurable and predictable effects. The thing about science is that it's a really, really, really stingy study. Not prone to go about on faith, belief, or anything without rigorous, repetitive, mind numbing observation and experimentation. When I say mind numbing, I really mean mind numbing...the studies I've read...ugh. People dedicate their life to study one seemingly small, insignificant thing...like for instance decades studying rodents and the sizes of seeds they eat and the effect they have on local plant diversity. That's some thorough investigation right there.

~Zoo

Um, no. See, gravity does exist, otherwise we'd be floating. Someone (Newton) Gave it that name, but it exists with or without someone having to believe in it. The word itself is where the so-called "belief" lies, but call it another name and it's still there.

"That which we call a rose by any other name wouldst still smell as sweet"

-William Shakespeare.

This is pure poppycock.

Too bad your mind is not open to a sympathetic understanding of the Catholic slant for it would be a great step towards an appreciation of the profundity, coherance and stability of Catholic thought, which is a combination of faith, reason and science.

Sodaiho posts:

The short answer to this is faith builds being the base from which right reasoning proceeds to sublime conclusions.

I'll ask you the same question I asked of Asaxygirl and OckhamsRazor. Where's the beef....What is your logical and empirical evidence that bolster your undermining belief in the one Triune God and His revealed religion?

Well, I see you don't have a self-esteem problem, but maybe could use a little work on the virtue of humility!!!   



Zoo posts:

Cedarbird posts:

Exactly you two smarties. We don't know what it is, we can't see it, yet, we believe in the law of gravity and becasue we aren't floating take that it exists on faith. Gravitation is the mystery of mysteries.



Interesting point. And so is the same with God.

Yeah, I know. The only difference between the two is that you can't PROVE God exists to an atheist, but you can prove gravity exists to everyone. We're talking about logic and solid evidence, not faith. Of course God exists, but like it says in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, (and I'm paraphrasing here) God has no purpose if there isn't faith. If we could prove God exists, it doesn't leave any doubt, and therefore, no need for free thought or anything like that. And I like it that way.

Uh huh...and magnets are magic.   

~Zoo

Dear Lula:

How so?



What makes you think I am not sympathic? I have enormous sympathy for Catholics and Catholicism. I even took catechism classes with a newly arrived Irish priest for a few months. His absolute unwillingness to think out of the box he called his head was enough to make me throw up my hands, though. My point is not at all about faith, but your apparent confusing between faith and logic. They are not kin.

It seems as though some Christians have issues with non-Christian religious folk pointing out the fallacious thought that masquerades as profundity and depth of spirituality as often espoused by said Christians. True spiritual practice is not about concepts or text. Its about setting those aside and embracing the Infinite.

To suggest the Christian faith is whimsical and faith-based is hardly poppycock. To suggest that a First Cause is necessary is an assumption of faith, and not empirically or logically demonstrable. If you can make a logical proof of the existance of a first cause, I should like to see it. (Please note, I am not asking for a proof of God. That is impossible.) You keep talking about it, now please show me the empirical evidence.

Thank you.

I think you have completely misunderstood my point. I am not an atheist. I am a theist. I believe God exists, but not in any sense we can understand and most certainly not in a mainstream Christian sense. I believe there is a more than a triune God. I believe God is everywhere in everything. I believe God always was, is, and will be, just as the universe always was, is, and always will be. I believe He and His creation is perpetually unfolding, living, a dynamic. I also believe this all is One. Nothing really mystical about it. Its as plain as the nose on each of our faces. My faith requires me to recite that bit of Exodus twice a day, "Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai, Echad." (Hear Israel, the Lord or God, the Lord is One.) and mean it.

I believe in the revealed religion of God. I believe the Torah speaks for itself. I believe Christians have a great religion, and they are welcome to it. I believe their path will lead them to God as mine leads me to God. As I wrote in my blog, a rose by any other name is still a rose.

However, when it comes to the belief that some Christians hold that theirs is the only path, and that their God, Jesus, is the sole gate-keeper to the Universal, Well, I see that as incredibly closed minded, if not obnoxious. It reveals a primitive, almost child-like, view of God and theology. But then, that's how fundamentalists stike me, spiritually handicapped, and unwilling to open their mind's eye.

The beef is in solid, disciplined spiritual practice. The practice of daily meditation and prayer, the practice of tikkun olam (repairing the world as God's partner in creation), and the practice of long years of intense study couple with an open eye to the universe. The beef, Lula, is right there before you, as real as your palms pressed together connecting with everything there is.

Be well.

As usual, over the course of my night (for most of you it is day), much has been written, so if I fail to address something, I'm not ignoring you.

I would like to start by saying Zoologist being awesome is not a matter of self-esteem or humility - it is observable fact for which we have evidence. He's managed to get points across where I have failed, so he's at least observably awesome to me.

Now to the heart of the matter.

First of all, Lula asked on what I base my unbelief. I need to clarify something in this regard. Given a statement made as a fact, I look at the evidence for the fact. If the evidence is sound, I am inclined to believe that the fact is actually a fact. If there is a lack of evidence, I am inclined to not believe that the fact is a fact, but I do not mark it as "never going to be proven." It might be a fact some day provided evidence can substantiate it at some point in the future.

For the scientific, evidence must be testable and repeatable. I can test that 2 + 2 = 4. Lula, if your argument is that we cannot believe anything we sense with our senses, and that even my belief that I am sitting here typing this is just a matter of faith that I'm sitting here typing it, then ok. That means NOTHING is provable. Not that God exists.

You asked me once yesterday (I think it was) and yet again today (my day) what, if not a supreme Lawgiver, was the nature of conscience. I had actually already spoken to this when you asked, and so I didn't respond to it, but you may have missed it. I understand it isn't easy to follow these long threads when several people post multiple things. I do not fault you for that.

Here is what I had said earlier.

Once upon a time, doing what was "right" was a matter of survival of the species. If I pushed the food gatherer of my family off the cliff, we all get really hungry (for example). Some basic concepts of things that help our lives and things that hurt them can be learned strictly from experience. Even plain ole stub your toe pain teaches a version of right and wrong.

And I'll try to restate in case you actually DID read it and didn't understand what I was getting at.

Human beings have characteristics that have enabled them to survive in greater numbers than other species. Beyond having opposable thumbs. They have large brains relative to their physical size. They group into communities of various sizes - families, clans, tribes, races. They have developed a complex communication system which enables the sharing of ideas. They tend to "put their heads together" when faced with problems. They do this because the problems get solved faster that way in very much the same way it was probably discovered that if 6 people try to push on a large rock to move it, it moves faster than if one person tries to move it. I see the evidence of this even today. One need not go back to caveman days and prove that it was true for cavemen, though I believe, until sufficient evidence exists to prove me wrong, that it was true then as well.

Ok, hold all that thought for a moment. Now get a maze with an entrance and 6 dead ends. Put cheese at one of the dead ends. Put a rat in the maze. Wait until it finds the cheese. Repeat this with the cheese in the same place and with the same rat tomorrow. Repeat for a while. Soon, the rat learns the "right" thing to do and goes straight to the cheese. Is it because the rat took Jesus as his lord and savior that he finds the cheese or is it because he learned that in order to survive (eat), he had to behave in a certain way? I am not saying the rat did NOT take Jesus as his Lord and savior, and that is why he found the cheese, but I find it probable that the simpler of the two solutions - that the rat "learned" where the cheese is - is more likely the fact. Occam's Razor.

And I think it is the same for humans. What we call "right" is an outgrowth of trying to survive. And I mused upon this as I drove to work yesterday. The reason we see so much of what you would call "sin" these days, in seemingly increasing amounts, is because the "not right" things that people do is now *almost* completely beyond anything that would threaten the physical existence of themselves or the whole species.

"Right" remains, for me, a relative term. Provided we can at least agree that at one point (and maybe still?) cannibals existed, there is an example of what I mean here. For the general Christian public, I *think* they would find cannibalism to be wrong. Correct me if you need. But for the cannibals, they weren't trying to do Satan's work. They were just trying to survive, and they found, as repugnant as it might be to *our* sensibilities, that cannibalism worked as a solution to a problem. The problem of staying alive. Could they have found a better solution? Well, "better" is subjective and springs from what some other arbitrary group finds to be ok to do or not ok to do. Note that I am not making a case for cannibalism. I'm not stating a definitive goodness or evilness to the subject. I'm just saying it was "right" for them because it allowed them to stay alive longer.

Now onto proving unbelief. I cannot prove that any god does not exist. Nor did I ever claim that. Nor will I try to. As an example, I gave the Celestial Teapot. And if it wasn't clear what point that was making, I'll restate it too - in a different way.

Up in my bedroom right now is a leprechaun named Fred who rides a German Shephard. They are both invisible and inaudible and speak to me in my heart. Prove to me they don't exist. Do you not find that an inane thing for me to ask?

Well first off, you'd think it nonsense. But if I wrote a very clever book discussing all the great things that Fred and the Shephard have done to insure that I live forever (along with lots of threats that if I follow his evil counterpart, Doug the leprechaun who rides a Dachshund, I'll suffer forever) and buried it in my backyard, then who is to say that 2000 years from now there wouldn't be a group of people arguing as to whether or not Fred and the Shephard should be a part of high school biology classes?

It should be pretty obvious to all, regardless of what you believe, that this conversation can never come to a point of anything but "agree to disagree." The two "camps" live in different worlds and use different math for coming to conclusions. Each side thinks their way is the right way. Each has different definitions of "evidence" (or claim to - I don't really believe that last part and will describe it in a moment.) But suffice it to say, as long as religionists continue to claim that their evidence is as sound as scientific evidence, there's nothing to discuss. No harm, no foul...we just aren't going to agree because the religionists have removed any basis for discussing it by taking a short cut to knowledge and giving it a name. Faith.

Now. Lula, you mentioned it requires faith to believe 2 + 2 = 4. I would submit that you believe in belief, not God. If you believed in God, would you look both ways before crossing the street? Would you cry instead of party at a funeral? Would you refuse if I asked you to take a needle and shoot air into your veins? Would you place your hand on a burning stove and leave it there - ignoring the pain because of your faith?

If you need a picture of true faith and not "believing in belief" then pull up a picture of the two planes flying into the twin towers. THAT, my friends, is faith.

Cheers.

Geesh I leave my computer for one day and this is what happens? I'd love to address each and every point but these comments caught my eye so I'll respond to them first.



Exactly Zoo and this is why I believe in the historical Jesus. I've used this same argument for belief in the God of the bible. The Pharisees of his day didn't believe him. Heck even John the Baptist while in prison was having his own doubts he was so discouraged. But JEsus said, go back and tell John what you have seen and heard. Tell him the lame are walking, the blind are seeing, the dumb are speaking and many are turning to God.

Nothing in scripture is without witnesses. It was always two or three witnesses and we were not to believe unless we had them and once a prophet gave a message it better come true or he was done.

In my own life, GOd has proven himself many, many times. So yes, I believe in the same way as your story. I can safely assume that God will deliver to me those things he has promised in the future because thus far, he's been reliable.

Until then. I have no choice but to follow this Jesus of Nazarath of 2,000 years ago.



This is true. We CANNOT prove God to an Atheist. It's only God who opens eyes, ears, hearts and minds to himself.



I just answered this on your blog. I think you're right. All paths will lead to God. I just don't agree we believe it will be for the same reason. I also believe some are following the God of this world and haven't a clue.



Then that makes Jesus a liar, not us. We are believing a lie then? Either what he said was true or not. From a Christian perspective he sealed his words with his blood. I mean Sodaiho you keep speaking of embracing what you believe and practicing these beliefs don't you? Well that's what Jesus did. He showed us his love with action by giving up his own life. We as Christians are to do the same thing. We are to show the world our love by our actions. In effect we also are giving up our lives for others. The first thing we are doing in obedience is trying to "tell" others what and who is the source of truth. The very last thing Christ said to his disciples was to go and tell.

It would be much easier to take the easier route (and many do) by keeping our mouths shut. What do we have to gain? What do we have to lose? For the most part it certainly doesn't endear us to the world.

OCK,

I appreciate your response and as time permits I will respond back to your #73.

SoDaiho,

Regarding # 72, you're saying that God and the Universe are one....can't be....the Universe is a creation of God.

All things lead to God.


ASAXYGIRL POSTS: #54

In answer to your question, ever hear of the law of causality?


It tells us that every effect must be due to a power or agent that caused it. Nothing in the world came into existence of itself...including the phenomena of the moral law dictated to us by inner voice of our conscience, of which, even you as a scientist cannot deny every person has.

Motion came from a mover; design from a designer, life from life and the moral law dictated to us by our voice of conscience from a Lawmaker or Lawgiver. The proof of causality is simple and irrefutable. A watch takes a watch maker, the Cosmos manifests design that supposes a Designer of infinite intelligence and power, whom we call Almighty God. The universality of belief in the existence of a Supreme Being is a forceful reminder of the fact that our human nature recognizes and is dependent upon the existence of God.

The truth is in possession. Men do not have to persuade themselves that there is a God. It's the other way around...they have to persuade themselves there is no God. And no one yet who has attained such a temporary persuasion has been able to find a valid reason for it. Men do not grow into the idea of God, they endeavor to grow out of it.

Another proof is the existence of law as it manifests through inanimate as well as animate nature. It evidences the existence of a LawMaker or LawGiver. The Natural(moral)law in particular is a constant reminder of the LawMaker enjoining us to do and not to do certain things.

Just as the proof of causality is irrefutable, that God exists is an established fact which is beyond a question of reasonable doubt.

SoDaiho posts:

You're saying God IS the Universe...The Universe is God...this is all One (capitalized "O" in One no less!).

And you try to convince this isn't mystical??


and then you meld "the Universe is God" into:



No, a thousand times no. Really and truly, how can you mean it? IT CAN'T BE BOTH WAYS. This Cosmic (pantheist) God cannot do for it is material, non-intelligent, entirely lacking in the spiritual qualities of of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Pope Pius IX in 1862 condemned the idea of Pantheism. What he said makes perfect sense to me...and therefore would be my rejoinder...

"With a perversity only equalled by their folly, they (the Pantheists)venture to assert that the SUpreme, All-Wise, All-Provident Deity has no existence apart fromt he visible universe, that God; that God and nature are the same, and similiarly subject to change, that God is modified in man and the world and that everything is God and possesses the very substance of the Deity.

But God and the world being one and the same thing, there is no difference between spirit and matter, necessity and liberty, truth and falsehood, good and evil, right and wrong. In truth, nothing can be imagined more insane, impious, and irrational than this thinking."

To understand this in practical terms, let's put Pantheism's "Cosmic" God under this scope..

If the United States were based upon your "Cosmic" God is the Universe, those unalienable rights that we desire freely to exercise would be non-existent. Inalienable rights come, as the Declaration of Independence says, from a Creator, a Personal GOd, and not from the Universe. The Universe has no rights, animals have no rights, only man has rights, becasue the Creator who made him like unto Himself, with intelligence, reason, a conscience and free will, endowed him with them.

Soviet Russia and Communist China is logically the land of citizenship for believers on the "Cosmic" God.

SoDaiho posts: #72

I'll give you that we humankind with our limited intelligence cannot know God other than what He has revealed to us about Himself. Having said that, we do understand Pantheism and Pantheism is one with Atheism save in language.

Pantheism, like you do, affirms "God", but its "God" being "One" the Universe and Nature, is a refutation of belief in a Personal God, the Author of the Universe and Nature, whom Atheism brazenly denies.

SODAIHO Posts: #63

Lula posts:

Christ came into the world through a miracle; the Virgin Birth; and left to return to His heavenly home through a double miracle; The Resurrection and Ascension. He asked to be judged by His works which were in great measure of a supernatural, miraculous nature. Yet, you refuse to take stock in them.

When you question the authenticity of the miracles attributed to Christ, you question the New testament, the patristic writings of the early Christian centuries, which are surely as authentic as are the histories of ancient Greece and Rome.

I remember reading one of your posts in which you said you greatly admired Christ's Sermon on the Mount. To do so, you take admit that Christ is Divine and competant to perform miracles which warranted the Sanhedrin to pass the death sentence upon Him.

What about those great men throughout the Christian ages who admired Christ at the cost of their lives...they all believed what Christ did as well as what He said. All of those things were of supernatural nature..but you take no stock in that...You only see a de-Christified Christ...an ordinary man...but I tell you SoDaiho, this is not the real Jesus Christ....and that's why I say it's pure poppycock.

Lula, Panentheism is more what I see as an accurate sense of things. This POV allows for God to be in all creation without being material. What is not personal about the Infinite? This is true monotheism, Lula. So, what do you think Deut.6:4 was suggesting?

Be well.

There is no such thing as a virgin birth, there was no ressurection, no ascension, and no independent verification of any miricles. Nothing to take stock in.



I think the New Testament is great writing, a wonderful spin on a historical character the church later made into something he was not. Why would I have anything to do with patristic writings? The same sort of thing that condemned Jews and others to enormous suffering in the name of an idol?

The histories were histories, not attempts to promote a new religion...that's why they are highly suspect as history.



I do admire that sermon, as I admire many sutras of the Buddha and writings of the rabbis. I do not admit Jesus was any more or less divine than any man or woman.

The Sanhedrin did not condemn him to death, they simply recommended he be put to death for blasphemy, not as you suggest, for miricles. Since Jesus was not God and seemed to ask men to worship him as if he were, under the Law, he should have been condemned to death. As anyone with even a passing knowledge of rabbinic thought can attest, however, it would be incredibly difficult to actually put the man to death. Two Jews, ten opinions, nothing has changed that much. In truth it was the Romans who did this dead and, I suspect, did it for political reasons.

Be well.