"`Educated people confuse the laws of nature with the laws of thought and consider a suspension of one a contradiction of the other(Griffin, C.S. Lewis: A Dramatic Life, 210).'"
"He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and thereafter his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense." - Herman Melville
While many atheists and agnostics argue that we should arrive at our own religious beliefs through logical reasoning, they never will, because a God denying (atheistic) mind is impure, unable to grasp God's existence. We Christians cannot by our own reason or strength believe in God. God inspires in us the belief.
If Luther's Cathechism is to be believed, "I cannot by my own reason or strength" believe in Christ, God and/or whatever. Luther's Cathechism says that God inspires that faith in you. John Calvin also argued that you have to look at evidences for God with the `eyeglasses of faith.' I realize that this seems to be a circular argument, in that it says `God...because God.' But I suppose logic and words can go only so far to deal with these spiritual matters. I believe God has given us all a measure of faith. And if it seems little, Jesus says that faith even as small as a mustard seed can allow us the power to move mountains or to tell a tree `move from here to there.' This is not to be confused with Christian Science. James sire said "(illumination) comes to the minds of God's people-not to some non-rational facility like our emotions or our feelings. To know God's revelation means to use our minds. This makes knowledge about something we can share with others, something we can talk about. God's word is in words with ordinary rational content(Ron Rhodes-The challenge of cults.../James Sire, Scripture Twisting, Downers grove, IL, Intervarsity press, 1980, 17)," but it still mention's God's influence on the rational mind. "God can be known by finite man, though not with complete or exhaustive knowledge. God is above reason, but not against reason. By contrast, the Qur'an emphasises the exclusive transcendence of God: He does not reveal Himself and consequently cannot be known or understood by anything in his creation(Reaching Moslems For Christ, Saal, 67). The Qur'an is about obedience, not closeness with God. "Although Muslims believe that the Bible is a holy book, they deny its authority and their obligation to obey its precepts(Ibid, 67)."
"To me, the lingering doubts resulting from the parts of Christianity that don't make sense, or are hopelessly obsolete, would be mentally destructive."
"You believe in Christianity, because, when in such a state of fear of death and lost time, logic doesn't have a chance."
If you're going to die, and you're unable to do anything about it, why does logic matter? Is thinking that "there is no God" going to help you escape a nailed coffin buried six feet under ground? Is it going to lift that freight train off your crumpled body and restore you to health after the wreck? Is it going to help you go back in time and fix the mistake that caused your life to be in peril? Do you want to pass those last few agonized, helpless moments worrying and/or hoping that someone will rescue you, when your atheistic viewpoint suggests that nobody will? How can you just shrug that situation off by going `oh well'? Don't you see the finality of death? Can you actually imagine ceasing to exist? And what if there is something after death? Wouldn't it make sense to prepare yourself for at least one religion's afterlife, just in case something exists after death?
"I think you can guess my attitude toward being yanked around by a mental process that would diminish my ability to understand reality, and appreciate fantasy, for what they both are. The brain - drain of mystic ecstacy is like the effect of drugs and drunkenness. I want all my little grey cells working (as well as possible)./Before you say that being in the presence of God is just so overwhelmingly excellent that boredom is impossible, think of how similar that description is to a perpetual drug trip. Is being perpetually wired out of your mind supposed to be good?"
"Religion is hazardous to your health"? Certainly not. If you believed in the afterlife, you'd see that it's actually better for your health. And you're assuming that the overwhelming presence of God will destroy your brain. It might blow us away, but that doesn't mean it's bad for us. It's actually more humbling this way. To know that there's someone greater than ourselves out there. And how well are those grey cells working if you shut them off to any possibility of spiritual phenomenon? Just because Christians don't accept theories of evolution and the big bang, you think they have shut off their brains to all scientific information. You think I've shut off my brain? By no means! I'm trying to use it to the fullest extent possible, too! It's possible to believe and accept Jesus in your life and still study natural sciences, physics, and whatever. Isaac Newton was a Christian. So was Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Georges Culver, Charles Babbage, Lord Rayleigh, John Ambrose Fleming, James Clark Maxwell, Michael Faraday, George Stokes, Sir William Herschel, Robert Boyle, Gregor Mendel, Louis Agassiz, James Simpson, Matthew Maury, Blaise Pascal, William Ramsey, John Ray, Bernard Riemann and David Brewster.
"I have my religion... I don't see anything else as being very important I do. I don't want to live like a cow. If loving God and my neighbor was all that counted, awe - stuck herd animals could do both while they stand grazing in the rain. Neither loves require intelligence - only subservience. Humans have intelligence and should use it for as much as possible."
Religion doesn't impede you from this. Your statement presumes that being awestruck about God's magnificence is below our intellect. In actuality, God's magnificence is so great that even the most complex brain short - circuits when considering it. And in your case, the person gives up trying because it's beyond what your brain can comprehend. Sometimes it takes intelligence to excel in subservience. You must think that religious people don't use their brains. You must think I'm a total nincompoop. You probably think I believe my car runs on magic and angels. You probably think that believing in the bible means rejecting the periodic table of elements as a `work of Satan.' You probably think that just because I don't believe Adam and Eve evolved, that I also don't believe the earth rotates around the sun. You probably think that just because I don't believe that a giant explosion accidentally caused you and I to exist, that I also believe that you'll go to hell for believing that there are two hydrogen atoms in water.
"At one time, people believed trees and lakes harbored spirits. The Viking explorers had Valhalla to look forward to. Moslem men of valor will exhaust themselves nightly on scores of eternal virgins. Being a believer, it may be hard for you to step back and see them all as an equal pack of inspiring, satisfying (but very unreal), fantasies as I do."
And I say, being a unbeliever, it may be hard for you to step back and see one religion as true above all others. Instead of an `equal pack of inspiring, satisfying (but very unreal), fantasies.' There won't be sex in heaven. At least not the kind human beings define as sex (in even the loosest possible definition of sex).
"Why is it that as long as a scientific theory is working well, no one worries about God in the machinery- but as soon as there are unanswered questions, quite a few instantly `answer' that God did X, so that is why it is so. That answers nothing!"
Why is it that as long as a scientific theory is working well, no one talks about God's supposed nonpresence in the machinery - but as soon as there are unanswered questions, quite a few instantly `answer' that God didn't X, so that is why it is so. That answers nothing!
"How about, `I haven't any idea why it is as it is, but just because our theory is incomplete and I dont know (sic) enuf to fix it, that isn't proof of God or that God did it!'?"
Yeah? How about, `I haven't any idea why it is as it is, but just because our theory is incomplete and I dont know enough to fix it, that isn't disproof of God's existence or that God didn't do it!'
"It is much more sensible to say `I don't know how the universe started, why it progressed, or why I am here' than to say God did it."
The problem with your `explanation' is that it doesn't explain anything. What happens when a person says "I dunno" when you're looking for directions to get to a specific street? You go somewhere else. It's like that comedian said. "Stupid people should have a sign that says `I'm stupid,' so you would never ask them anything." You may not be stupid, but if you think `I don't know' is a satisfactory answer, you should be wearing a sign that says `I dunno' so people wouldn't ask you anything spiritual. Ian Crombie said it better than I ever could: "Atheism may encounter fewer intellectual difficulties(than theism), but that is because it is not a hypothesis but a refusal to look for explanations of a certain type(Griffin, C.S. Lewis: A Dramatic Life, 291)."
"My position is that in the absence of some visible proof of God's existance (even indirectly, as in the book Contact where after carrying out the evaluation of `pi' far enough, a coded message appears in the string of numbers.), it is not equally logical to believe something exists or that it doesn't. Any statistician will tell you that non existence of any order or structure is far more likely."
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain
So much for the argument about Christianity being a `soothing myth.' While it's true that we should study how the universe operates, and that we shouldn't believe that `angels fly down and pry open each individual flower's petals to make sure it blooms,' you have no grounds by which to argue that spiritual things don't exist somewhere, to some degree. You can't disprove the existence of God or the afterlife or anything of the sort.
"Don't most grief counselors advise `comming to terms with, and accepting' the situation?"
That's not the same as them telling people to deny the existence of God and all religous issues.
"The idea of God is unsatisfying because one must inevitably then ask "Sooo, who made God?"
He made himself. I spoke about this on the implied assumptions page. I don't believe anyone created God. I don't believe there are any gods ruling above God. I don't think he needs a family, since He can create things out of nothing. But human beings are his creation, and we were created to be his servants. If someone created God, then we wouldn't worship Him, we'd worship His creator. Though I do see it as a possibility that since God is made up of many parts, one part might have come before the rest, but it would still be part of that "one" or `echad God, one that's not just one full entity, but not a separate multitude of gods, either. I think the idea is too complex for human brains. I know I can't figure it out. But just because I don't understand it doesn't stop me from believing.
"Where was God while He was making the universe?"
Where he was. This is an example of how a puny human mind cannot fathom God's power or existence or substance. See the implied assumptions page.
"Where does God live?"
Everywhere. Nowhere. In our hearts, in the universe. He's too big to live anywhere we can geographically pinpoint by any human frame of reference.
"The answer `God always existed - no one made God' is even more unsatisfying than saying `the universe has always existed (though from the perspective of all life, it is true)'"
It's only `unsatisfying' to you because you can't fit that into your frame of reference, into a little neatly labeled compartment. You're having difficulty figuring it out because your human brain is too small to fathom it. You can't compartmentalize God because he created the compartmentizer.
"How does saying `Why...God did it!' explain anything?"
How does `I don't know the answer, but there must be some reason other than God' explain anything?
"The fact that a high percentage of humans do [religion], despite massive contrary evidence, is disappointing."
As far as I can tell from all your other arguments, there is hardly `massive contrary evidence.'
"Occam's Razor states that the simplest explanation that fits the facts is best. Christianity is too complicated. Atheism is simpler."
So is evolution, the big bang theory and genetics. How do you define `simple' and `best'? I mean, what's simpler? Saying "God made everything, including himself," or writing five thousand textbooks on how the universe and the earth and life on this planet supposedly formed all by itself with no outside help? Which is simpler? Providing million page books about the various periods of billions of years when matter somehow formed out of nothing and exploded? Or simply saying, "God spoke, and bang, it happened"? But even if you were still arguing that Christianity is too complex, the razor can cut both ways. Even if you rephrased the statement to say, "The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one," it's still possible to be incorrect. Simple explanations aren't always correct. There remains a possibility for error.
"A few doing that sort of thing [religion] could be ignored or cured,but a billion people? No way to change
that. So just throw away any lingering idealistic notions about`perfecting' the world (or even
individuals), and quit worrying about religion, politics, or anything
in that `faith/self-delusion' category."
Tough talk from a person who believes in some sort of `perfected' secular utopia. Why bother saying anything, then? Your `cure' is worse than the `disease,' your `perfection' based on imperfect, laisez faire, Humanistic notions, rather than what is right in the sight of God. And I answered your `self delusion' argument elsewhere.
"St. Thomas of Aquinias proposed five proofs of the existance of God, but Emanual Kant disposed of 4. The 5th, was Cause and Effect. He could have demolished that one too, if he had known about Quantum Mechanics. At the subatomic level, there is no cause and effect. Unless God didn't make anything smaller than atoms (which would prove God isn't God of everything), or at least impose order upon them, then God doesn't exist."
Instead of saying that `since Kant dismantled Aquinias' arguments, it means God doesn't exist,' Uhhh...how about `Aquinias' proofs need work!?' Besides, quantum mechanics is just a theoretical structure, borderline science fiction. Very hypocritical of a person who claims to not have or believe in any religious texts.
"The Serenity Prayer you sent says in the first line: on some things...give up."
On some things, not all things.
"Religion doesn't attempt to discover `the truth' - it picks and choses texts and ideas and then declares the truth - and those who don't agree can (and will!) go to Hell. To me, this is so intellectually corrupt and unsatisfying, I have no `faith' in it ever finding the truth."
Nothing. Even you, in your atheism, have theories about how matter formed out of complete and absolute nothingness.
"My advice is to avoid going into the (substitute ethnic group) ghetto at night, assuming God will protect you. Just as when at the religious gathering, you are safe only as long as you `belong'."
That's because you have no faith in God. I have faith that God will protect me, that God is with me, no matter what. If God tells me to go in the ghetto, I'll go in the ghetto. I value God more than anything else.
Me: "Humans are emotional creatures. Even atheists are emotionally biased."
Agnostic: "Unfortunately. If God existed, I doubt He would have made this mistake."
But you make this claim with an emotional bias, you see. "Maybe I think much of religion still appeals to the uncivilized, not quite grown - up always inside us, that still wants parents to take over and solve all problems. There is a mother figure, and is full of rules from a mighty father, who is a nice guy sometimes, but will punish unruliness with a fierceness that appeals to, and comforts, the most suppressed underdog. I think the sooner we quit being slaves to it - simply learning from the past, then depending upon ourselves, the better. I think we should grow up."