Chatpilot's "God is a Mythy" site.

part 2 of prescriptive/descriptive laws of physics coming Wednessday


http://chatpilot-godisamyth.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-pros-of-atheism.html

ChatpilotOctober 9, 2015 at 5:55 PM

My devotion to Jesus started out as love and gratitude for saving me a poor wretched piece of shit sinner. I praised and adored him every waking moment of every day. But... fear was always present when it came to displeasing him. In fact, the Bible often admonishes believers to fear the Lord.

Here we have a good indication that his conversion was not real. "perfect love casts out fear." Thank God the person who led me to the Lord taught me that God wants us to love ourselves.

I could care less what that blogger says the rules of logical reasoning state that the one making the positive claim must bear the burden of proof. I can't disprove that God does not exist but I am not making that definitive claim that he does not exist. I am simply stating that if you say he does then prove it! If you don't understand that then I can't help you.

The atheists struggle to keep their exemption from the burden to proof. Of course atheists don't care about logic, its about convincing themselves the ideology is true. Look at the double standard. They make all kinds of claims about Christianity and slough off proof with "I didn't say God doesn't exist.? JB told him about my book and showed him my list of God arguments but he still says "you have to prove God exists before you can assert anything about Go0d." That's the old >you must prove God before you can argue for God." So there is no way to ever meet a prima facie burden but they never have to prove anything. That is irrational. Chatpilot is a bright guy and he strikes me as ones, but he's picked up the bad habits the ideological brainwashing teaches. He must show why my list of 42 God arguments and my book are not close enough to proof to allow statements about God?

Here's what he says about the book:

Chatpilot:

Thanks for sharing that link. But after a cursory perusal of the information provided by the author I have found no need to have to read his 418 page book. Let me explain: First off his idea of God is not the traditional view of God as recognized and believed in by the majority of the Christian churches of our day and age.

why must one have a traditional understanding. Where does he get the idea that only the traditional view is valid? More over God as being itself is a tradition in Christian theology going back to John of Damascus in the 800s.

Chatpilot:

He states clearly that his concept of God is "not an argument for the existence of God" so you are using this information improperly here. He also makes abstract assertions of God who he claims is beyond our understanding.

he quotes me:

"God is primordial being. God is ontologically prior to all that is (save himself of course that goes without saying)." " God is the framework in which our whole existence takes place, we can't think of God as "a being" because he's totlaly off scale, hes not a being along side other beings hes' the basis upon which beingness has any meaning."

Chatpilot: These are some very big claims that forego the most essential step of all which is proving the existence of God. This is also known as putting the horse before the carriage. Second, how can you make any assertions about something which at the same time you claim is beyond human understanding? God is supposed to be ineffable yet Christians put a lot of time and effort trying to describe and understand what is supposed to be impossible to know.

Metacrock: He says this in response to my list of arguments and my book (which backs two arguments from experience). In saying that I can't make states about my belief until I prove it, when those states are the advancement of arguments to "prove" it (justify) is the old fallacy prove the argument before you can make it. That's obviously an illogical and unfair burden as it would mean no one could ever make an argument.
Chatpilot:

The author brings nothing new to the table. It's nothing more than a bunch of empty assertions thought up in his mind in order to convince himself and others of the existence of a being he believes to exist. Finally, if anything his initial description of God sounds more like the deistic view of God making him a deist and not a Christian.

Metacrock:
So many atheists have asserted that I made this up and no one else believes it, totally irrational since I'm quoting theologians all the time. It's totally obvious I didn't make it up. Of course he refuses to read the book. see the side bar for link to amazon for The Trace of God by Joseph Hinman. When he says I bring nothing new to the table that just shows he has not read any of the arguments (the two arguments covered in the book are on the list on Doxa. I defy you to find anyone who uses the arguments I use! God is being itself? The Transcendental signifier, who says that? Did he read any of it?

What other apologist has 200 studies backing up his arguments and deals with them in such depth he writes a 400 page book about it? Not that I'm putting myself up with Swinburne or Plantinga but no message board poster does that. The Trace is a ground breaking work. All I did was report on the work of Dr. Hood. But Hood comes real close to proof. He guy demands proof but he wont listen when he gets it (or wont read it).That is another reason to think there's a brain washing process, because it's so common.

Chatpilot

You can't claim to know something on the one hand then in the same breath claim that he or it is unknowable. That is what is known as a contradiction or a paradox.

Metacrock: Of course you can because I specified different ways of knowing. We can't know exhaustively, or I accurate verbiage but we can experience God and know through experiential means.

An Atheist Discovers the "God Beyond God"

 

I am Plying for time while I seek to come up with better answers for Dave on his describe the Gospel challenge. I came across this stuff which is tangential to some of the problems of standardized symbols and meaning. It might good to reflect on some of this in thinking about that challenge.
I came across an interesting article by Marlene Winellon the atheist blog "Debunking Christianity. This person is a therapist of some kind. Her profile says that she offers therapy to those traumatized by religion. What I find interesting about this that her statement about the alternative to religious belief that she has found for her own personal world view is none other than Paul Tillich's notion of The ground of being! this is in fact my very understanding of God!

Winell indicates some basic misunderstanding about theology. In her statement she tries to attack religion. Although, this is not meant to be an attack. I can see some value in her attempts to help traumatized ex fundie s move forward in their lives. I do think religion can be very debilitating if it is not done right. Half truth is a very powerful weapon. But in making these theolgoical mistakes Winell is contributing to the half truth. The half truth of which I spoke is that of the fundamentalists, the way they distort the Gospel. Windell says:

Thursday, November 01, 2007

I keep getting asked, So Do You Believe in God?
So do you believe in God?

As a therapist working to help people recover from the damage of religion, I get this frequently. So I’ve decided to make a better effort to reply. To be honest, I don’t like the question because it presumes we know what those words mean. Here are some responses, touching on more or less serious aspects of the topic.

Yes I think I know what the words mean. She further demontrates lack of understanding in the nature of God in terms of necessity and contingency.

1. Which god? Do you mean Zeus, Baal, Athena, Shiva, Allah, Jehovah, or some other? If you mean one of those, then no. I am not a theist. I don’t believe in an individual being that created and now controls the world.

When people say things like this, which ;God, as though they are all so much alike, I see a read flag. It usually means a lack of theological sophistication. The similarity is in the metaphor suggested by ancient concepts of suzerain authority, the big man on a throne,t he ruler the potentate. That's a literary metaphor and that's where the similarity ends. The God of the Bible is totally different from these other little human figures because they are contingent.
They had parents. Zeus was the son of Saturn (Chronos in Greek set up). Athena was the daughter of Zeus and sprang from his head fully grown. Allah is the same God as the God of the Bible the Muslims just think he wants different things. that's not an argument about how he is, except they literaize the metaphor and just make him the real guy in the sky. Of course Jahova is the corrupted name of the God of the Bible. So clearly she doesn't understand the Christian concept of God. Like so many atheists they just take the literal version as the whole thing. This means basically that atheists are fundamentalists. Then she does something staggering. I really can't understand this, she denies that belief itself is an intelligible concept.

2. What is belief? Is it a cognitive conclusion that I have reached basic on logical consideration of evidence? That would assume I have access to all the information, and I do not. Is it an emotional feeling for something beyond myself? Well, my emotions vary, and some days are hopeful, other days are dark. Emotions are a rocky basis for “belief.” Do I make a leap of faith, not knowing anything really, but simply wanting to “believe,” and putting stock in a “scripture” to give it support? This is also difficult because knowing about the origins of “scripture,” I know the complexity; they were not simply dictated. Also, the strength of my blind faith can also vary and I’m not sure how completely I am supposed to convince myself in order to say I “believe.”

Here we see the typical atheist conception of faith; just blind leap into the darkness with no evidence. We really need to talk about this some time. These people have have just got to start looking thing up. The proper source to use would be Westminster Dictionary of Christian theology. You would not use a refrigeration manuel to define automotive standards or weighs and measures for agriculture, so you would not use a popular dictionary to understand theology. You would use the dictionary made by theologians to explain the way theologians use their specialized terms. See my recent blog piece on Faith is not belief without reason.
After questioning the concept of belief as a coherent concept she then speaks of what passes for belief, and for God, in her world view.

4. If I must use the concept at all, I would equate it with the “nature of being.” This is close to “ground of being,” a phrase coined by John Robinson many years ago in Honest to God. For me it involves a perception of existence grounded in the profound science of modern physics. Most ordinary people do not know much about this. Yet, we now know from findings in both relativity theory and quantum physics, that the universe is much more strange and incredible than we ever realized. It calls for massive humility because there are things no one understands, yet we now have good reason to question all of our basic assumptions about “reality.” The difference is bigger than finding out the world is not flat. We have evidence for questioning our ideas about matter, linear time, cause and effect, and more. String theorists agree there are eleven dimensions. Yet the general population operates all day every day assuming things that are completely out of date. The knowledge has not reached the masses. This is akin to having everyone act as if the earth is still flat. The issues are intensely profound, with implications for everything we do. The big words for me are “mystery” and “possibility.” Feelings are humility, awe, and excitement. There is no religious description of “god” that matches the grandeur of the universe as it is – elusive, ever-changing, impossibly mind-boggling. And this includes us. We are part of the fabric; there is no separation. If this is believing in god, then by all means, a hundred times YES! But I’m still not drawn to the language.

First of all, John Robinson did not coin the term "Being itself." It is found as far back as the intertestamental translating of Exodus by the Rabbis who produced the LXX. In Exodus 3, 11-21 they translate the phrase often rendered "I am that i am" in English bibles, as "I am the being." Since the definite article (ego o' ami) carries a sense of quality when used in this way, "I am being " or I am being itself is the best translation. By the way John 1:1 should be translated "the word was deity" not "the word was the God." The concept is picked up by John of Damascus in the eighth century AD. Robinson got it from Tillich, it is also used by Ware in The Orthodox church to describe Eastern Orthodox beliefs about God, and John MacQuerry uses it extensively.
Secondly her tak about knowing beyond langauge is just coming out of Christian mysticism. People are seeking God like it or not. She is a believe in Gdo even though she doesn't know God, ust as Paul said of the Athenians in Acts 17: 11-21.
She quotes a couple of notables to back up her view:

A couple of quotes that I find consistent with this:

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”`
-Carl Sagan

The actual fact is that atheists have stunted their spiritual growth. they tend not to understand Christian views at the higher level of sophistication. Of course its hardly their fault. liberal theology gets almost no air play, one never sees clearly references to it and even on PBS they give it short shrift. There are concepts by Christian thinkers which dwarf anything short of Einstein Process theology certainly is as sophisticated s anything Sagan ever thought about. Greater scientists than him have been Christians, even in the modern age.

“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
-Albert Einstein

He was wrong about the uncertantainty princple too.
We need to be careful that in our attempts to move beyond the traumatizing aspects of our lives that we don't miss the valuable things. I was traumatized by my fundamentalist environment as a child. I think it caused no end of problems for me. I think the "sucky" parts of my personality can be traced to that era of my life. I and my brother used to stand up in church and lead singing, or help. we really weren't we were jut waving our arms, people thought it was cute and encouraged us. They would go "good job leading sining today." One day I thought "I think I'll preach the sermon today." I stood up, faced the guy sitting right behind me, (I was about five or four) looked him in the eye and shouted "You are going to hell!" He was horrified and didn't know what to thin.. I will never forget the look on that guy's face. As "luck" or "fate" or god whatever would have it, he was a visitor so he didn't know about the two little twins leading sining and how everyone encouraged us. What's interesting about that is that acting out my idea of what a sermon was I immediately went right ot the condemnation and threats of hell. Now no preacher had actually done that in our church. How did I know to do it? I probably saw something on tv, but it fit the mentality of the church.
My point is I can understand the problem with religion. I have more air curling stories than that that I could tell. One thumbnail example, I once dreamed that I was at one of the old churches we went to when I was in high school int he dream it was a center of satan worship. In another dream of the same era the little religious private school I attended in eighth and ninth grades was ran by a secret cult of vampires where sucking the kids blood. That might give an idea of ho these places affected me. Yet, I found healing when I found Jesus. My solution to the bad religious experince was to have good religious experiences.

Not only does Winell throw the babby out she watns to kill the whole concept of God.

5. Dispensing with the “god” word, it makes a little more sense for me to address “spirituality,” although this word has often meant a focus on other-worldly things. I prefer to describe spirituality as a way of living which is here-and-now. These are attributes rather than a definition. They involve feelings and perceptions and experiences which depend on openness. This openness can be chosen and developed. Rather than escaping into a different realm, I think of spirituality in terms of how we live our lives – the choices, the consciousness, the texture of daily life. There are several aspects of this:

I don't totally disagree there. But the interesting thing is she wants to do away with the term "God" and yet her alternative to it is the more sophisticated concept of God that is less known, but no less Christian. The idea that the reality of God is beyond words and must be explored experimentally is hardly new in Christian thought, ti is the stuff of which Christian mysticism is made. The idea that the reality of God is something beyond our cultural constructs of God is explored by Tillich in his book The Courage to Be, in the chapter "The God beyond God." I highly recomend it.

Where is God and What's He Doing?

I just don't know what the deal is with atheists? Two different people yesterday on CARM, one asked "where is God," the other "what is God doing?" I've seen them ask these things before. They just can't think logically about it. I felt like saying "God used to be off inspecting dew drops and making sure sparrows don't fall, but now lately he's taken to playing Parcheesi with the angels, and hanging out at the post office so he can pick up his social security check." Come on, where is God? Use your brain, why do you think they call it "omnipresent?"

Are they trying to get at the idea that an omnipresent mind is unacceptable becuase they can't conceive of it? Or do they just refuse to think about it? Then when I tell them they are thinking of God like a big man in the sky they go "O I am not!" No you just think he's located in a single place. My view is that God is a mind and the universe is a thought in that mind. So God is bigger than the universe and encuposes the entire universe as a passing fancy. That means God is everywhere and yet no where. It also means we can't possibly know where God is. It doesn't matter becuase a better question is "where are we?"

Of cousre that leads to the question "how can there be a mind without a brain?" That's an unfair question becuase they are basing that as a difficulty upon such a limited sample, biological organisms on one planet. God is not a biological organism so there's no reason to  expect God to function in that way. Moreover, God is the basis  of our entire world. That totally removes him form any such questions. How can we even ask, much less expect an answer? It also raises the issue about the reality of our own lives, and implies a form of determinism. I just think we don't have to live with either option they because they are untenable from an existential stand point. The rules don't have to be the same so God doesn't have decide our every move as we do characters we imagine. We have no choice but to live our lives as though life is real and we are free. Things just work better when we make those assumptions.

This led to the issue about God and Time. My fellow Christians and I posting yesterday were assuming the standard model of big bang cosmology, thus positing that God is outside time. This lead to a great deal of consternation by one atheist, "how can you know that? that's just speculation." Yes, sure but if great created the universe the most efficient way for him to do it would the big bang, which what the evidence indicates. That puts God outside of time becuase he would have to be existent prior to the big bang in order to cause it, he would have to be outside it if he's not subject to it. These are just logical inferences, but this atheist (and many others I've seen) treat logic as though it's cow dung. the only thing that matters is hard empirical data. Then they will turn right around and act like the combustive is a dune deal when in fact there is no empirical evidence to back it and ti's all logical inference from math. Every time I would say something like "God is beyond time, we can't say 'before time' becuase there can't be a "before" before time (no sequential order without time see?). Then he would seem to indicate that this was a "secret answer" for Christians that no atheist would accept. I don't know how he worked out that we were sharing the secret with him.

Then we come to the burning issue "what is God doing?" this makes me wonder "do these guys not have enough to do? Maybe I should tell them about golden age comics?" I mean come on, what's he doing? they can't imagine a couple of things. What would one do if one was everywhere and all powerful? Maybe stuff work right? Check up on all the sparrows to make sure the don't fall out of the sky? Number hairs on people's heads, with six billion (or is it nine?) we have a lot of hairs to count.

Really, be honest now it's this just a big like treating God like a big man? He doesn't have enough to do? How do we know he's not out creating multiverses and stuff? That question is just a function of underrating the concept of God. God is not a big man in the sky who is looking for something to do. We don't have to assume he get's board or that he doesn't' have some higher thing to be doing like meditation or calculating things. It's a very real possibility that he might just be creating lots of other stuff. He could be answering prayers and figuring what to do for and with billions upon billions of creatures in billions upon billions of universes.

Really and truly though I don't accept that God has to figure. I don't accept that he get's board or needs to do things like we do. I have no idea what being God entails and I don't need to know. I can well imagine. But asking the question is like asking what the laws of physics are doing? Or, what is the universal sense of justice doing? Not to equate God with his own creation or make any pantheist implications but it is also a bit like asking what is the universe doing?

I don't really mind them asking these questions, even though they do imply a rather limited imagination. What I really resent is the question begging tone they take to the answers. One such implication that makes, aside from "this is the secret knowledge Christians hide form atheists," is the idea that "you are just making this up." They express like zero amount of faith in logic to be a proper guide or even a tool for excluding contradiction. While at the same time their own world view is about 60% speculation. Then of cousre the question begging:

Christian: God doesn't need to be doing anything he's not like us he doesn't get board

Atheist: Wrong he doesn't exist so he can't do anything!

Christian: so why did you ask?

Atheist: just to show how stupid it is!

Christian: O it show how stupid IT is? I see....

Then of course they throw in the inevitable: who created God?

Christian: he was designed by committee.

Revolutionary Jesus

Mural by Jose Clemente Orozco "Christ Destroying
his Cross," 1943

This post comes under the heading of "what I want to tell atheists positively about Jesus." I started it back when I posted that one about Jesus and Dylan. It's based upon my outrage or dismay (I should say) over learning that so many atheists don't admire or respect Jesus as a historical figure. I re-posting it because after reading it again it seems pretty good.It's also in response to the statements by Weekend Fisher.

I have been deeply moved by Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco's (1883-1949) painting of Jesus chopping down his own cross. The Christ of this mural prostrate is drawn in a very primitive style. Christ is not the Pascal lamb but refuses his destiny and will not go to the cross. The painting is disturbing because the first impression is that of blasphemy. Is the artist mocking Christ? Is he rejecting faith at its most sacred level? Orozco is not trying to blaspheme Jesus, nor is he denying the atonement. I find this painting very moving not our any rejection of Christ’s sacrifice or any desire to defame the doctrine of atonement, but because for me it says Jesus would, weather as the son of God, or if he was only a man in history, refuse to be the poster boy for institutional hypocrisy, Jesus would NOT allow himself to be used as symbol to sanctify the institution as it oppresses the poor and ignores the needs of the people. I believe that the real Jesus of history is both the Son of God and the man of history, and he does refuse this role. The real Jesus was a revolutionary of a most remarkable kind. Often we hear that Jesus is the great ethical teacher, and he claimed to be the Messiah, and savior of the world. We usually understand his ethics as an addendum, something any self respecting son of God would be required to have, but mainly irrelevant to his claims of godhood. Jesus ethics were far from being an addendum, however, they were the weaponry and major battle tactics of his amazing revolution. Politics and religion were intertwined in first century Hebrew society. Jesus’ ethics and his Messianic claims work together to fulfill his ultimate mission of world saving and together they make for one the most unique revolutions in human history.

It is not so strange to think of Jesus as a revolutionary. There were even Priests in Latin America in the 60’s, such as Camillio Tores but joined Che and became gorilla fighters. But Jesus the man of history was a true revolutionary. The region from which Jesus is said to have sprung is known as “the Galilee.” The Galilee was a hot bed of revolution, filled with uprisings and tensions. The Romans regarded it as the seat of Zealotry where the real revolutionaries were based. Just four miles from Jesus’ family farm “Nazareth” is a major metropolis known as Serapes. Just four miles down the road Jesus would have had access to what was then modern sophistication, political unrest and new ideas. Nor did he have to go to India to learn of traditions beyond his native prudential Judaism, the major trade route to India went right by his house,. That route lay on the plain of Megiddo where the end of the world is supposed to take place, the final battle between good and evil. Nazareth overlooks the plain of Megiddo and apparently the battle of Armageddon. All of these influences would have been at work in Jesus upbringing. Not to mention the fact that he was a descendant of David, born in Bethlehem and named as the high priest of Zechariah (Joshua = Jesus) who is linked to the Messiah (Zechariah 4).

Jesus revolution, however, was a bit odd. He did not lead an army nor did he command his followers to fight or pick up weapons. His was a non-violent revolution in the mode of Gandhi and that is where his ethics play a major role in backing his mission. The role of the Messiah in the society of Israel was that of political liberator, but it took on overtones of cosmic proportion. In the book of Isaiah we see the concept of Messiah first begins to be introduced, and is then back read into previous statements such as Moses admonition that “a prophet like me will come” and even God’s word to Eve “I will place enmity between the serpent and your seed.” The Messianic kingdom sketched out at the end of Isaiah is not the millennial kingdom of Christ’s post epochal reign on earth, but Israel after the return from the exile. By the second temple period and the time of Jesus, the concept had grown to almost divine proportions. The Messiah was to stand on the top of the temple and shout “Jerusalem your time at hand” the end of the world would ensue. The Messiah was to rise from the dead all of fallen Israel and for that reason he held the keys of life and death. The Jews did not see the Messiah as world redeemer; they did not see him as atoning sacrifice. These weren't entirely Christian innovations, they were foreshadowed at Qumran. But they weren't mainstream. The Jews certainly did not expect the Messiah to be crucified and raise from the dead.

Jesus was such a radical revolutionary, that is a "strange" different, unconventional one, that when his guys made noises about actually installing him on the throne the ran from them. That's because he knew, as everyone from the Galilee knew, the futility of trying to fight the Romans. The slaughter of the innocents in the book of Luke, is not recorded in history. Atheists are always quick to remind us of this. But it does not have to be recorded to have happened because that kind of thing happened all the time. Even a gathering as innocent as the sermon on the mount risked attack by Romans even though nothing provocative was being said. When they started talking about making Jesus king he slopped away and ran from them. Not because he lost his nerve, but because that would totally divert the people from his true purpose. Jesus has no intention of leading an armed revolt that was the opposite of what he had in mind. neither did he intend to pacify the people to accept pain and hardship with platitudes about pie in the sky. Was his program escapist? Was it just a personal nirvana with no touch stone in reality or responsibility to the world? It was not this ether. It was a practical and pragmatic system fro changing the nature of the world by changing the way people relate to each other. He accomplished this by taking people out of the world while keeping them in it.

In Jesus' system we live by the dictates of a higher citizenship, a world beyond this one ruled entirely by God. This is echoed in the model prayer he taught the disciples "thy kingdom come thy will be don't on earth, as it is in heaven." The device Jesus used for this trick of living by the rules of world while being physically in another, we the kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God was the essence of Jesus' message:

Mt 3:2
and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

atheists think Jesus was saying "If you don't believe in me you will go to hell." But he actually never says this. All the action is in the kingdom and the kingdom is the big deal. The coming of the kingdom Jesus makes out to be an immanent, immediate, almost emergency status event that will happen soon, and when it does, man is it a big thing!

Mt 4:17
From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

Mt 4:23
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Mr 1:15 - Show Context
"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

He never says the Kingdom is reward becasue you had the good sense to believe on him, but he does speak as though its the answer to all our troubles:

Mt 5:3
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Mt 5:10
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Most revolutionaries come to abolish the standing order, not impose a kingdom, one kingdom over another.It is within this context that he talks about the ethics and personal relationships and how to relate to people. This is not just some ad-on that's in addition to believing the right things, nor is it unrelated, but it is an outgrowth, a logical extension, one is the basis of the other. The Kingdom is coming. It's power is already here. We can be part of it now, because it has two aspects. This is "realized Eschatology" which was developed by the theologian C.H.Dodd; the kingdom has an "already" dimension" and a "not yet" dimension. We live in the kingdom now even as we are in the world. How we treat each other is an integral aspect of the kingdom.

Mt 5:20
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.


Mt 7:21 - Show Context
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Jesus ethical and moral teachings may be the greatest ever recorded, of course that's a biased and culturally bound appraisal. But they are certainly among the greatest, and the leaders and theologians of other world religions laud him for his teachings and many of them try to claim him as their own; the Muslims, The Hindu, and the B'Hai. Yet is was not the originality of his moral thinking that makes him great; the Stoics and others said many of the same things. And yet there are certain factors which do make Jesus' teachings unique and worthy of particular attention above and beyond that of most if not all ethical teachers...

Let's use a crash course in Jesus' ethics as a means of understanding his values:

Beatitudes

The "beatitudes" that Jesus speaks in the Sermon on the mount indicate the value system out of which he worked. Blessed means "happy" but he is saying more than "happy are the peacemakers." In pronouncing them blessed he is saying basically 'these are the good guys' and indicates a natural Tao working through the divine economy to protect and vindicate those who live by such values. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted;...meek will inherit the earth...those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be filled...merciful shown mercy...pure in heart will see God...peacemakers called sons of God...those persecuted for righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heave." (Matt.5:3-10)

This is the way, this is how to be, these are the values one should hold. This is basically what he is saying. Essentially these qualities are those of a righteous person, they are oriented around God as the primary value and love for the neighbor as the main manifestation of love for God. To mourn probably means repenting for the evil we have done, or at least being able to empathize with other, to care about the pain others. "poor in spirit" refers to real poor people made more explicit in Luke, but the poor in the Bible are the righteous poor who trust in God for their sustenance.

prioritize: Seek Ye first the Kingdom of God...

"Do not be anxious saying 'what shall we eat?' 'what shall we drink?' 'what shall we wear?' The Gentiles seek all fo these things and your heavnly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first his kingdom and his riaghteousness, and all these will be added unto you..." (Matt. 5:28-33)

prime directive: Golden Rule

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." ..Other religions, probably all, have similar injunctions, but I have not found has this qualifier making it a self-reflexive command.


Self-Reflexive nature

By placing the command in terms of one's own standard of well being, the command becomes an exhortation to "love the neighbor as you love yourself." No higher standard could be given, one does to himself only that which he/she most desires to be done. By placing the command in these terms one cannot refuse to come to the aid of anyone in need. We would all prefer that others come to our aid. If the command were stated negatively, "do not do unto others that which you would not have done to yourself" one could ignore the neighbor in need. If the command stopped at merely loving the enemy or the neighbor one could refuse to help. By placing it in these self reflexive terms it is made active. One must go out of his way to seek out the needy.

b) Categorical Imperative.

Kant's great ethical system the categorical imperative was based on the Golden Rule of Jesus.

3) Love for Enemies

If you love those who love and hate those who hate you even the Gentiles do that, but I say unto you love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you

matt 5-6....

4) Greatest commandment

Matt 22:35. "and one of them, a lawgiver, ask him a question to test him, 'teacher what is the greatest commandment?' ...37 "and he said to him ye shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first command,and the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commands depend the law and the prophets." (RSV).

Note: All legal regulations and striving of law keeping are summed up in love of God and love of neighbor. This shows that Jesus' ethics surpass the rule keeping stage and ascend to the highest level of conceptual morality, that of the ideal stage where actions are motivated by internalized principles. Moreover, by basing the second command upon love for the neighbor, but relating to love for self, it forms it's own second version of the categorical imperative. Note also if we love our neighbor as ourselves we are commanded to love ourselves, to rectify the self image in relation to reciprocal nature with others. At the same time, we cannot get off the hook by loving enemies any less (since even enemies are neighbors). Thus the will for the good of the other is indexed by our own will for our own good.

Psychological Motivations

Great Compassion

The compassion of Jesus can be seen in many of the stories. The woman caught in the act of adultery is taken before him and the mob wants to stone her. She has broken the law, she is worthy of death (accordion to that culture and that time). Jesus stoops and writes in the sand. We don't know what he wrote, but perhaps it was the names of those in the mob who had slept with her (they weren't being accused). He says "let he who is without sin cast the first stone..." There is the compassion he exhibited to the many people who implored him for healing, and he never refused anyone.We forget anyone else would have been running from those lepers and demoniac that he healed. The demoniac were dangerous, and the leapers thought contagious. But the also demonstrates a total lack of hypocrisy in being unafraid to associate with those who needed him most. When he was criticized for being in the company of drunkards and prostitutes; he merely made fun of the prudes and said, in affect "well, I didn't come to help those who are so well off (the self righteous people) but those who know they need help" There is no way to capture the greatness of Christ's compassion and moral teachings in one of these sub points, but I urge you to get a Bible and read the Gospels over and over, and with an open heart and you will see no greater compassion than that of Jesus Christ, and that of course is culminated in his sacrifice on the cross for our sins.

Greatest Sacrifice

He did lay down his life for the sins of the world. "Greater love hath no man than to give up his life for a friend," yet Jesus' died for everyone; and his own understanding of what he was doing was that he laid down his life as a "ransom for many." But it seems unlikely that his followers would enlarge upon his mission to this extent. Perhaps they could have enlarged upon his death o include the mission to Israel and it was Paul who expanded it to the rest of the world. But there is great likelihood that he understood himself to be doing something beneficial for all humanity. After all it was not Pauline Theology but the understanding of the Beloved Disciple of the fourth Gospel who puts into Jesus mouth the statement "for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life."






Living as though we were in the kingdom now is the most radical move of any revolutionary program. We don't need to hurt anyone, we don't need to fight anyone. ;We just treat people the way God wants us to treat them, out of love. Over time like the mustard seed int he parable he told, the kingdom will grow into a mighty tree that will shade the world. Of course that brings up a sore spot. Some might suggest that has not happened. Others might suggest are still working on it. I think it's worked out much better than skeptical types are willing to admit. Of course the problem is the quasi religious types who think they can manipulate the truth for their devices, and the legalistic types who think they have to kiss up the quasi religious types or they aren't religious enough. While there's a long way to go we need to be cognizant of the fact that Christianity is more than just a social agenda and plan for living. The Kingdom of God is not just a social club or a political program it's a spiritual reality. What Jesus was offering was not just membership in heaven, but a heaven that starts now on earth and is manifested in the way we treat people.

Atheists Can't Handle Truth:massive confusion over Tillch's impied OA

Last week I made a post about Tillich's implied Ontological argument. I will now summarize. The concept of truth, X is "true" as opposed to being false, and the contradiction to X is fase by virtue of the fact that X is true, is the basis for understanding that being has depth. Its' not a proof that God exists, becasue in Tillich's view existence is a term we use for contingent things.God transcends existence but is being itself. So existence is less than being. Tillich opposed arguments that attempt to prove God exists because he saw them as objectifying God and turning him into a thing, an additional fact in the universe, rather than the ground of being.

The implied Tillich OA, rather than proving the existence of God actually demonstrates the depth of being. Remember Tillich said "if you know that being has depth you can't be an atheist." What he means by depth is there's more to being than just the surface level of things existing. So the idea of God as being itself is the idea that some aspect of reality's such that we can think of it as "holy." Or as John Macquarrie puts it "holy being."

The OA says there is a category of logic called truth and its contradiction is false. It's not limited to anyone particular truth, but all truth, the concept of truth itself. This concept is transcendent in that it can't be limited to any one place or time as long as we are using the same sense of the terms. In this sense it is unconditioned. Since God is also unconditioned in this way, being itself, apart form any particular example of being but the basis for all being then God is synonymous with truth.

The atheist throw a little tantrum because they want to control truth, without God. They want scinece to be the only source of truth. They say "how could 2+2=4 prove god?" The ides is not tha any given particular truth proves god, it's that the concept of a true answer and its contradiction is false, the fact that that category is universal, transcendent and unconditioned means that there is a transcendent unconditioned aspect of reality.

In the discussion on CARM two atheists in particular fell all over themselves reacting badly to this idea.

Discussion on CARM

Captain obvious

Science is truth... based on the available evidence at the time. It models and explains natural processes. When new discoveries are made, they replace or update previous theories. Knowledge grows incrementally, that is a thing.

Westvelitern

Two things can be contradictory and yet true in science. You should familiarize yourself with the Quantum world.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

you actually read that? did you notice it defines truth as fact!

so you can't argue against the concept of truth itself as unconditioned corrospnosense to what is.

Which was not the point in the first place. Man you are dense sometimes.


(but of cousre it was the point, it's my thread it's my point)


Can science be both true and not true? Sure, but you won't know what part is not true until something new that appears to be true updates it.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

look all that jazz has to assume ideas. Basque you talking language so you have to assume meaning to assume is to assume ideas.

Westveletern

you can't deny philosophy becuase it's the basis of scinece (natural philosophy).

Methodological naturalism is the basis of science.

Metacrock
of course that's not a philosophy is it? A little thing called Naturalism!

Westvleteren;

Still not getting the difference in scientific evidence and philosophical argument are you?

Metacrock
you arleady admitted that science is based upon philosophy. because naturalism is not a fact it's a philosophy. to have the concept of facts you have to have the concept o trut. this has been proven by the definitions from Websters.

you have contradicted yourself over and over. first you try to say that scinece gives facts. then you say facts have nothing to do with truth bu the dictionary fines truth by fact and fact by truth. then you say facts having nothing to do with the way he world is. then you scinece tells us the way the word is.

either the science of scinece is a systematic method for understanding th way things for or it' just a superstition. if the former then it is about true. it's in the category of truth telling.

You can't seal scinece off from the category of truth. you have tried to make it into it's own little category that is neither true nor false but you still want it to tell you facts and how the world is. That's tacitly accepting truth as a category.

I"m sorry you have never thought about this before. This is just part of the reason why scinece requires philosophy to make it make sense.

Westvleteren;

Methodological naturalism not philosophical naturalism

Metacrock
what do you think ethological naturalism is derived from? there's no fact in nature that says "this is natural." I don't see little tags on rocks and trees that say "natural tree." these are words, all words are constructs and all contracts are ideas.



Westvleteren;

Lets try to bring this down to the third grade level for you. Science explains facts

Metacrock
what is a fact? the dictionary says facts are part of truth. you deny scinece is truth. but here you are saying science accepts this idea that is part of truth.

Westvleteren;

That facts exist does not in any way lead to the existence of a god no matter what you definition of a god is. Do I need to try and bring that down to a kindergarten level for you?

Metacrock
Is what you just said true? how can it be true unless you accept a concept of truth? If you accept a concept of turth you must accept that there is a transcendent unconditioned, that correlates to God because that's what God is.

Westvleteren;

It is a method of explaining the world around us, nothing more or less.

Metacrock
O a method! ah I see, because it' sa method it just comes magically out of the earth we don't have to think about it right? methods aren't related to anything about ideas are they? Aren't methods derived form ideas? that makes them part of philosophy genius.

Westvleteren;

It does not tell us facts it explains facts, that seems to be hard for you to grasp. That explanation is never complete hence it changes over time as we gain further knowledge.

Metacrock
you have a concept of fact that's disjointed form truth even though the dictionary defines fact as truth and truth as fact. You admit it's not complete, which means to fit it into a larger understanding we have to augment it with ideas and constructs, the process of which is philosophy itself! But then you assert htat philosophy is cow dung and scinece doesn't' need it. You just showed us that it needs some sort of augmenting with thought.

I"m sorry you have never thought about this before. This is just part of the reason why scinece requires philosophy to make it make sense. (This is what I'm saying o you Westwhoseits)


Originally Posted by souper genyus

All knowledge is tentative and subject to revision or omission, but it is perhaps the only method of inquiry into contingent claims that has demonstrated that it can even get close to approaching the truth.

Metacrock
you have to have a category for truth to have an appraoch to truth. So that what you just said you have to tacitly accept the idea of truth. Which you did. Atheists throughout this thread have been treating the category of truth as though it's nothing more than some particular fact about things.

Westvleteren;

]if we can see it, touch it and test it it is natural.
Ditto for you.

Metacrock
I know you can't understand concepts. tis' not in a lab manual so you can't get it, but try to reflect a big for a sec ok? You can't look at something in nature an see "natural" written on it. you have to apply an idea in your mind. That idea comes form thinking not form facts or observations. You don't see 'naturalism' in nature, you have to apply a construct. That's philosophy.

the idea of Naturalism comes from a philosophical idea. Saying that about touching it that's just par to the idea. Touching it doesn't tell you it's natural in the way that book says "this is natural." You have to apply a concept.


Westvleteren;

Try reading for comprehension.

Metacrock
look who is taking. you say the word but you don't understand it. you are really looking for slogans and brain washing rather than actually think about what I'm saying. you are not really thinking about any of the things I'm saying you are completely brain washed.

Westvleteren;

Nonsensical gibberish that has no bearing on reality. If my kids came up with that nonsense I would have them committed.

Metacrock
To define reality you have to think about the concept. that is philosophy can't you get it? are you so dense you can't understand the difference in observing and thinking?

Westvleteren;

What part of evidence versus pure philosophical argumentation was lost on you?

Metacrock
the part where you can't understand Hume.. I'm sure you never read him but he say we don't see cause and effect we have to assume it. that means we are applying philosophy. the same with naturalism. natural is not a thing you see. it's a category of thought you impose.

what a genius can't even understand that!


Westvleteren;

Not what I said but then again your comprehension is abysmal.
Again not what I said Metacrack.

Metacrock
I'm not the one who can't think about what' being said. you contradict yourself everything you speak of methodology and naturism and then say it's not part of thinking.

you don't see methodology in nature. do you know that? [B]where is the methodology in nature. Is it in the desert in Arizona? where they do keep it?[/B]

These nonsense statements about "philosophical arguments are no good and "don't' mean nutt'n," have to stop. Nothing betrays an ignorance of the history of scinece more concretely than the attempt by scientism to rail road actual thinking.

First let's define scientism: the concept that scinece is the only form o knowledge, all other kinds f learning and knowing are invalid.Science is the only thing that tells us anything worth knowing.

How do we define Philosophy? There are a couple of answer that come up on Google which I think are simple and apt:

phi·los·o·phy/fəˈläsəfē/Noun
1. The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, esp. when considered as an academic discipline.
2. A set of views and theories of a particular philosopher concerning such study or an aspect of it. More »

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~phil/whatis/wsa.html

Philosophy's goal is nothing less than a systematic world view. Other fields study particular kinds of things. Philosophy asks how it all fits together. For example, if you want to learn about bodies, take a course in physics or biology. If you want to learn about minds, take a course in psychology. But if you want to learn about how minds are related to bodies, or how physics is related to psychology, then philosophy (of mind) is for you. Similarly, economics, political science, and art and music courses study different values (welfare, justice, and beauty). Then moral philosophers ask how these values are similar or different, when one may be traded off against another, and where any of these values fit into the physical world. Again, historians try to discover knowledge of the past and astronomers try to discover knowledge of stars and planets, but only philosophers ask what makes any of these beliefs knowledge, and how (or whether) we can have any knowledge at all. Such philosophical questions are very abstract, but that is what enables them to cover so many different fields at once.

you don't have to be doing academic philosophy to be philosophizing. This is why it's so incredibly ignorant for one to say thing like "philosophical arguments are no good." The same people turn right around and say "only scinece is worth knowing' spout all the slogans of scientific. Then when push comes to shove they demonstrate that they are doing philosophy in place of scinece!

Science's proper domain is the workings of the physical world. Science is a systematic methodology for understanding the working of the psychical world. As soon as you start making pronouncements to the effect that there is nothing else but the physical world, you are doing metaphysics (philosophy). Anytime you depart from the workings of the physical world to explain the bigger picture of what it means or what it entails or does not entail you are doing something else.

any kind of thinking about the nature of reality is by its nature philosophy. I argued with an atheist the other day who thought he was protected from philosophy by using a "science" word like "methodology." He says science is naturalistic methodology. He says "I said methodology not philosophy." He thinks because he used a slogan that's approved by his ideology that means it's not philosophical. That is so extremely naive.

Method is not something we observe in the world, we have to make it up. We make it up based upon theory, ideas, thinking, hypothesis testing. All of this is derived from philosophy. Science used to be called "natural philosophy." The idea of "natural" is a concept, it has to be learned, ot had to be made up. It's philosophy it's not scinece per se. It's been expropriated by scinece but it's not science. Method is derived from philosophical speculation.

At it's core science depends heavily upon philosophy and anytime one moves out from the micro level to the macro to understand the bigger picture one is doing philosophy. Philosophical arguments are fine and good and do they prove things, they are necessary to make. Even if they don't prove things per se they are necessary and they being done all the time by those who say they are no good. It's just that they dogmatically prescribe their version of philosophy and rule out versions that disprove their control over nature.

Are Atheits Immune to the Gosepl?

Bill Moyers once did a special about the song Amazing Grace. He included on that special (PBS) an interview with Judy Collins. In 1971 she did the album Whales and Nightingales which included her rendition of "Amazing Grace," it was a big hit at the time and over the years has become a classic. Her version still defines the song for a lot of people, it's near Iconic status. It really made Collin's career even though she was very popular and had many hits before. Not to take away form her subsequent triumphs such as her version of "send in the clowns." Collins is my favorite singer (or is it Joan Baez?). Amazing grace is my favorite religious song. When I saw Moyers' interview on You tube Collins came across to me as sharp, deep, insightful, compassionate and a survivor of a hard life. I moved moved by the interview and wanted others to hear it.

Two most powerful concepts in Christianity are redemption and transformation. I don't know Collin's spiritual ideas. I have no idea if she thinks of herself as a Christian or not. She is a profound thinker and things she in this interview are great, they are just what I wish I could get across of all of you. It's not specific to Christianity but it touches exactly on the heart of the Gospel.

I asked the atheists on CARM to listen and think about it. She talks about the life transformation thing too. that's why made me think to put it up here. I put this up becuase I like the way she talks about these concepts. It's not specifically Christian and I don't know if she is a Christian. I pointed these things out.


Interview part 1

part 2


Original recording by Collins of Amazing Grace
from Whales an Nightingales album (1971)

Here was the atheist reaction:

Harry C

Yes, once they have you convinced that there is something fundamentally wrong with you, that you are a “wretch” and you need to be “saved” to be “transformed” then they have caught you hook line & sinker. Then you are easily separated from your cash for the snake oil to cure the imaginary problem.

That’s the “good news” of Atheism. You aren’t lost. You don’t need to be saved, or redeemed, or transformed or any such nonsense. There is nothing really wrong with you, even if Judy says there is.

Madmax

I reserve my anger for arrogant, assuming theists who insist on including me in their insecurities and pet fears. You want to believe your a wretch? Have at it, but speak for yourself and don't presume to speak for anyone else. You theists just look foolish when you try.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

atheist hate themselves. that's proved by studies. that's the motivation of atheism.

What a load of crap. I am living proof that this is entirely false, I do not hate myself, and I'll wager there are many atheists like me who don't hate themselves and don't have any such motivations.

So the idea that God loves them makes then angry...

Another false pile of crap. Such an idea would not in any way make me angry, I simply don't don't believe it's true.

We are all ok we also all wrecked. Its' the anger of the self heating one who can't admit he's wretched.

the more rational Sun of my Soul

I think you are missing the point of his post meta (my humble apologies if i am wrong)
his post was not in anyway an attack on you.

But rather on the idea that Christianity teaches and instructs that we are all evil...(regardless of what we do or do not) just because we are born...
(and this is a necessary teaching in order for the necessary salvic atonement belief..one is hingent upon the other)

Now I don't think we are all okay....but i do think some of us are.
Christianity doesn't allow for this....for someone to be....okay, sane, healthy and happy, productive and good....
atheism does.

Moving beyond CARM

Austine Cline: "myth: atheists and atheists world view don't
allow for forgiveness."
About.com

If anything, it might be argued that the concept of forgiveness has much more significance for atheists than for some religious theists and some Christians. After all, Christians ultimately only need to be forgiven by their god — and according to them, their god will forgive absolutely anything with just a single requirement, which is to accept Jesus Christ. Christians also believe that, in the end, their mistakes will be fixed or made up for by their god. There is nothing they can do which would thwart their god's plan for humanity and the universe, and that's what's ultimately important.

For atheists, though, there are no gods to seek forgiveness from and certainly no gods who will fix any mistakes. For atheists, the only forgiveness that can exist must come from the people around us and from ourselves. Atheists can't presume that if some god forgives them, then it doesn't matter what others around them think because we humans are all that really count in the end. Penn probably put it best:

Debating Christianity message board
Dr. Phyiscs Jan 9, 2011

"is the Victorious Redemption of Jesus Moral?"

(lets assume the the crucifixion happened as the christians say it does for this thread)

the crucifixion of jesus christ was brutal and bloody. if i were present i would feel the need to STOP the bloody human sacrifice. this act of vicarious redemption is equivalent to scapegoating. is this not immoral and barbaric?

"you can serve my sentence in jail, but you cant take away my responsibility... after looking at the offer (of jesus' sacrifice) and considering it, i would rather decline the offer of this lamb's blood, but thanks anyways...... - whats that? if i dont accept this offer you will KILL ME?! and send me to hell for eternity? is that a THREAT?" (Christopher Hitchens)

This Christian god IF he exists does NOT give me or you a choice, but rather is blackmailing us into following him. The christian idea of god is a "supernatural dictatorship in whose court you have no repeal, with a leader you can not overthrow, and whose supervision you could never escape." (hitch)

i either must worship this being which i think is IMMORAL for performing and/or participating in human sacrifices (among other atrocities) OR burn in hell for eternity.. this is not an offer of a moral creator.[/b]

This array of atheist views gives a clear indication that at least one segment of their community is so bitter and cynical about religious belief they can't even hear a great song with coming unglued with anger. They can't accept what every single culture and ever major writer in history has said. It's so universally recognized that there's a problem with being human we have a standard phrase for it, "the human condition." Yet these guys are livid about denying that there is a human condition. We all ok, just do what you do. They are prefect they can't even admit they make mistakes. To me that says self hatred, it screams self hatred. They can't accept themselves, therefore they can't accept their maker. This is what studies show. (for part 2 see here).

A friend of mine insists that it's the fundies. The Churches have made them this way by failing to communicate the love of God. While I think that's true, it's also the case, and my friend doesn't deal with atheists so she doesn't know, atheists gear a great deal of their socialization to nursing their anger and building further hatred. A huge portion of their time and energy consists of railing about the evils of religion. Atheists build up the anger and feelings of rejection, in fact their socialization process thrives on finding boarder line people who feel lonely and rejected by the chruch then ridiculing them into submission. That ploy could not work if they had the chruch to fall back on. Since they feel they don't, in a sense is the fault of the chruch. It' also the fault of the people who purposely design to "deconvert others." I feel that most Chrsitians don't understand that this is a major focus of the atheist movement. A lot of the problem comes from inadequate proclamation of the Gospel

Sun of my Soul expresses the idea that "we are all born evil." That was her understanding of the Gospel when she was a Christian? She is a recently "deconverted." Or did she just get brain washed to believe it. I know she would claim that was her understanding. I've seen this happen before. A Christian one week says "no we are not taught that we are all evil we are made in the image of God." then next week after becoming an atheist says "we are all taught that we are born evil." All the good answers she gave one week forgotten the next. It's enough to make you wonder if they are growing giant pods with people in them. I think the truth of it is we are taught both. The Gospel does affirmed "no one is righteous, no not one" and "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." A rejected loner who is on the edge of faith and feels alone may be countering that sense of self loathing with the counter balancing doctrine of the image of God. We are so made. Then when she goes off the edge she apt to lean to the "we are taught we are evil" side of it.

The idea of letting go of the guilt and accepting self loathing is so great that it appears to be a release but it doesn't lead to transformation because they studies show that those with mystical experience have the transformation more so than those who don't. I have in the past given a little test of my own devising to atheist who claim to have been "strong Christians." They never turn out to be as strong as they claim. I think boarder line people who have a poor sense of self esteem and blame God for being as they are and no strong support in the chruch and feel they don't have a support group of Christians to turn to are apt to fall away and they to emphasize the side they secretly feared rather than using the counter balance that is in the Gospel. In other words they gravitate to the "the Bible says we are all evil" side of the dilemma.

Cline argues above that forgiveness is more real for atheists becuase Christians believe they have to forgive or be forgiven to get into heaven but atheists do it because it's good not to get anything. Yet Cline is an active professional missionary for atheism. He's sowing seeds to extract the borderline lonely people from the faith. He's not interested in understanding what the Gospel really has to say. His argument is stupid on face value. He's really saying forgiveness is better if you have to earn it. Since you can't earn it, it can only be an aspect of God's grace.

Cline's statement is indicative of someone who doesn't understand what forgiveness is. Forigivenss cannot be earned, it's not a matter of brownie points. Its' a matter of love. Atheists don't like love, they don't believe in it. If you don't feel God's love (which you are not going to when your waking hour is about how deeply you hate people who believe in God) then you can't understand the nature of something like forgiveness that is essentially an act of love. Of cousre it's not a true description of all atheists, but all atheists don't believe that forgiveness must be earned. I suspect that the atheist fundamentalist, the "Dawkies" or the "Hitchenistas" understand niether love nor forgiveness.

Are they immune to the Gospel? Atheists come in all varieties, some may be. Even Charles Finney had his burned out areas where his message couldn't get through. He was such a strong evangelist that people who would drop to their knees and start begging God to save them just becasue Finney came to look at their factory. Ah yes but remember Madmax expresses distaste for the idea of begging God. Of course that's the misunderstanding. People beg God becuase they don't understand God's love. They don't understand God wants to help us. They think they have to beg God and the great distaste for that shows us two things. One thing it shows us is that they don't understand love, they don't know God. The other is that they are engaged in a battle of will. They refuse to accept that there could anything greater than their egos that has a claim on their lives. This is probably the self esteem issue at work again.

The only thing we can do is to make sure that we, the chruch, communicate the Gospel clearly, accurately and show them God's love. They will mock and ridicule and kick us in the teeth, and I am the worst about showing love. This is, nevertheless, what the chruch must face. We have done a stinky job of doing this and it needs doing more than ever.

The Atheist montra: "there's not a Shred of evidence for your God"

Been posting on CARM again. You know what trouble that brings? The atheists have been fired up repeating their mantra "there's not a shred of evidence for God." There are times when I find that annoying and times when I find it amusing. The reason for either reaction is because all believers know they have reasons for believing and a lot of those reasons are based upon good evidence. Even those who don't have evidence sometimes have sophisticated reasons why they don't need it. The atheist world is simplistic it defies anything sophistocated. This is a true example of what Tillich meant when he said "if you know that being has depth you can't be an atheist." The atheist is assuming that the so called "default" amounts to the basis for a tennable world view, assuming (fallacious) that the alleged default is based upon a true appraisal of the world as it is, which is reflected accurately by a surface view of things proved to exist (or thought to be proved to exist) and no need to delve any more deeply into the matter of being.

The atheist assumption lends credence to the ideologically assumption that to accept only the most well proved scientific assumptions is to mount up a great fortress of facts that demonstaes a scientifically validated world view. There are three major problems with this approach:

(1) Selective and self serving: creates truth regime.

(2) Creates a template effect that is used to screen out any other possibilities

(3) Assumes fallaciously that the surface level equates to an adequate world view

(1) Selective and self serving: Of course in implying the big fortress of facts ("I only believe things that are totally proved by science" I have heard many of them say) they are actually selecting the facts they choose to believe and ignoring others they can't stand. The 200 empirical studies on religious experience are a good example. 200 studies is a vast body of scientific data, that is literally a fortress of facts. They don't accept a word of it. I've seen the most idiotic excuses to doubt the studies form bold faced assertion that they are all done by preachers (most of them done by real social scientists) to attacks on the bibliogrpahy compiled by a promoter of the research, which is guilt by association (the bib included both the good studies and some wacy source like Depok Chopra and to these atheists was sure proof the studies are not good). Another example is the big bang. Atheists used to cling to the big bang as the word from science because it seemed to represent the universe popping out of nothing. Then Christians began to observe that it fit creation better, so now atheists turned against the big bang. One good joke, I found atheists quoting a particular site quite a bit and it turned out i was a creationist site! They were quoting like it was a valid scientifically authoritative site because they didn't get that some creationsts are against the big bang.

(2) Template: The selective nature of the fortress of facts means that that atheist is not nobly or boldly sticking to "only that which is proved by science" but is actually creating his/her own truth regalement that seeks to control what is understood as reality and bend the facts to support an ideological view point. The term truth regime refers to an ideology or a world view that screens out all other possibilities and only allows one view to be true. This is just what atheists have done. This is what's reflected in their often heard mantra "there's no proof for your God." It's not becuase they are considering alternatives or weighing coutner evidence. It's pretty clear that they way they decide the question is to create a template that says "here is the only from of knowledge and anything else has to be wrong." Of couret template is based upon an atheist reductions world view. Hold up the God arguent to the template, doe it fit? This is about God adn the tempalte says no God so it doesn't fit, therefore, this can't be proof.

A good example of this is yesterday in sparing with the inimitable "big thinker" as this guy humbly calls himself (as opposed to "tiny thinker" who actually brilliant). I made temporal beginning argument (in a nut shell):

(1) Time begins with the big bang
(2) there can be no time beyond event horizon (this is "before the big bang" to the laymen but since there can't be a "before" before time, physicist such as Hawking transfered it to spacial coordinates and speak of "beyond" time and "within space/time." Or "even horizon" which is euphemism for the big bang).
(3) No times no causes thus nothing can come to be.
(4) there must be some thing that can change the rules for creation (I go on to argue that this rules change can only be a mind--God). For the actual argument see here.

Bigthinker says,"you argument doesn't do anything. it's meaningless." I say "why?" He says "becasue it doesnt' do anything." I said "it proves God." he says 'not can't becasue it's meaningless," "why is it meaningless" "because it doesn't do anything.

Just like the idiocracy in the movie "it's got what plants crave"
what's that?
"electro-lights"
why do plants need electro-lights?
"It's got what plants crave."

If the argument is right, I'm not saying an intelligent atheists in good shape at the top of his game can't find valid things to argue agaisnt it. This guy is clear just going in circles because as presented the argument does prove nothing should be here without an all seeing mind capable of re-writing the rules for creation. Yet this guy keeps saying "It doesn't do anything" but he never says what he means. One guy, so what? The whole board has been stumped by it so far. I've done this before. this very argument had sec webbers screaming and cursing becuase they could not find an answer. At times when I have insisted on pushing to the limit and forcing them to face that the did not answer one of my arguments, they would saying "I dont' think arguemnts prove anything anyway. We've seen this over and over again. The Lungs of Charles Anne. Second miracle to put St. Teresa of Lisieux (sp) over the top. I did everything but get the xrays. They demand that I get them. They wont even investigate they just demand that until I own the Xrays (which are in the archives the church in Eruope you can buy copies but expensive and I can't find anyone who can tell me how) until I own those Xrays it's not proven it's bull shit it's not valid they can't be bothered with it. Becasue part of the evidence comes from a saint adoration site then they just dismiss completely, even though I have spoken with a member of the Lourdes/saint making medical committee who swears the X-Rays are there and they are genuine. I am not even asking them to take my word for it, they wont even investigate by search for other sources.

(3) Surface Level = world view:The atheist rests in his comfort zone imagining that the surface level of appear is a valid world view. The surface level (that which is clearly proved by science) is a very basic level and a very misleading level. Of course they don't even understand the basic problems of epistemology. when you confront them with that they poo poo. They will tell me my sense of God's' presence is totally untrustworthy worthy because perceptions and experiences are subjective and subjective is always misleading. You ask them "how do you know you exist" they say "O don't be stupid, I see the world around me, I'm here. It appears to me so clearly as I experience the world." The surface is the world of superficial perceptions. Trusting that as "that which is proved by science "is totally illusory. Consider particle-wave duality. The more closly we seek the answer the more unreal reality seems.

Belief in God is a world view. It's at the world view stage of belief, just as the concept of the big fortress of facts or the validity of scinece, the distrust of the subjective all of these are world view level concepts. Its' a world veiw precisely because you can't prove it. That would like trying to prove that one should love others, or that one should be a democrat or republican. These are sweeping ideas that rest of on vast sets of assumptions. There's no way to prove a world view as the world view is the scale in which we weigh proof. When we accept that something is proved it's proved agaisnt the background of our world view. You can't prove the background of proof that would be redundant and requite a regression. You need another world view against which to weight the evidence for the first world view and so on.

World view are paradigms and they shift according to their abilities to handle anomalies. This is basic theory according to Thomas S. Kuhn. We absorb anomalies into the paradigm. Something doesn't fit we just say "o that's just an anomaly, just wait and further evidence will clear it up." When there are too many of these and another world view answers them better then the paradigm shifts. Kuhn says this is the engine that really drives science. It's not a cumulative piling up of facts, as the atheists would have it with their fortress of facts, but the shift when the former world view can't hold anymore. The fortress of facts topples when we come to realize there is too much depth in being to be dismissed and the fortress of facts is not enough for a world view.In the mean time they decide the truth of evidence comparing the template and saying 'this God argument doesn't fit the atheist template so it must be wrong, therefore, it's not proved."

At that level the concept of proof in God argument is superfluous. They are not really comparing facts in a fortress they are slectively keeping out facts that contradict their view. This all makes them content with the surface but then anything that disturbs the surface is a proof of depth and thus a reason to believe there can be more. The atheist fortress of facts is self defeating.

The Greatest Film Ever: The Seventh Seal

knight (Max Von Sydow) playing chess with death




foundChivalry Now

The Seventh Seal


The knight playing chess with Death.
This movie, from 1957, is Ingar Bergman's greatest film, and considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time.
The story is about a knight returning home from the crusades. He finds the land ravaged by plague and religious fanatics. On his journey, he is visited by Death, who agrees to let the knight live if he can beat him at a game of chess.
The following is taken from the script where the knight mistakenly thinks he is confessing to a priest, but it is Death who is listening. It expresses the existential struggle of this knight searching for truth.

Both the dialogue and the synopsis below are from the link I link to below "Chivalry Now"



Synopsis:

A knight tries to pray along the seaside, but is unable to. He is troubled by the requirements of faith. Although he has gone to the Holy Land to fight in the Crusade for God, all he saw there was death and injustice, and men of twisted faith. He asks himself, "where is God? What is the meaning of existence without Him? Where can I find any sense to life?" He is an idealist who is troubled. He is no longer set in the ideals given to him, but questions everything to find a greater truth. What troubled him most is that there seems to be no idealized truth to grasp onto, and this leaves him searching in despair.
The squire is more down to earth, the disenchanted intellectual who demands that everyone else see the world from his disenchantment. He has not only lost his ideals (if he ever had them), but lost the desire to find something greater than what he sees. He is the existentialist. Basically he resents his station, that of serving the more idealistic knight.

Death accepts the challenge of playing the game of chess, giving the knight a chance to continue search for God, and dedicate his life to doing one good act. One wonders if we are not all playing chess with Death, postponing the inevitable, which might be waiting for us around the next corner.

The married couple, the actors, represent a healthy relationship, despite their obvious hardships. They love each other, and their son. The father tells his wife that their son will be a great acrobat, that he will accomplish the incredible (keeping the ball suspended in mid-air). He then explains that the trick would be impossible for him or his wife, but not necessarily for Mikael. In this statement, he expresses hope for the future, and disavows limitations on the next generation. There is a simple idealism expressed in this. We live and then we die, allowing evolution to produce something better. We should facilitate this process. That the actor sees visions suggests that he is in tune with his own mystical experiences, which transcends the rituals of religion.

The squire has great disrespect for priests, whom he sees as taking advantage of common people, using fear as a tool. He degrades those religious idealists who created the idea of a Holy Crusade. The thought of religious fanatics beating themselves out of repentance frightens him.

The man who steals from the dead was previously a student of theology who proselytized going to the Crusade. He is now a thief, and attempts to rape the woman who discovers his treachery. The squire believes that this is the natural progression of religious leaders. The man belittles and threatens the actor, hating him for his simple authenticity. He later dies of the plague.

The burning of the witch demonstrates how our belief in God and angels and the devil are ultimately based on nothing we can see or touch. There is life, and there is death. The witch who believes in the devil is obviously insane. Are the priests who condemn her, and the soldiers who kill her much different? The knight experiences anguish at her death, as the squire points out that only emptiness awaits her.
The actor who has the affair with the blacksmith's wife feigns his own death. Before stabbing himself with the fake knife, he states that he will leave the unreality of his life, and take on the reality of a corpse. This is a powerful statement of existential thought. The living person is not static; he is always creating himself, with every choice and direction that he takes. This is likened to "unreality." The dead corpse is, in comparison, a fixed object, without conscious potential. It's reality does not change. It is dead, not alive.

The knight distracts Death long enough for the married couple to escape. This is his good deed, and the answer to what he was looking for. Our purpose is to preserve life for the future. Other than that, we cannot be sure of anything. Even Death seems pleased by the knight's pleasure. The knight asks Death for what he knows about the mysteries of life. Death can tell him nothing. It appears that Death is more of a reality than God.

The ending is very interesting. Everyone dies, except for the couple and their baby, who have escaped. The knight begs his unseen God for mercy, while the squire complains that he is wasting his breath. They both die, but who is the one who contributed the most to life? It is the discouraged idealist who seeks for truth. His life had more meaning in that he saved the lives of others

Bergmann was an atheist, the son of a minister and Chaplin to the King of Sweden. He produced a huge body of works in the 50's and 60's and set the tone for films in that decade and beyond. In such films as "Hour of the Wolf," "The seventh Seal," "Wild Strawberries," "Virgin Spring," "Crys and whispers," Bergmann wrestled with the oceanic topics of life, aunxt, meaning, the existence of God, the anxiety of being human.


watching those films makes up some of the happiest memories of my youth. For me he will always be the symbol of the greatness of art, the discovery of life, and the search for ultimate meaning.My two favorite films of all time are Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. The only other director I place on the same level is Kurosawa.

Bergman is one of the finest examples of the style of atheism into which I fitted when I was young. Searching, pondering the great questions, an existentialist who is never satisfied with conventional answers. The thing about Bergman as an atheist is that he's the diametrical opposite of Dawkins. He wasn't arrogant about his unbelief, although he was a rebel of theater and film making, originally known as "one of the angry young men" of early 50s. He knew he was great and was very arrogant in the arts, but in terms of eternity and the transcendent, he deals with religion with great respect. Even when he mocks religion he's not mocking the people for believing it, and he never makes a mockery of the search.He's still searching himself. He's like someone saying "If you find anything I would still like to know, but I don't think you are going to." He doesn't handle religion with kid gloves, its obvious he thought most of it was nonsense, but he never degrades the sense of wonder at the holy or the luminosity or realization of our need to seek the ultimate.

"The Seventh Seal" has all of these features. Nothing is more of a slap in the face to blind obedience and unthinking conformity of the religious history of the West than Bergman's scenes such as, burning the girl at the steak, and the girl who has faith Satan will save her suddenly realizes "there's no body there to save me and I'm going to die now." The superstition of the guy smearing the blood and bile of a black dog on the walls to keep the plague away. These are stinging rebuttals to traditional organized religion. The Circus performers, especially the husband, child-like and innocent, happy, only concerned with the happiness of his family and his art, represent those for whom faith is real. The husband sees the Virgin Mary everywhere and at times we see her tripping by in the background while no one else notices.

The sincere seeker is never berated by Bergman, but human frailty is never masked. The old actor is always seeking other men's wives to court, the young woodman's wife is never faithful, the three are always seeking to do each other harm. Yet at the same time this mockery, it's a fares.

The Knight is a seeker but he's also afraid. He seeks certainty. He's not seeking the infinite or the divine necessarily but certainty as to what's true. He confesses this to one whom he takes for a priest but it's really death in disguise. This is how death learns the combination of knight and bishop he's been uses and then beats him. The confession made to death is about his need for certainty and his fear of not finding it. So death is saying in a sense, "I'm the only certainty, and you only find it after you come with me."

Here's an excerpt of the confession to death, on Chivalry Now.

ANTONIUS: I want to confess, as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face, and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.

DEATH: Yet you do not want to die.

ANTONIUS: Yes I do.

DEATH: What are you waiting for?

ANTONIUS: Knowledge.

DEATH: You want a guarantee?


ANTONIUS: Call it what you will. Is it so hard to conceive of God with one's senses? Why must He hide in a mist of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe, but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear Him out of my heart. But He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me. But He is silent. I cry to Him in the dark, but there seems to be no one there.


DEATH: Perhaps there is no one there.

ANTONIUS: Then life is a senseless terror. No man can live with Death and know that everything is [for] nothing.

DEATH: Most people think neither of Death nor nothingness.

ANTONIUS: Until they stand on the edge of life, and see the Darkness.

Bergman is an odd mixture, he was cutting edge sixties rebel in the arts, worldly, sophisticated, atheist, intellectual. Yet he was sensitive to the search for God and the desire to find truth. His films are paradoxical as well. The film is a combination of Mel Brooks camp humor, with high school play where the drama teacher has made the production very stagy and it's all shot on home movie. There are times when the production seems so rough you can swear it is a home movie. Then you go to the coffee shop after and talk about the existence of God for three hours because you realize you have seen a great film and it has transported you into the search. His films are also paradoxical as he was, they convey this greatness. To appear so cheap and amateur to leave one with the sense of having seen a truly great work of art it has to be truly great.


The major Characters dance over the hill with death, they all die of the plague but all we see is they meat death, then they all dance away with him. They are spied by the only survives of the traveling companions, the hippie-like performers and their young son, who watch them dance over the horizon into eternity.