Misconceptions About Religion

Andy Wright makes comments in response to "More on Extraordinary claims," I will answer his comments here because they are typical of certain atheist misconceptions that I have been trying to correct since I started on internet apologetics boards. The average atheist on the net seems to believe that religion is for feeble minded dullards who can't think, that's its effects are clearly proven to be very bad for both the individual and society, and that belief is receding into he mists of history. Not only are these ideas totally wrong, but they are the exact opposite of truth. Not only so, but that these things are totally false is clearly demonstrably provable with the best scientific evidence. Religion is actually very good for you, religious people are much better adjusted, by and large, than most atheists. Religious people are happier, they are less likely to commit crimes, if you except fundamentalists their marriages are better.

Wright was reacting to my statement that religion is normative for human experince, and the point of saying that was to show that belief is not an extraordinary claim. So let us keep that in mind, because most of Wrights arguments lose sight of this poin.

Andy Wright:

you say "religious belief is normative for human behavior. It is not merely "normal" but "normative" meaning it sets the standard. Belief is basic to human psyche, to our understanding of the good, of meaning in life, the ultimate limits of reality, the grounding of nature and being itself,"
this is not true. there have been and continue to be successful human societies where religion is not part of the society, where simply not knowing was acceptable.

This is clearly disproved by history. There has never been a single non religious society anyone where on earth. There have only been a handful of attempts to make societies that were non religious, and in not only did those cases fail, but they were the imposition of an ideology by an elite who imposed its will upon the masses.There has never been a single organic culture where the masses were just naturally not religious. Even in the Soviet union and china, where the only attempts to destroy the faith of the masses was imposed, it failed miserably. At the height of the cultural revolution in China when the government was the most anti-religious, the people were still 51% religious and Christianity made up a huge portion.

Wright again:

you seem to define religion as belief in a single higher power, yet among the societies that have religion, there have been as many societies that beleived in multiple spirits in a range from every single thing having a spirit to there being many extra powerful beings that you would call gods.

This is my true definition of religion, I've given it hundreds of times on message board all over the net and it is on my website in my credo where I clearly go over the all the beliefs I hold. I got this definition from Dr. Neil McFarlane in his lecture notes in his class on "religion in a Global perspective" at Perkins School of Theology (SMU). I think it was influenced by Dr Fredrick Strung ("string").


My definition of religion:

In my view Religion is an attept to identify a human problemic, that is the basic problematic nature at the heart of being human. Having identified it, reilgious traditions seek to resolve the problematic nature of human life by offering a transformative experince which allows one to transcend the difficulty and to be fulfilled or feel more human or be "saved." Religious traditions also usually seek to mediate this transformation through cerimony or some sort of theological orientation. These three things make up the nature of religion:

(a) identification of the problematic

(b) Transformative power to overcome the nature of the problematic

(c) a means of mediating this transformative power.

All religions offer these things, weather the problematic be seen as separation from nature, or imbalance with cosmic forces, re-birth through desire which leads to suffering, or moral sin in rebellion against God.

Transformations come in all sorts of packages too, they can be the big experince of born again Christianity (mediated through the "sinners prayer") or they can be the mystical experince, mediated through the mass, or enlightenment, mediated through mediation, mandala, mantra and other mediation aids, or what have you.

The reason for identifying with a particular religious tradition is because one feels that this particular tradition identifies the problematic better than others, and offers mediation in a more sure or certain or compelte way. One must go with the tradition with which one feels the strongest connection.


For me that is the Christian Tradition, primarily because I feel that the historical connection to Jesus of Nazareth, and the unique concept of Grace mark the Christian tradition as the best mediation of the Ultimate Transformative Experience. But more on that latter.

So your statement is quite false. I do not limit by view of religion to belief in a single "powerful being." In fact that view of what I believe is so far off, you clearly know nothing about my views. Obviously you are merely reacting to the label "Christian" and have not bothered to find out that Christianity is very diverse. I do not believe that God is a single powerful being! I do not believe that God is "A being." I believe that God is "being itself." That means God is the basis of what being is, the foundation of all being, not a being, but the basic ground of all being. I further believe that differing religions and concepts of God and gods are merely sign posts that point to this foundation of being. The are metaphors and analogies that point to something beyond themselves, something beyond our ability to understand. I have written many pages on this on my website. The major such pages can be found here: The Ground of Being

Wright goes on:

the range and differences among them are so great as to make lumping them all under 'religion' is almost ridiculous.

That is indicative misunderstanding the nature of religion is. Religion is so much bigger, better, and more important than you are willing to accept, or even than you suspect.

there have been many societies around the world where a human was thought of as the current incarnation of god. this differs so much from Christianity as to again, be almost impossible to be considered the same thing.

That's a misconception. It doesn't really matter, it's a meaningless point anyway, because I'm sure I know much more about world religion than you do. Remember the class I mention, above, "religion in a global perspective?" Neil McFarland who taught that class lived in Japan for 30 years. He was the leading expert on the New Religions of Japan (his book was Rush House of the Gods--I love that title!). He was very sympathetic to Eastern religions and he studied them with major Shinto and Buddhists priests in Japan. That class focussed on religions of Asia, especially Japan. There are not other societies or religions which have exactly the same understanding of deity as Christianity. There are none where a human being was thought of as God in the way that Christian theology came to regard Christ after the second century or so. But to say that these religions can't be regarded as the same thing is just poppy cock. They all fit with the definition given above and they all fit with the concept of mystical union which I have clearly espoused for years.

Wright:

and in all of those societies, there were a wide range of level of belief in the locally accepted 'religion'. some were vigorous hyper believers and most belived some of it but had doubts about a little of it and some believed very little or none at all of it. societies varied a great deal in how much they tolerated the non-beleivers, from none at all to total tolerance, and still, even when there was no tolerance, there were non-beleivers who kept silent about it. your claim that religion is 'normative' lacks anthropological basis for societies and is lacking even more when applied to individuals.

Notice that you don't give a single example. Prior to the eighteenth century true atheists who really believed there was no God at all of any kind were very rare, and mostly they were uneducated. They had no scientific basis for their claims, merely anger toward religious people and institutions.No actually your misconceptions lack anthropological backing. I am quoting anthropologists. I'm quoting major social scientists such as Abraham Maslow who did studies on the nature of religious experience and found that its one of the greatest things or people. Maslow's book was Peak Experience and there is a copy online. A vast body of social sciences data shows that religion is far better for you than unbelief.


Wright:

Atheists today have all that stuff you claim belief is basic to and they have it without . . . guess what . . . belief in any god or religion. you might not want to admit there are well adjusted atheists making positive contributions to the world, and i am not sure why you are so intolerant of atheism or why it threatens you so, but you claim about belief being essential to a person or a society is . . . bogus.

Saying that religion is normative is not at all the same as saying that there are no well adjusted atheists. That's not the issue at all. In fact the data does show that believers are much better "adjusted" and less mental illness and less depression than unbelievers.

again from my website:


Religioius belief indicative of good mental health

a)Religous Pepole are More Self Actualized

Dr. Michale Nielson,Ph.D. Psychology and religion.
"http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/ukraine/index.htm"

Quote:

"What makes someone psychologically healthy? This was the question that guided Maslow's work. He saw too much emphasis in psychology on negative behavior and thought, and wanted to supplant it with a psychology of mental health. To this end, he developed a hierarchy of needs, ranging from lower level physiological needs, through love and belonging, to self- actualization. Self-actualized people are those who have reached their potential for self-development. Maslow claimed that mystics are more likely to be self-actualized than are other people. Mystics also are more likely to have had "peak experiences," experiences in which the person feels a sense of ecstasy and oneness with the universe. Although his hierarchy of needs sounds appealing, researchers have had difficulty finding support for his theory."

Gagenback

Quote:

In terms of psychological correlates, well-being and happiness has been associated with mystical experiences,(Mathes, Zevon, Roter, Joerger, 1982; Hay & Morisy, 1978; Greeley, 1975; Alexander, Boyer, & Alexander, 1987) as well as self-actualization (Hood, 1977; Alexander, 1992). Regarding the latter, the developer of self-actualization believed that even one spontaneous peak or transcendental experience could promote self-actualization. Correlational research has supported this relationship. In a recent statistical meta-analysis of causal designs with Transcendental Meditation (TM) controlling for length of treatment and strength of study design, it was found that: TM enhances self-actualization on standard inventories significantly more than recent clinically devised relaxation/meditation procedures not explicitly directed toward transcendence [mystical experience] (p. 1; Alexander, 1992)

b) Christian Repentence Promotes Healthy Mindedness

william James
Gilford lectures

Quote:

"Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the beginning been the critical religious act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward with its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such healthy-minded Christians means getting away from the sin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession and absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method of keeping healthy-mindedness on top. By it a man's accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with no old debts inscribed. Any Catholicwill tell us how clean and fresh and free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means belonged to the healthy-minded type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it, and be repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded ideas, due in the main to the largeness of his conception of God. -..."

e. Recent Empirical Studies Prove Religious Believers have less depression, mental illness lower Divorce rate, ect.

J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090

Quote:

"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical staus in whihc research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alchohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."

[The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health]


This part is very important becasue it speaks diretly to what you said about atheists being well adjusted.


2) Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.
Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."

I know you are going to get angry about that because people usually do. but this is a scientific fact. It comes from many studies that compare those who have reilgious experiences to those who do not. They find constantly that those who are are better ad musted, less depression and mental illness. It's not just anyone says "I am a Christian" but those who have religious experinces.


b. psychotherapeutic discipline re-evalutes Frued's criticism of religion

Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."

[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Atenção e interpretação (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]



c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."

3) Religion is positive factor in physical health.

"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service
(Dec. 23, 1998)
Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm

Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support — a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."


see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.

4) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness



Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.

Nielsen again:

In the days before research boards reviewed research proposals before the studies were conducted, Pahnke devised an experiment to induce people to have a religious experience. On a Good Friday, when they were to meditate in a chapel for 2.5 hours, twenty theology students were given either psilocybin or a placebo. The students who were given the psilocybin reported intense religious experiences, as you might imagine. Their levels of happiness also were significantly greater than the control group reported. But what is especially interesting is that these effects remained 6 months after the experiment, as the psilocybin group reported more "persistent and positive changes" in their attitudes to life than did the placebo group.



Pahnke, W. H. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology, 8, 295-314.


Now finally let's not forget the context of the original issue. I was showing that belief in God cannot be an "extraordinary claim" because it's normative for human experince. That means it sets the standard. I have proven that it does. This has nothing to do with proving that it's true, it is merely a matter of proving that it is standard for human experince. The vast majority of all humans who have ever lived have believed in some form of God, we are fit to be religious, it's better for our minds and our bodies. We were religious 65,000 years ago, our distant ancestors, our cousins the Neanderthals, were religious. Humanity has been religious longer than it has been human! Obviously then it is normative. IT doesn't matter that there are few exceptions, that's not the point. It doesn't make you a bad person, to not be religious. Nor does it make you abnormal or somehow lacking. But is the standard human experience to be religious. that is simply a fact.

To be or not to be: Necessary or Contingent

I argue that since eternal being can't be contingent it must be necessary. Many atheists tell me this is utterly illogical, but they do on assuming (I think) that there is some third choice or that contingency is just arbitrary.

This is actaully quote logical given the assumptions that I make:

(1) Necesity = That which cannot fail or cease to exist.

(2) Necessity = that which can fail or cease to exist.

(3) The other type of necessity is dependence for existence upon something prior or ontologically higher existent.

(4) both types of contingency are related given that 3 is the only concrete example we can give to explain why 2 would be the case.

(5) Necessity and contingency are the only choices for an existent.

I have argued the correct nature of the first four elsewhere. I would now like to demonstrate why assumption 5 is true.

Aside from Being and nothingness, the most basic categories that can ever been made concerning existence are these:

Necessity/impossibility

Contingency/ fiction

These can be subdivided But these are the most basic you can't draw up a fifth category. These take in all other matters related to existence. Note that impossibility and necessity are related. Impossible is just the "down side" or "negative" version of Necessary. That's why Hartshorne argues that God must be either necessary or impossible, because the concept of God rules out contingent.

Fictional is the negative of contingent. What all of this means is a thing can be either necessary or impossible, if it is not contingent. If it is contingent it can either be contingent or fictional. So functional things are contingencies that don't exist in the "real" world.

Examples:

Necessary: Being itself. It can't cease or fail to exist. This means something that is necessary has to be and it has to what it is, there are no circumstances through which it would have been different.

Impossible Meaning an impossibility cannot exist as a matter of logical self contradiction; there's a flaw at the base of the concept which contradicts and because of that it can't exist; example is square circles.

Contingent An existing thing that can fail or cease to exist. When we say it can fail it means the circumstances that produced could have been different and it would not have been; example would be one's parents. My mother could have married another man and I would not exist.

Fiction Something that does not exist but it could have, just doesn't happen to becuase the circumstances that would have produced it just didn't materialize; example, Huckleberry Finn. He was made up by Mark Twain but had there been people like his parents then he could have existed, there is no contradiction in the concept that would prevent his existence.


There are no other possibilities. This no fifth choice. Either a thing is necessary or it is contingent. If it is not contingent it can only be either impossible or necessary.

A fictional thing is contingent but it is non existent contingency, meaning if it did exist there would be no logical contradiction to it's existence but it fails to exist because the circumstances that would produce it failed to materialize. That's the negative side of contingency.
I call that "fictional."


Arguments

When I say being has to be necessary if it is not contingent, this is why I say so. Because it cant' be impossible or it wouldn't be being. It can't be functional or it would not be being, so it can only be N or c and if it not c then it must be N.


Naturalistic things are all contingencies. Atheists will always argue that this can't be proved. But they also can never give an example that contradicts the basic fact that all things we encounter in nature are always contingent. There are no counter examples.

They say QM particles.

While it is true that QMp's don't seem to have direct causal agents, they do require frameworks to be already in place; time, physical law and vacuum flux. That means they require prior conditions. So they are contingent.

The whole of the universe

They will say drawing the conclusion about the whole form the parts is fallacy of composition. Two answers.

(1) Logicians say that if the parts are all identical then the whole can be understood as derived from the parts and it is not the fallacy of composition. That means since the parts are all contingent then whole is contingent.

Example would be dominoes. you have a row of them and one falls they all fall down. You can't then say "but the whole is standing up, just because the parts are laying down doesn't mean the whole is standing." Well, yea, it does. The whole is not standing.

(2) Atheists would have to prove that the natural realm has to exist and can't be different than it is in order to show it's not contingent. There is no argument based upon empirical data that we can turn to that shows us that the natural world has to exist as it is.

Moreover the option of the universe just popping into existence out of nothing is illogical. We could point to a lot of reasons but the main one is there's no becoming in a timeless void. Total absolute nothing (the nothing it pops in from) would be timeless because time is something. Nothing could ever change if there was a timeless void.

Therefore eternal being must be necessary being.

The problem with connecting the dots and drawing the rest of the God attributes from being and then arguing "therefore God" is that atheists feel cheated because they are not willing to accept where logic takes us.

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New God argument: Eternal necessity

Definitions:

God: theological definitions defined operationally, that means theology is the field of study for concepts of God. One should use Theological sources to document definitions of God. But just to show atheists how unreasonable they are to disparage theology, I will quote from Webster's online:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/God

Webster online
ww.Google.com/Dictionary

Main Entry: 1god
Pronunciation: \ˈgäd also ˈgȯd\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old High German got god
Date: before 12th century

1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe b Christian Science : the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind
2 : a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
3 : a person or thing of supreme value4 : a powerful ruler




Take the first definition, supreme ultimate reality. They define God as the basis of reality or ultimate reality, that's how I define God.

Attributes of God:

A. Ground of Being
B. Eternal
C. Ontologically necessary
D. Final cause or ultimate prior condition.

note: I don't include consciousness because it's not a primary attribute of God. Not to say I think God is not conscoius, but other things are conscious so this is not a quality that uniquely makes God God.


Necessity or Necessary being: That which cannot cease or fail to be. Based upon Felws definition of logical necessity Philosophical Dictionary p 242 paraphrase: a proposition the denial of which would result in a logical self contradiction. Applied ontologically we have that which cannot cease or fail to exist. This is so because the proposition of the non existence such an entity or thing or aspect of reality would be a contradiction. Thus since it would be a contradiction if X didn't exist then it can't cease or fail to exist.

Contingency: Flew (same page) defines logical contingency as that which if the proposition was denied would not cause a contradiction. So in ontological terms something which could fail or cease to be without a contradiction.

That means I will argue that it means explicitly that if the circumstances that made X possible had been different X would not have existed. Thus to be non contingent X must be such that it does not depend upon prior conditions at all.

Prior condition: Ontologically prior not necessary temporally prior. that is hierarchically necessary not necessarily temporally so.


Assumptions:

(1) Goal is to argue for rational warrant for belief


(2) God is not "a being" But the eternal necessary aspect of being, or "being itself" (aka "primordial being).

God transcends the neat understood categories of finite temporal existence.


(3) Attributes of God are mutually exclusive

in other words there can't be two grounds of being;


any aseity is all asiety, in other words there can't be two eternal necessary aspects of being, if there were they would both just be eternal necessary being. This is so for the reason from no 2.







Argument:



P(1) All the attributes of God are indexed by God's eternal aspect

In other words, all the attributes stem from this one: being eternal God would be ontologically necessary since it's logical that the one eternal existing aspect of reality would give rise to the temporal aspects. Being necessary and eternal God would naturally be the ground of being, and being the ground of being God could naturally be the final cause or ultimate prior condition: Assumption: that change in a timeless void is impossible and temporal beings can't just spring from nothing for no reason.


p(2) Temporal existence is contingent upon eternal being to bring it about (from assumption in P1).

I argue it is reasonable to assume that since there is no changeless void the temporal aspects must be somehow dependent upon the eternal aspects of Being.


P(3)The Natural Realm is marked by the Temporal


documentation:

Nature: in the sense of "natural world"


Webster online
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Nature

Main Entry: na·ture
Pronunciation: \ˈnā-chər\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin natura, from natus, past participle of nasci to be born — more at nation
Date: 14th century

1 a : the inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing : essence b : disposition, temperament
2 a : a creative and controlling force in the universe b : an inner force or the sum of such forces in an individual



nine entries no 2 implies cause in terms of "controlling force."



Wikipedia

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. ...


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature

The term nature comes from the Latin Natura, which is equivalent to the Greek "physis" meaning Life from life. We this reflected in the Wiki definition where it refers to life in general. The point is that the basic assumption of life from life is causality, so the basic concept of causal connection in embedded in the word itself in it's basic definition.

(for docs on natural see Mathias Joseph Scheeben Nature and Grace 1856).

Brainy Quote
http://www.brainyquote.com/words/na/nature193356.html


The existing system of things; the world of matter, or of matter and mind; the creation; the universe.The personified sum and order of causes and effects; the powers which produce existing phenomena, whether in the total or in detail; the agencies which carry on the processes of creation or of being; -- ..., embodying the total of all finite agencies and forces as disconnected from a creating or ordering intelligence.The established or regular course of things; usual order of events; connection of cause and effect. Not the whole quote, see the link.



Word reference.com
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/nature

╚nature
5 nature
a causal agent creating and controlling things in the universe; "the laws of nature"; "nature has seen to it that men are stronger than women"
Category Tree:
entity

Even the concept of Materialism is based upon cause and effect.


a. Materailism based upon cause and effect

Dictonary of Philosphy Anthony Flew, article on "Materialism"

"...the belief that everything that exists is ether matter or entirely dependent upon matter for its existence."



dependence = C/E


Center For Theology and the Natural Sciences Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999) http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?(this source is already linked above)

"...Beyond the Christian community there was even greater unease. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern science is that every physical event can be sufficiently explained solely in terms of preceding physical causes. Quite apart from its possible status as the moment of creation, the Big Bang singularity is an offense to this basic assumption. Thus some philosophers of science have opposed the very idea of the Big Bang as irrational and untestable."





b) Something from nothing contradicts materialism

Science and The Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead.
NY: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76

"We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... science which is employed in their development [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical causation is supreme, and which disjoints the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved."[Whitehead was an atheist]




P(4) It follows that an eternal aspect of being must be


from 2-4, since it would be illogical to assume that temporal agencies just spring up by themselves for no reason with no connection to anything eternal, being must be eternal, otherwise either nothing would have ever been or it would have ceased to be, unless one is willing to believe that all things that exist are only a few billion years old and before that there was absolute nothing. But that would still leave without an explanation as to how something came form nothing.

P(5) Since Being must have an eternal aspect, and since it is logical to assume that this aspect gives rise to temporal being, and since it is logical to assume that nature is only temporal and not eternal it is logical to assume that a trans temporal trans-natural aspect eternal necessary being is also the ground of being nd the final cause of all that is.

P(6) Since an eternal necessary Ground of all being that functions as final cause must exist, then there must be in existence an aspect of Being that is identical to what we call "God," Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that God exists.


Corollary:

P(7) Should atheists try to argue that nature could exhibit these aspects they have to prove a distinction between such aspects when used of God and when used of "nature." They are merely trying to barrow divine attributes to lend to nature, any example of these attributes is merely an example of the divine.

Proof: Of this final corollary proof is that the juxtaposition of finite or temporal and eternal in the human mind has always produced the sense of the numinous that stands behind all religious experience, the creation of religion itself. When we find these attributes, supposedly in nature, they evoke in us a sense of worship and subjection and the sublime. This is demonstrate by study after study about the trigger effects of mystical experience.

This is the reason for the stray sky at night effect. It resonates with the God pod.

Models of Atonement

The following essay is from DOXA. I put it up because tonight on CARM I ran into an argument I've seen a number of times, but not until now did it dawn on me why people make it. I suddenly realized so few people understand why there was an atonement. The average Christian understanding is so screwed most of them can't explain it to another person. This is reflected in the answers to this argument.


The argument goes like this: So what if Jesus was crucified? what's the big deal? There re much worse ways to suffer. Crucifixion is bad but it is far from the worst thing that can happen to you. So why was it a sacrifice, I mean after all he is God, what would it matter to him if he dies? And he got to come back."


Now this is incredibly ignorant, but it occurs to me there re some resins for this kind of chaotic thinking, but also one big hidden premise. Before launching into that analysis, however, I would like to comment on the inadequacy of Christian understanding.

First, most Christians try to answer this out of a need for piety. They do not give a theological answer, they give a pious one. The pious answer can't be undestood by modern people, they lack pious feelings, so it just makes it worse. The pious answer of course is to try and mount up the pain and make it seem so very much worse. O. Jesus suffered in hell and he suffers every minute and he's still suffering and he felt all the agony in the world. Of course it doesn't' really say that anywhere in the Bible. While I think this is true, and while my pious side feels the prier sense of reversions Dan gratitude to our savior for this work, we can't use this to answer the question because modern impiety can't understand the answer. They just hear us reiterating their hidden primes.

The other Christian answers are Propitiatory atonement, Substitutionary, or Moral government. These are the tree major ways of looking at the atonement. Propitiation means to turn away anger. This answer is also incomprehensible t moderns. God is so very angry with us that he can't stand the sight of us, he hats o stick Jesus between himself and us so he will see Jesus and turn away his anger. This just makes God seem like a red faced historical parent who couldn't comprehend the consequences of his creation when he decided to make it. Substitutionary atonement says Jesus took our place, he received the penalty our sins deserved. This comes in two verities. One is financial translation, Jesus paid the debt. the other is closer to moral government, Jesus was executed because he stepped in and took the place of the guilty party. Both of these are also problematic, because they really allow the guilty to get off Scott free and persecute an innocent person. The thing is in real Fe you could not go down to the jail and talk them into letting you take another prisoners place. WE can harp on how this is a grace so fine we can't undersigned it in the natural mind, and relapse into piety again singing the praises to God for doing this wonderful act, but it wont answer the atheists questions.

I realize that the view I hold to is a little known minority view. I know I'm bucking the mainstream. But I think it makes a lot more sense and actually why there was an atonement. Before getting into it, however, I want to comment upon the atheist hidden premise. The explicit premise of the atheist argument is that atonement works by Jesus suffering a whole lot. If Jesus suffers enough then restitution is made. But wait, restitution for what? For our sins? Then why should Jesus suffer more than we do or more than our victims do? Why do antes seem to think, as was argued on CRAM tonight, that Jesus must suffer more than anyone ever has for the atonement to work? It's because the hidden premise is that God is guilty and the atonement is the time God pays for his own mistakes. Jesus has to suffer more than anyone to make up for what God has done, inconveniencing us by creating us.

The sickness of the modern mind can scarcely comprehend Christian theology now. I wonder if it isn't too late and we are just past the day when people in the West can really be saved?

I mean consider the idea that usually accompanies this argument: well he is God after all, a little torture death cant' hurt him. In the old days, when we had a culture that ran on Christian memories, people said how great that God would do this for us when he didn't have to! Now the argument is "Of course he had to, it's the least he can do, after all I didn't asked to be born, so I'm entitled to whatever goodies can get in compensation." That's why I think the hidden premise is to blame God; its as though they are saying God has to suffer more than anyone to make up for the suffering he caused as creator. This sort of attitude is very troubling.

In any case, my view is the Participatory atonement. It was embraced by several church fathers and modern theologians supporting it are mentioned below:





I.The Atonement: God's Solidarity With Humanity.



A. The inadequacy of Financial Transactions

Many ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of Jesus' death on the cross as analogues to a financial transaction. Usually this idea goes something like this: we are in hock to the devil because we sinned. God pays the debt we owe by sending Jesus to die for us, and that pays off the devil. The problem with this view is the Bible never says we owe the devil anything. We owe God. The financial transaction model is inadequate. Matters of the soul are much more important than any monetary arrangement and business transactions and banking do not do justice to the import of the issue. Moreover, there is a more sophisticated model; that of the sacrifice for sin. In this model Jesus is like a sacrificial lamb who is murdered in our place. This model is also inadequate because it is based on a primitive notion of sacrifice. The one making the sacrifice pays over something valuable to him to appease an angry God. In this case God is paying himself. This view is also called the "propitiation view" becuase it is based upon propitiation, which means to turn away wrath. The more meaningful notion is that of Solidarity. The Solidarity or "participatory" view says that Jesus entered human history to participate in our lot as finite humans, and he died as a means of identifying with us. We are under the law of sin and death, we are under curse of the law (we sin, we die, we are not capable in our own human strength of being good enough to merit salvation). IN taking on the penalty of sin (while remaining sinless) Jesus died in our stead; not in the manner of a primitive animal sacrifice (that is just a metaphor) but as one of us, so that through identification with us, we might identify with him and therefore, partake of his newness of life.



B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity


In the book of Hebrews it says "in former times God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken more perfectly through his son." Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to humanity. The prophets were speaking for God, but their words were limited in how much they could tell us about God. Jesus was God in the flesh and as such, we can see clearly by his character, his actions, and his teachings what God wants of us and how much God cares about us. God is for humanity, God is on our side! The greatest sign of God's support of our cause as needy humans is Jesus death on the cross, a death in solidarity with us as victims of our own sinful hearts and societies. Thus we can see the lengths God is will to go to to point us toward himself. There are many verses in the Bible that seem to contradict this view. These are the verses which seem to say that Atonement is propitiatory.



C. Death in Solidarity with Victims


1) Support from Modern Theologians


Three Major Modern Theologians support the solidarity notion of atonement: Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), Matthew L. Lamb (Solidarity With Victims), and D.E.H. Whiteley (The Theology of St. Paul).In the 1980s Moltmann (German Calvinist) was called the greatest living protestant theologian, and made his name in laying the groundwork for what became liberation theology. Lamb (Catholic Priest) was big name in political theology, and Whiteley (scholar at Oxford) was a major Pauline scholar in the 1960s.In his work The Crucified God Moltmann interprets the cry of Jesus on the cross, "my God my God why have you forsaken me" as a statement of solidarity, placing him in identification with all who feel abandoned by God.Whiteley: "If St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement] it is best described as one of salvation through participation [the 'solidarity' view]: Christ shared all of our experience, sin alone excepted, including death in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life...Paul does not hold a theory of substitution..." (The Theology of St. Paul, 130)An example of one of the great classical theologians of the early chruch who held to a similar view is St. Irenaeus (according to Whiteley, 133).



2) Scriptural

...all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore burried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certainly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Chrsit Jesus.(Romans 6:1-5)

In Short, if we have united ourselves to Christ, entered his death and been raised to life, we participate in his death and resurrection thourgh our act of solidarity, united with Christ in his death, than it stands to reason that his death is an act of solidarity with us, that he expresses his solidarity with humanity in his death.

This is why Jesus cries out on the cross "why have you forsaken me?" According to Moltmann this is an expression of Solidarity with all who feel abandoned by God.Jesus death in solidarity creates the grounds for forgiveness, since it is through his death that we express our solidarity, and through that, share in his life in union with Christ. Many verses seem to suggest a propitiatory view. But these are actually speaking of the affects of the solidarity. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath thorugh him! For if when we were considered God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! What appears to be saying that the shedding of blood is what creates forgiveness is actually saying that the death in solidarity creates the grounds for reconciliation. IT says we were enemies then we were reconciled to him thorugh the death, his expression of solidarity changes the ground, when we express our solidarity and enter into the death we are giving up to God, we move from enemy to friend, and in that sense the shedding of blood, the death in solidarity, creates the conditions through which we can be and are forgiven. He goes on to talk about sharing in his life, which is participation, solidarity, unity.



D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.

Jurgen Moltmann's notion of Solidarity (see The Crucified God) is based upon the notion of Political solidarity. Christ died in Solidarity with victims. He took upon himself a political death by purposely angering the powers of the day. Thus in his death he identifies with victims of oppression. But we are all victims of oppression. Sin has a social dimension, the injustice we experience as the hands of society and social and governmental institutions is primarily and at a very basic level the result of the social aspects of sin. Power, and political machinations begin in the sinful heart, the ego, the desire for power, and they manifest themselves through institutions built by the will to power over the other. But in a more fundamental sense we are all victims of our own sinful natures. We scheme against others on some level to build ourselves up and secure our conditions in life. IN this sense we cannot help but do injustice to others. In return injustice is done to us.Jesus died in solidarity with us, he underwent the ultimate consequences of living in a sinful world, in order to demonstrate the depths of God's love and God's desire to save us. Take an analogy from political organizing. IN Central America governments often send "death squads" to murder labor unionists and political dissenter. IN Guatemala there were some American organizations which organized for college students to go to Guatemala and escort the leaders of dissenting groups so that they would not be murdered.

The logic was that the death squads wouldn't hurt an American Student because it would bring bad press and shut off U.S. government funds to their military. As disturbing as these political implications are, let's stay focused on the Gospel. Jesus is like those students, and like some of them, he was actually killed. But unlike them he went out of his way to be killed, to be victimized by the the rage of the sinful and power seeking so that he could illustrate to us the desire of God; that God is on our side, God is on the side of the poor, the victimized, the marginalized, and the lost. Jesus said "a physician is not sent to the well but to the sick."The key to salvation is to accept God's statement of solidarity, to express our solidarity with God by placing ourselves into the death of Christ (by identification with it, by trust in it's efficacy for our salvation).



E. Atonement is a Primitive Concept?


This charge is made quite often by internet-skeptics, especially Jewish anti-missionaries who confuse the concept with the notion of Human sacrifice. But the charge rests on the idea that sacrifice itself is a primitive notion. If one commits a crime, someone else should not pay for it. This attack can be put forward in many forms but the basic notion revolves around the idea that one person dying for the sins of another, taking the penalty or sacrificing to remove the guilt of another is a primitive concept. None of this applies with the Participatory view of the atonement (solidarity) since the workings of Christ's death, the manner in which it secures salvation, is neither through turning away of wrath nor taking upon himself others sins, but the creation of the grounds through which one declares one's own solidarity with God and the grounds through which God accepts that solidarity and extends his own; the identification of God himself with the needs and crays of his own creation.



F. Unfair to Jesus as God's Son?



Internet skeptics sometimes argue that God can't be trusted if he would sacrifice his son. This is so silly and such a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine and the nature of religious belief that it hardly deserves an answer. Obviously God is three persons in one essence, the Trinity , Triune Godhead. Clearly God's act of solidarity was made with the unanimity of a single Godhead. God is not three God's, and is always in concert with himself.

The Big Paleantologist in the Sky:The Dawkins Side of the Armstrong Quote

A couple of weeks ago I put up a quote by Karen Armstrong about the being itself thing. Some atheists mistakenly thought it was saying that religion is stupid and outdated when it really said he opposite, because they are so ignorant they have no concept of liberal theology. When they read some liberal theology they think it's atheism because they don't even know what liberal is. I bot so caught up on that side of the article I totally forgot the article was the result of a request by the editor of two different people about their views. The other commenting person was Dawkins. They two did not know what the other said. A quick rehash of Armstrong's view then we should look at what Dawkins said.

Armstrong said that religion was hurt by the literalizing of the metaphor of the guy in the sky. she said that ancient religion understood something modern evangelicals have forgotten, that God is being itself and the big guy in the sky is just a metaphor. She used Newton as an example of one literalizing the metaphor. Newton decided he science proved God and since that gave him a literal understanding of the existence of God he just literlized the metaphor to fit scinece thinking he didn't need it as a metaphor as long as he had his scientific proof. Then in the next generation La place (really about a hundred years latter) said "we have naturalistic cause and effect so we don't God anymore." Now we go over and look at what Dawkins says we find the only understands the literilzed metaphor.

the orginal Arrmonstrong Quote and my few comments are here:

My analysis of what the Armstrong Quote means here:



The Dawkins part of the article is subtitled "Dawkins argues that Evoluion Leaves God with nothing to do."

Dawkins

Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in "Natural Theology," that the creation of life was God's greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we'd amend the statement: Evolution is the universe's greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.

Paley was another example Armstrong used to say that "here's a Christian who is literilzing his metaphors." So of Dawkins is taking the literized version as the real thing. He's treating evolution as a final case as though there need to be a reason for evolution to exist or any prior conditions that make it work or make it possible.

Indeed, evolution is probably the greatest show in the entire universe. Most scientists' hunch is that there are independently evolved life forms dotted around planetary islands throughout the universe—though sadly too thinly scattered to encounter one another. And if there is life elsewhere, it is something stronger than a hunch to say that it will turn out to be Darwinian life. The argument in favor of alien life's existing at all is weaker than the argument that—if it exists at all—it will be Darwinian life. But it is also possible that we really are alone in the universe, in which case Earth, with its greatest show, is the most remarkable planet in the universe.

Not likely that we are alone. If he's write about the natural of evolution but that doesn't put a damper on God. Only if you see God as big man in the sky and you think he has to make a decision about each and every little thing he's doing that this would be a problem.

What is so special about life? It never violates the laws of physics. Nothing does (if anything did, physicists would just have to formulate new laws—it's happened often enough in the history of science). But although life never violates the laws of physics, it pushes them into unexpected avenues that stagger the imagination. If we didn't know about life we wouldn't believe it was possible—except, of course, that there'd then be nobody around to do the disbelieving!

Here he talks as though there are prescriptive laws of physics. Of course if you make a God argument, "who prescribes the prescriptive laws" then atheists will say "don't you know anything? there are not actual 'laws' they are not prescriptive they are only descriptive. If that's the case then of course nothing can ever violate them because what ever happens is a prori what the laws the law says, since it doesn't actually actually do anything bu describe what happens. So why is he talking like there's some sort obeying to be done? My hung is that this is a sort of devotional langauge that atheists use. Since science is their God they they speak about it in different terms when praising it then they do when describing how it works, as Simone Weil said "the language of the nuptial chamber is not the language of the market place." Witness above:evolution is probably the greatest show in the entire universe.

I think what's happening here is that they are literelizing their own metaphor. When you call them on it (law demands a lawgiver) they do "O yea that's just a metaphor, forgot about that." But Just as a fundamentalist really does think of God as literally a man in the sky becuase he has no other model for thinking about it, Atheists really do in their heart of hearts believe that there are prescriptive laws of physics, that's why their devotional language is about prescriptive laws.

The laws of physics, before Darwinian evolution bursts out from their midst, can make rocks and sand, gas clouds and stars, whirlpools and waves, whirlpool-shaped galaxies and light that travels as waves while behaving like particles. It is an interesting, fascinating and, in many ways, deeply mysterious universe.

The laws of physics move in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform. Yea, they don't have any "devotional language," they are not worshiping scinece! come off it.

But now, enter life. Look, through the eyes of a physicist, at a bounding kangaroo, a swooping bat, a leaping dolphin, a soaring Coast Redwood. There never was a rock that bounded like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate, never a sand grain that swam like a water flea. Not once do any of these creatures disobey one jot or tittle of the laws of physics. Far from violating the laws of thermodynamics (as is often ignorantly alleged) they are relentlessly driven by them. Far from violating the laws of motion, animals exploit them to their advantage as they walk, run, dodge and jink, leap and fly, pounce on prey or spring to safety.

Never once are the laws of physics violated, yet life emerges into uncharted territory. And how is the trick done? The answer is a process that, although variable in its wondrous detail, is sufficiently uniform to deserve one single name: Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information. We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet. And my bet, as I said, is that the same process is in operation wherever life may be found, anywhere in the universe.

Holy Tialhard de Chardin Batman. That's devotional enough to be found in Hymn to the Universe.

What if the greatest show on earth is not the greatest show in the universe? What if there are life forms on other planets that have evolved so far beyond our level of intelligence and creativity that we should regard them as gods, were we ever so fortunate (or unfortunate?) as to meet them? Would they indeed be gods? Wouldn't we be tempted to fall on our knees and worship them, as a medieval peasant might if suddenly confronted with such miracles as a Boeing 747, a mobile telephone or Google Earth? But, however god-like the aliens might seem, they would not be gods, and for one very important reason. They did not create the universe; it created them, just as it created us. Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics.

This is a very revealing paragraph because it shows us two things: (1) He really does think of God as just a jumped up man, that's his basic concept and he can't understand or even does know that there is any other option or concept more sophisticated. He really clearly thinks that this is what exactly the notion deity is about. Not the Ground of being but a guy with a ray gun who could zap you and then beam up to the ship before you know it. The big alien in the sky with the Ray gun is no closer to being God than is a cave man with a club in the sky or a pond scum in the sky. The only thing such an image can ever be is a er zots metaphor litearlized and put over in place of the real concept of necessary eternal being which is not a man in the sky. (2) It opens a window into Dawkins own concept of devotional language and his notion of what he worships. I think this explains why atheists are bullies on message boards. What they worship is what they seek and it's their reason for doing scinece: power. I've often observed that the real hateful sort of atheist, the street hood who is filled with so much he's banned from board to board is just hung up on the idea of being powerless and taking it out upon a class of people who he assumes have a measure of social power, church people.

To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences. Once it has done so, of course, those intelligences can create other complex things: works of art and music, advanced technology, computers, the Internet and who knows what in the future? Darwinian evolution may not be the only such generative process in the universe. There may be other "cranes" (Daniel Dennett's term, which he opposes to "skyhooks") that we have not yet discovered or imagined. But, however wonderful and however different from Darwinian evolution those putative cranes may be, they cannot be magic. They will share with Darwinian evolution the facility to raise up complexity, as an emergent property, out of simplicity, while never violating natural law.

So he deifies the agency or the tool through which God works, but can't understand that there's a deeper aspect to it than just the creativity of the agency itself. His concept of deity is clearly contingent and rooted in the magnifying of natural things, such as "big man in sky." Not just any man in the sky, but a big man.

Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.

The reason it appears to leave God out is because all he's really saying is "I can't understand the idea of God in any more complex fashion than a big man in sky, but I have a bigger man in the sky." In other words, big white lab coat guy with test tube in sky beats big cave man in sky. In posing the question "what would have to do" he's positing the notion of God as a man who get's board, waits around, has to find things to do. Presumably God would be using evolution as a tool and doing all that stuff he talks about. But we don't need to say that because even that caters to a model of God as a mechanic with a tool. Now I am not saying that God is evolution, but let's think about using evolution itself as the metaphor for God, then to say "what would God be doing while things are evolving? That is a meaningless question, he would be evolving them!

But Dawkins knows just enough about modern theology be dangerous. He tries to preempt the argument:

Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."

That is a copy of a sort of existentially based take on God popular in the early 60s rooted in the works God is dead movement people such as Van Bearuean and Altizer. But doesn't apply to Tillich or his existential ontology (God as being itself).

Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists.

Here we see a tactic used by atheists on every message board where I have argued this. They always copy and imitate their Master's example and appeal to popularity because they think Christianity is just about following the herd. Notice how he equates a literalism of the guy in the sky with belief in God itself, "they believe in God" as though Tillich didn't believe in God. Because his only conception of God is the simplistic guy in the sky. Notice how he doesn't really address the issue of other views of God which are not based upon the Suzerain model. He goes for the most fluphy sounding wavy gravy existential bs he can find.

If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

What he says here is important because it clues us in. He can only think of existence in literal biological terms. God has to be the big man in the sky to exist, and Dawkins big scientist in the sky is better because he's a more modern big man. Concepts of process theology and being itself and all that is just wasted on him.

Atheist show thier problems in Reading Comprehension

Both on carm and comments to this blog have illustrated the problem atheist have with understanding simple statements. Its' so clear what Armstong is saying one can always tell what atheist want to believe is being said becuase it varies so widely with what is said. They all start out saying "she does not say that big in the sky is not possible." they say "she doesn't say she believes anything" they want so badly to believe she's an atheist because they think she's offering more bolster for the little brain washing. I guess she must be an atheist favorite and they can convince themselves of anything. They think she is against religion because they interpret your statements against literalism in religion as meaning she's against all religion.

She is not brash enough to say "I believe this..." what she does say makes it absolutely clear that:

(1) She blames the belief in big man in sky for ruining the ability of modern religious thought to proceed in a sophistacted fashion and understand science.

(2) She makes it quite clear that she considers belief in big man in sky to be stupid literalism. >Literalism is always the stumpier option.


let's look at the quote:

Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped—even primitive.

Up front we are told that religious thinking lags behind scientific thinking. But this is not because scinece is true and religion is false. that's probably what atheists want to see in it but it's not true as will become plain in a minute. I'm sure atheists read that to mean all religious thinking is stupid and primate and to as good as science. That is clearly not what she's saying. It's so obvious there's no way a thinking person could read it this way unless they were so longing to have her agree with the atheist prattle.

In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.

this is a description of mystical theology and the God beyond God concept, which will be made even more clear in a moment. Now I supposes probably most atheists read this phrase and says "that says religion is fiction it's made up stuff and not true. Anyone who thinks that's her meaning is an idiot and can't read. Contrast this with what she said before, which view will see as the "screw up" or the one "lagging behind" that she mentions in the fist section? Well it is not this one, so it obviously has to be the big sky the sky since these the only two that she talks about.

But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact.

This is the beginning of the section where he will lay the blame on the shoulders of literalistic scientific thinking theists and not on the God beyond God concept. In this phrase she says they were transforming the expansive mystical theology into a literalistic (she calls "hard fact") way of thinking. that this is negative become clear immediately.

Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.

Odds are she would not think Paley was great, so in linking his thinking to that of Newton she's obviously lambasting Newton for trying to make religion scientific. She's saying that the Newtonian are ones who made it literalistic. The scientific thinking is degrading the expansive God beyond God sophistication and bringing it down to a literalistic level of big man in the sky. Why does she talk about the Mechanic? What's the difference in big man on throne and big mechanic in the sky? the big mechanic in the sky is just a slightly more educated version of big man in sky. That it leads to Paley is a bad thing for her as I don't think she is a creationist or the argument form design type.

But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid.

this proves it! She links the big mechanic in the sky with the big man in the sky and that's bad because it's just a projection and calling it an "idol" definitely condemns it. But I'm sure that atheists read that and thought she's saying all belief in god is like that. In reality it's perfectly obvious that she's distinguishing between big man in sky and God beyond God. Atheists see this as referring to all religion no doubt. Clearly she is distinguishing.

God had been essential to Newtonian physics but it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource.

now they read this and to them it says "all region is stupid and all we need to science." they see her say others after Newton dispensed with God and they think she's saying "we can all dispense with God of any concept." But we already know that she sees the big scientist in the sky thing of Newton as a come down from the ancient notion of God beyond God and being itself. Since that's a come down the other alternative has to be better. So she is not saying all ideas about God can be dispensed with, that's obvious that she's not saying that.

Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history.

How many atheists read this and think she's describing a process of making things up and she thinks that's stupid and she blames all religion for doing that? I would wager that almost atheists read it that way. Obviously, she's describing a good process, the choice that she thinks is better than the guy in the sky, the one that has been degraded. We already estabilshed that. she clearly says there's a come down and Newton brought us down form a better way to think about God and here shes' describing what that is.

Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology; if translated into ritual or ethical action, a good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity.

So atheists read this and say "surely she wouldn't accept myth as a valid way to think. myth is fiction it's a lie so she wouldn't like that, that's unscientific." But that's exactly what she likes. Clearly there's a type of postmodernism in her thinking that is anti-chronocentric. In other words she doesn't see ancient world people are being stupid and everything they did was wrong. She believes there is timeless truth and people of all ages discover it. Notice that she's saying good things about it. "a good myth helped you cope with morality." That's not a criticism it's a good thing.

In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. The Genesis creation hymn, written during the Israelites' exile in Babylonia in the 6th century BC, was a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion. Its vision of an ordered universe where everything had its place was probably consoling to a displaced people, though—as we can see in the Bible—some of the exiles preferred a more aggressive cosmology.

Here she clearly identifies herself with a kind of new agie postmdoern thinking, the sort of Campbell and Elaide thing. That's a good reason to think she supports the God beyond God idea. She doesn't say "I think this..." but the intelligent person can gather what a person supports from what they say even if they are explicit about it. Atheists can't do this for obvious reasons. But those of us who learn reading comprehension can do so.

She doesn't say "I believe in Being itself" but she even uses the phrase "God beyond God" (Tillich) and does she say about it? She says that it's better, it has good threatening uses, it can perk you up and transform your life, it was degraded and religion was made more literalistic and less able to cope by trying to make it scientific and that Newton just had a big guy in the sky. Newton's guy in the sky was a bit mechanic but he was still a guy in the sky. So clearly she prefers the other approach.

Maybe she doesn't actual believe that God is being itself, but she clearly understands the concept, doesn't think it's stupid, and supports it over the literalism of the guy in the sky.

Please excuse the long quote. This is by Karen Armstong. This statment is so good I would like to use it as my manifesto. Of course the atheists on CARM can't understand what it means. This is exactly what I'm trying to tell them but they just can't hear it.

Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped—even primitive. In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.

But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.

But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid. God had been essential to Newtonian physics but it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource.



Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history.

Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology; if translated into ritual or ethical action, a good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity.

In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. The Genesis creation hymn, written during the Israelites' exile in Babylonia in the 6th century BC, was a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion. Its vision of an ordered universe where everything had its place was probably consoling to a displaced people, though—as we can see in the Bible—some of the exiles preferred a more aggressive cosmology.

She is obviously saying that the big man in the sky doesn't exist, but he doesn't have to exist to know that there is a God and that some aspect of being is divine. The atheists are not capable of that kind of thought, let alone any kind of thought.

Being Does So have to be, Answering Blowfly

I recently put up a new version of my major God argument, cosmological necessity, on CARM. I changed the basic trust and made it more in line with Tillich on being itself and less about cosmology. I call it "being has to be." Atheists just went wild They were totally incensed by the idea of the audacity to actually argue for God. I don't understand this because they spend all their time going "show me some evidence, there's not one thing to prove God exists, show me something." So I did and they went wild wiht angrily "how dare you try to prove God exists?" One of them actually said belief in God is a dangerous idea that must be silenced adn trying to prove God exists is usurping scinece and reality. You can see my reports on their comments on Atheist Watch: "Orwellian Atheism."


After the smoke cleared, Blowfly puts up a piece trying to disprove the argument by ridicule and misrepresentation. Here's what he says:




blowfly

It's because Being is just... wait a minute, let's get rid of that capitalization, it's misleading. "being". That's better.

It's capitalized to distinguish the eternal necessary aspect (which proved in the nature of the argument, see link above) from the particular examples of "the beings," the contingent temporal aspects of being that come and go all the time.

Now, "being" is just an abstract concept. It's not something profound ontological foundation which forms the ultimate fabric of reality demanding some philosophy account. It's just an abstract concept, like "love", or "The number 12", or "pinkness". Abstractions exist in our heads, not in some Platonic realm, or in some strange manner weaving their way through each of their instantiations.

this concept that being is an abstraction is wrong and is completely repudiated by Tillich. There's a long passage in Systematic Theology II (10-11) where he shows that this is merely a modernization of a nominalist position (for Tillich "nominalist" is correlated with to modern reductionism or scientism).

When a doctrine of God is initiated by defining God as being itself, the philosophical concept of being is introduced into systematic theology. This was so in the earliest period of Christian theology and has been so in the whole history of Christian thought. It appears in the present system [meaning in his systematic theology] in three places, in the doctrine of God where God is called being as being or the ground and the power of being; in the doctrine of man…and in the doctrine of Christ where he is called manifestation of New Being…In spite of the fact that classical theology has always used the concept of “being” the term has been criticized from the standpoint of nominalistic philosophy and that of personalistic theology. Considering the prominent role which the concept plays in the system it is necessary to reply to the criticisms and at the same time to clarify the way in which the term is used in its different applications.

The criticism of the nominalists and their positivistic decedents to the present day is based upon the assumption that the concept of being represents the highest possible abstraction. It is understood as the gneus to which all other genera are subordinated with respect to universality and with respect to the degree of abstraction. IF this were the way in which the concept of being is reached, nominalism could interpret it as it interprets all universals, namely, as communicative notions which point to particulars but have no reality of their own. Only the completely particular, the thing here and now, has reality. Universals are means of communication without any power of being. Being, as such, therefore, does not designate anything real. God, if he exists, exists as a particular and could be called the most individual of all beings.

The answer to this argument is that the concept of being does not have the character that nominalism attributed to it. It is not the highest abstraction, although it demands the ability of radical abstraction. It is the expression of the experience of being over against non-being. Therefore, it can be described as the power of being which resists non being. For this reason the medieval philosophers called being the basic transcendetntale, beyond the universal and the particular. In this sense was understood alike by such people as Parmenides in Greece and Shankara in India. In this sense its significance has been rediscovered by contemporary existentialists such as Heidegger and Marcle. The idea of being lies beyond the conflict of nominalism and realism. The same word, the emptiest of all concepts when taken as an abstraction, becomes the most meaningful of all concepts when it is understood as the power of being in everything that has being.

The concept is old and has been floating around philosophy for centuries it's even older than Christianity itself.


Blowfly again:

And so "being" doesn't need to have any sort of existence beyond a simple abstract concept in our heads. And so I reject these "ground of being" arguments.

Being can't be an abstraction if byt hat we mean only an summation in the mind of all such things which a certain characteristic. Being has to be a valid concrete force that actually gives rise to temporal contingency, since the argument proves that things must always been, nothingness as a putative state is impossible, thus something eternal must always exist. That eternal aspect is what we call "being itself" or "primordial being." It's a way to distinguish not only the eternal aspect of being but the fact that we are not talking about a localized being such a big man in the sky. We are talking about an aspect of reality, the aspect that is always underlying all temporal contingent appearances of existence.

Atheist poster Magnus understands this and actually came to the aid of the argument at least to that aspect of the argument:

Magnus:

No, this is 100% wrong. Being is all that exists. To put it another way, being *is* existence. That fact there is something means that it is being. I don't know where you got the idea that being, or existence, was an abstract concept.

Quote:
Originally Posted by blowfly View Post

But you're still reifying "Being". I don't see why that's necessary. Existence is a property we ascribe to things, not the foundation for their existence.

HRG called it reification as one of his usual usages of a term to give the illusion that he has an idea. What's really going on there is merely his knee jerk reaction to an idea that challenges his nominalistic tendencies.

this other guys jumps in:

Originally Posted by Spacemonkeyadb View Post

Well, you can define 'being' as simply the totality of existence if you like. But to then go on to say that God is being itself (as Metacrock likes to do) would reduce theism to the atheistic kind of pantheism. You don't get to say that the fact there is something means that it is 'being', unless you want to say that something is everything.

Magnus

No one would say something is everything. They would say that all things are part of being, which is of course correct. That doesn't mean that things are not distinct in other ways. Something doesn't need to be everything to be part of being.

The bottom line is Tillch's statement that being has depth. If you know being has depth you can't an atheist. So the atheist have to deny that being has depth and since they don't understand what that means all they do is keep insisting that being can't be (whatever they think that means) and that existence is merely the fact of not being nothing. At this point they are not even coherent. Without understanding what it means to way being has depth there's no way you can deny that it does.

Tillich's statement:
(the shaking of the Foundations)

The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not.

what it means to say being has depth

all of these arguments are documented by reference to Tillichs ST v II 10-11 or 163-164 except also reference to John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, op cit (find where he says being and the beings)

Tillich tells us that the notion of God as being itself is old; it can be taken back to the pre-Socratics. It has been used throughout the history of the church. The two major criticisms are the idea that it is nothing but an empty abstraction and that is means an impersonal view of God. As will be seen both criticisms are false. The criticism that it is an empty abstraction is basically a reductionist criticism, going all the way back to the nominalists. In its modern incarnation it is a reductionist criticism. In refuting this argument Tillich implicitly denies that his concept of God is anything like an atheistic concept. He denies that his view is that the fact of existing things is God, or God is nothing more than the sheer fact of existence. The alternative to mere abstraction that Tillich offers is the “power of being.” By that he means being as an active force that resist nothingness. He almost makes it sound like nothingness is an active force, or like gravity, pull us to the center of mass, or like water draining out of a sink. We are being sucked down the drain to the sewer of nothingness except the drain stopper of being prevents this. The transcendental transcends both universal and particular according to Tillich. In Platonic analogy that would give being itself the role of “the one” as the form of the forms. That’s probably somehow analogous to the role the idea played in Tillich’s understanding. What he says about the same word can be either the emptiest or the most meaningful of terms depending upon one’s assumptions, is actually a good fleshing out of what he means by being having depth. Not only is he saying that things are not as they seem on the surface, but one way in which they are not the same is that there’s a power to being that resists nothingness. Being is “on,” by that I mean it’s a positive force; it is the most basic thing aside from nothingness.

The quotation given above continues:

No philosophy can suppress the notion of being in this latter sense. It be hidden under presuppositions and reductive formulas, but it nevertheless underlies the basic concepts of philosophizing. For “being” remains the content, the mystery and the eternal aporia of thinking. No theology can suppress the notion of being as the power of being. One cannot separate them. In the moment in which one says that God is or that he has being, the question arises as to how his relation to being is understood. The only possible answer seems to be that God is being itself, the sense of the power of being, or of the power to conquer non being.

At this point the terminology gets sloppy and hazy. Is God the power of being? Is being itself the power of being? Is being the power of being? If being is the “power of being.” This is a redundant phrase. What does “being is the power of being” tell us about what being is? Of course we can always sort it out in our own way and hope we are on the same page with Tillich. God is the power of being, but that would mean that God is also something other than being which furnishes being its power. Unless we want to say that Being is power. What is being? Power. What is power, being? What in the heck are we saying? The answer is that Tillich says himself this phase “God is being itself” is a metaphorical way of speaking. It’s a symbol, it’s not meant to be a literal and precise formation tracing the essence of the divine. We might also note that John MacQuarrie makes a distinction between Being and “the beings.” Contingent being are “the beings” and they cohere in reality because they participate in Being as creatures of the Being itself. Being is the power to resist nothingness, the power to be. Thus we can say God is the basis upon which all that is coheres and has its being. God is the basis upon which “the beings” (all existing things) have their being. The power of being is its nature to generate becoming. Just as existentialism presupposes an essential to play off of, so becoming presupposes state of Being to develop from. Yet, these statements must be taken as metaphors, as Tillich himself says. We cannot understand these terms as scientific style terms which accurately tell us the physical make up and dimensions of a given object. These are not ways to promote a scientific understanding of God, or could hey be nor should they be.

That being itself indicates the power of being is part is metaphorical, at the same time it is part of the concept of the depth being. Being is not merely the fact of existence but it also contains the basis upon which all being is. That would correlate to God as creator. In MacQuarrie’s terms, “being let’s be.” This may imply a more passive role than Tillich had in mind. He views God’s creative role from the standpoint of a check on nothingness, but what both are really talking about is an active force of creative power that brings more being out of being itself. Being let’s be is such a passive way to register the idea of “resisting” nothingness, but at the same time both are means avoiding the direct statement, “God is the creator of all that is.” Nevertheless that’s obviously what’s they are saying, or trying not to say. Obviously, then Being is necessary and “the beings” (in McQuarrie speak) are contingencies. Being itself is necessary being, the being are contingent being. This is another aspect of the depth of being. It’s not just so simple that all we need to do is to rattle off a list of concrete things we can observe in the world. There are two level, necessity and contingency, or two modes of being. Within each role there are different roles. On the level of necessity being is eternal, on the level of contingency being is temporal. Tillich makes much of this distinction. The difference in the two and the sense of the numinous it evokes are very important for Tillich and will figure prominently in the arguments that can be made in terms of reasons to believe.

The reason Tillich take such a backwards way of expressing God creative force is to emphasize the distinction between being and nothingness. This is the primary first and original distinction in reality, the bottom line so to speak between something and nothing. The first distinction in existence is that between being and nothingness. The power of being to resist nothingness (God’s creative force) is the first basis upon which anything is at all. That means we can look at this creative force as the nature of being the basic bottom line of what it means to be and what being is. Thus if we choose for some reason to call this force “God” if we want to use that term, which Tillich says in the quotation above is the meaning of that term, we can say that God is “being itself.” God is this basic force that is the first dentition in all of reality. It is both first temporally (it would be the basis of time) it would be “fist” ontologically. Tillch is thinking in a way that modern scenically ensorcelled people are not really able to think, and have never thought in. McQuarrie puts it into a passive sense “let’s being,” for a different reason. He warns of Heidegger’s tendency to “stretch language” or the awareness of Heidegger (and himself) that to speak of being at an ontological level is a stretch beyond the confines of fact based conceptualism. For him being role as the fomentation of more being, or “the beings” is expressed in a passive sense to remove the emphasis upon the activity of a creative agent.

Another aspect of the depth of being is the diversity of being. Tillich develops many themes of meaning, diversity, and historicity in laying out the Gospel framework and translating it into his phenomenological take on the diversity of being. Human being, fallen nature, sin, redemption, new being in Christ, these are standard Christian themes but a good deal of his Systematic Theology is devoted to exploring them from the perspective of their relationship to being. What he’s doing there is demonstrating the depth of being ontologically and in terms of human experience. Part II of Systematic Theology vol I is about “Being and God.” Here he deals with topics of “The Question of Being: Man, Self and World.” “God is the answer to the question implied in Being” he says. He first deals with reason and revelation. Then he moves into the question of being and its meaning. He says that in coming to term with reason and its take on existential conflicts, ond one is forced into asking the most essential question of all, why is there something rather than nothing at all? But I have given this in Heidegger’s terms. Tillich puts it a big differently “why is there something, why not nothing?” He points out that to ask “why is there not nothing?” is to attribute a kind of being to nothingness. Thus as he puts it “one cannot go behind being.” What he’s saying is, like trying to imagine one’s own non existence, it can’t be done. We cannot get under being itself, its’ the furthest we can go back in our understanding, and it eludes our understanding. Thought is based upon being and it can’t go beyond its base. One can imagine the negotiation of things, however, and it can “describe the nature and structure and structure of everything that is the power of resisting non being.” Ontological questions, he points out, are not tautologies because of this ability to mentally play with being and non being. We are not merely saying “being is being” when we try to define what it is, because there’s a possibility of negating any particular form of being. The possibility of universality and less than universal aspect of forms of being make ontology possible. There are concepts which are less universal than being but more universal than any concept about being, thus these are “categories” of thought.

These categories form the basis of theological significance. These are central concepts that make theology “go,” so to speak (not Tillich’s phrase). These are ontological concepts, ontology is not theology. One can be an atheist and totally secular and do ontology as part of philosophy, and such a thinker would have to deal with these concepts. But in like manner all theologians must deal with them as well. While they are not theology per se they are essential to theology. The concepts are: (1) the structure implicitly in the basic ontological question (why is there something rather than nothing?); (2) the elements which constitute ontological structure; (3) characteristics of being which are the conditions of existence; (4) categories of being and knowing. The structure (1) is that the question presupposes an asking subject, and an object being asked about. This is the subject/object structure that is presupposed and that in turn assumes the structure of world and self; this as the basic articulation of being. That the self has a world to which it belongs and from which it will deduce the nature of its being precedes all other structures and will be the basic analysis which precedes all other analysis. The elements of the ontological structure he groups into three sets of pairs: individuality and universality, dynamics and form, and freedom and density. These are polarities and the first expresses self referential nature of being.

The ontological concepts pertaining to number (3) (characteristics of being) “expresses the power of being to exist,” in Tillich’s own words, “and the difference between essential and existential being.”

Atehist Fear of the Ancinet world.

I've seen a tendency of atheists lately to mock and ridicule ancient world people and by extension to condemn religion becuase ancient people believed it. We know atheists have always believed such things, but in the last month I've gotten a dozen or so comments to the effect "why would you want to be link ancient Bronze age people?" They specifically target the bronze age. why? it's illogical. Here are two examples form the same post on CARM. By a guy named "Too."

Are bronze age men worthy of absolute trust?
Christians beliefs depend almost entirely on trusting the words of bronze age men. ( and later 'editors etc)

So why are these bronze age guys so trustworthy? It surely can't be because they, themselves say they are.

Is there evidence that men back in the bronze age where above reproach. They all were without sin?Any of them were?

Yet I hear their translated words echoed here time and time again as if they were known to be absolute truths.

Would you trust your life to their word alone at a trial? Why?

I fail to see any evidence that bronze age men were in any way free of the many imperfections that all humans have today.
__________________

and then this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Too View Post
Then you have absolute faith in them. Perhaps in god , IF THEY WERE TELLING THE TRUE FACTS, but as we know humans are never without fault.

Faith in the word of bronze age men is what Christianity is based on.

Jesus, the Christian god, everything you think you know about god originated from the mouths and pens of bronze age men (and early more primitive men). This is an undeniable fact.

First of all you show your true ignorance of history here. Waht youa re saying is just manifest crap. You are leaving out a little thing called SOCIAL EVOLUTION! what you are saying would be like arguing that the Mustang mock 1 circa 1971 was crappy car because it was directly related to the model T and that the 1998 Torus was a crappy car becuase it's just another direct extension of the model T.

The ethical standard Jesus put down anticipate Kant. The views of the NT, especially Paul are clearly evolved way beyond anything Bronze age people thought about. If you follow that track from the Ice man and his mushrooms you follow it far enough you come the development of modern scinece. It's silly beyond compare to condemn human ancestry becuase it's nothing less than the bedrock of who are today.

Obviously an evolution in thinking. this evolution opens up the reality to timeless truth. Timeless truth was true in Bronze age and it's true today and it will be true a million years form now. We view timeless truth from different perspectives but it never goes away just because it's old, that's why it's timeless. The develop of perspective is evolution that's what atheists embrace but that's what you ignore here: religious belief has evolved it has kept pace with human understanding.

It amuses me to no end how atheists can be so unthinking. I mean come on, it's one thing to try and mock and ridicule the hated target group, all hate groups do that, but to pick one out that died off thousands of years ago and sit there going "I am so much better than the ice man! see how stupid he was, he fore to death because they was ni the mountains I'm so much better than him." LOL how silly can you get?

what is this need atheists have to hate ancient world people? It must be the latest tangent, becuase even though I've seen atheists say these kinds of things for years, just int he last month I've seen about a dozen statements such as "how can you be like ancient Bronze age people?" They are so scandalized by the idea that our ancinet ancestors lived a lot time ago and believed pre scientific notions. That's so shocking, how will I ever live that down?

When archaeologists dig up pot shards they don't do "O look at this stupid pot, it broke to pieces." they learn from the artifacts. Why should we look at our ancient ancestors, the basic material from which we evolved and made fun of them for the time lived in? This is some sick mentality that can only approach life through ridicule of others. You must have some brittle self esteem.

If we are going to avoid everything that Bronze age people did because being ancient they were stupid and everything they thought was bad then here's a list of things we have to give up:

Mushrooms as medicine
the idea that natural herbs can help with sickness.
the idea of seeking new solutions through trial and error
Loving our children
loving our parents
loving our mates
Loving our selves
understanding ourselves as part of group
goup loyalty
understanding ourselves as distinct from the group
making fire
making the wheel
riding horses.
making clothes


there are probably more things but this is off the top of my head.


why must we think that ancinet people who so incredibly stupid? Anthropologists no longer understand the origins of religion as primitive failed scinece. They now understand that it was the dawning of mystical consciousness that created the notion of religion. Since we know that this sort of consciousness is real good for us and changes our lives for the better (as demonstrated over and over again by the hundreds of empirical scientific studies that prove it) we really should conclude that Bronze age people were not so dumb, that they actually discovered a timeless truth or two that are still good today.

I should have used this as another reason in my debate why atheism is bankrupt.


No movement that thrives ont he sick ego warping drive to put yourself up by putting others down can survive for long.
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