If God is dead then wheres he buried? Surely the same biochemical adenosine when alive, perhap’s? Sounds like eating shit backwards to me all this Atheist talk.
Hi JT,
I agree that the feelings are common to many people, as well as a certain amount of conditioning through society, but I think what is particularly disturbing about the assumption that is being laid down with this thread is similar to a statement that ‘lightning can’t exist, because I haven’t been struck yet. Never mind the flashes and the noise, until I have felt the raw power of natural electricity, it doesn’t exist!’
If we base our assumptions on the power-politics of ‘Beliefs’, which has cost the church so much credibility and avoid the search with a receptive mind, we might fail to witness the ‘quietly whispering voice’ of God because we’re waiting for the ‘Storm, the Eathquake or the Fire’ figuratively speaking.
What about the image that I like from a German theologian: The truth is like a bright shining star that illuminates our life but then fades with the daylight, and we are left waiting for it to return. Sometimes the daylight occupies our senses so much, that we are asleep the next time the star shines. Or cloud prevents the light from getting through to us, and we lose our trust that the star was ever there.
You’re on to a good point here, life does go on!! Regardless whether I am prepared for it, time doesn’t stop to give me a chance to reorientate myself. That is the reality of the circumstances of time and why people yearn for a life without the continuous ticking of time in their heads. The Spiritual would say to you that you are allowing this ticking to fill you brain and that you are able to transcend and rise to another level - and that faith is the way to remain balanced.
Yes, empowerment or the ability to fashion our lives in a manner that makes sense is important - perhaps not for those who have just left school and haven’t discovered the seriousness of obligation or commitment in a life that is always asking something of us. But you and I know that faith or philosophy has to be more than just a game of badminton, where the shuttle is just knocked to and fro, if it is meant to have a meaning for our lives.
Shalom
Bob
prophile, you fail to make any sense. Please provide an intelligeble argument.
kesh, that’s pretty immature of you. I don’t suppose you have an argument for God, do you?
Bob, welcome to the tread. Still, I feel that you combat atheism with skepticism. You can prove lightning without being struck by it. Curious, what is your argument for God.
Welcome back Bob! I believe you brought back a lance from your medieval expedition! Why is it that some people hear that still, small voice and imbue it with characteristics which it never projected, like omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence?
It is not that i don’t believe but rather that i have no reason to believe. I have offered some fine objections which have elicited few comments.
I proffer:
I feel that I am being instigated into a rather petty fight, and I am going to have to pass. Although I will say if my thoughts didnt come out as hoped, I suppose it is my fault. Or perhaps the fault of the reader…I suppose that balances on rather or not anyone else understood. Well, in hopes of making myself clear…my point was your analogy was irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. Perhaps we lost each other’s arguments…maybe if you werent so hostile in your posts there could be better discourse on the subject.
Well, I went from the sort of blind following of my religion at a young age to a total lack of faith. I pretty much kept it hidden from my family and most of my friends as they are ‘hard core’ christians and their reaction to my being atheist would not have been taken well. Even though I did not believe in a higher power that did not stop my interest in theology. I found the world’s ‘ignorance’ that there was a god completely fascinating and started researching all types of religions and beliefs. And I guess there was a type of jealousy. They were so sure of their place in the world and that when they died there would be eternal happiness. I both mocked them and envied them.
Pretty much the reason why I believed once again in a higher power is personal. I had put it in this post, but thought about it and decided to delete that part.
Hi Hombre,
Interesting that you should say that. I am very skeptical - funny really for a ‘believer’ - but I’m skeptical of all things that don’t ‘add up.’ It’s my intuition that has served me well for that purpose. Atheists are under an illusion if they believe that they have any better arguments going for them - there is far more under the heavens than humankind has fathomed out.
It isn’t about proving anything, it is about trusting someone or finding purpose, direction and hope in a line of perception. It is about being receptive and learning to avoid the ‘chains’ of existence that cloud our minds. ‘God’ is as much a metapher as any other name for the Mystery that has caused life. Therefore the argument for God is found in the need of humankind for purpose, aim, ambition, aspiration, desire, direction, dream, goal, hope, meaning, mecca, or principles. It is our appointment to search, ask and knock on doors.
Just as an orgasm awakes the need for more intercourse, so does fulfilment awaken the need for communion with ‘God’ (intersting that the word for ‘knowing’ God and ‘knowing’ one’s partner is the same in Hebrew). Just as thirst needs to be quenched, and hunger needs to be satisfied, so does the need for God find fruition if we are receptive. Just because someone may not see something, it doesn’t prove that it isn’t there - it might well be that the person is blind.
Shalom
Bob
There is One God.
God is knowable. “God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.â€
To know God you can seek ATMAN, your own soul. This word and this idea is from the UPanishads. For indeed ATMAN = BRAHMAN. Your soul is one and the smae with God. God is your own soul, and your own soul is identical with God.
God is the Oversoul. The soul of all souls. The spirit of all spirits. The source of all sources. The Light of all lights. The Truth og all truths.
God is Transcendent and Immanent.
You yourself, you are God. YOu are ATMAN, you are BRAHMAN. You are God in ignorance of your Godhood. Or a Budhist might say, You are the Buddha in ignorance of your Buddahood. YOU are a divine spark, from the True God, captured by Archons, entrapped by the Demiurge.
Only by knowing God, intimately, can you attain liberation from inprisonment in ignoranct. Know God orthere is no God. Intimate knowledge, the GNOSIS.
Vishnu sleeps and dreams that he is the many things.
Thank you, prophile.
I wasn’t sure about a few of those matters. You cleared things up for me and I feel fabulous now. Fuck it, I’m going shopping.
Thanks again.
No, Bob, an orgasm awakes the need for a cigarette.
Hi Bob,
You Europeans are so lucky! Knightly battles in resplendid garb combatting the forces of evil! Here in the States we go out in jeans and a T shirt to do battle with three piece suits armed with briefcases. Some contrast, huh?
Absolutely right that there is nothing to prove, one way or the other. It would be arrogance beyond belief for a finite entity to attempt to know anything about that which is infinite, and yet the mystery remains…
To be constantly aware of the mystery, to be humble before it, to be in reverence of it, that is enough. All of our ‘needs’ for meaning and purpose are satisfied in the construct’s of the finite mind, Oddly enough, that finite mind has the capacity to hold both the mystery and it’s constructs at the same time. That it seldom happens cannot be faulted to the design. A simple faith that what is supposed to happen, will happen is eluded by the arrogance of our power to ‘reason’.
In the Ten Commandments does it not say, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”? Is not the abstracting away, and declaring a ‘knowing’ of that which is God, the establishment of idolatry? When faith in the unknown, undifferentiated mystery become’s belief has not this first commandment been broken?
JT
Hi Marshall,
It was my son who wanted to put his ‘stick’ in the car but we would have needed a van for his equipment, so he had to do with taking the tip of the spear (along with his swords, knives, armoured gloves, chainmail etc.) - imagine him wanting to come to America with that lot!!!
Ay, now there’s the rub! This kind of Dogma is a long way off from the beautiful words of the 139th Psalm, but it is probably argued from there without an inkling of intuitive vision:
O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Even if these words reveal a mentality that we may not approve of today, you can undestand them intuitively - but if you start taking them literally, you fail to respect them for what they are. Hence you arrive in the conundrums and contradictions.
Shalom
Bob
Hi JT,
And pretty crazy if you ask me…
Yes, because: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” - because these things are merely metaphors or parables, and in no way describe the great Mystery adequately. The image you have before your mind’s eye is just as much a ‘graven image’ as an idol, and equally as misleading.
Shalom
Bob
Bob, interesting post. You wrote:
I have to strongly disagree. I mean, what can you say of a group of people who when showed the reasons to not believe they go and deny the validity of reason.
Totally agree.
I see where you’re getting at. Nevertheless I don’t see the desire to search for God a proof or argument for God. I mean, God in this context just sounds like curiosity among other things. I guess my question is, what is God? As to say, how do you define the God you defend?
I have to disagree strongly there too. Our desires are very strong forces. Forces that many times we cannot overcome. This desire for God does not need to be quenched. The will can overcome it. It was my first step to freedom.
Maybe, but this isn’t about seeing. This is about reasoning, God’s greatest gift to man.
At this time I’d like to bring up a relavent mini-argument, if you will, into the thread. I claim that without reason for a being’s existence it is fair to say that that being does not exist.
hombre,
You might want to reconsider that position. You wouldn’t want to disappear in an application of logic. The fact that there is no rational reason for you to be here doesn’t mean you cease to exist.
You may be able to explain HOW you got here, but not WHY.
JT
YOu are most certainly welcom.
Oh, crap. I just vanished for a while there. Yeah, I really do reconsider that one. That argument really needed a lot more thought.
I’m gonna try again on this one: What kind of information, or lack of, do you need to reasonably say that something does not exist? Could you say that it is about evidence of something versus lack of? Could you say that an absence of a stong argument is enough?
For example …
You haven’t been paying attention … 
The name that can be named
is not the enduring and unchanging name.
Do you really believe that? I believe that we replace it, but we don’t overcome it. Or, we are lost somewhere down in the lower heirarchy of needs and haven’t been able to become free for aspects of fulfilment.
And all the same, it is not the only gift with which we are bestowed…
Shalom
Bob
With all due respect, Bob, I feel that you have not clearly defined your God nor have you given a clear argument for him. I feel that you have been throwing clues but I think that it would benefit the discussion if you were clear.
By replacing it we do overcome it. I’m not going to pretend that I understand how the atheist overcomes the desire to believe in God but I can tell you that I am much more happy now, in a philosophical sense, than I ever was when I was a Christian.
Call it faith in science or whatever you wish. All I can say is that seeing the world with eyes of reason and truth is very fulfilling and reassuring.
I do believe in God. However, the God I believe in is not exactly the Christian God. Nor the Jewish God. Nor the Islamic God. Nor the gods of the various polythiastic religions.
I do believe in a religion. However, I am not a devout Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.
There is truth in every religion, just as there are faults. And if we can compile all the truths and leave out all the faults, we have what Gandhi once called “comparative religion.” And I found this comparative religion making a lot more sense than any other one religion.
Using comparative religion, I have found my God. I concluded that God is not a wrathful judge. He is not an all-powerful father changing everything as he pleases. He is keeper of the harmony and the balance of the world. He weighs yin and yang and tries to balance them. But he needs the mortals’ help.
Atheists doubt a God because of all the terrible things happening in the world. But remember that it is not God that is responsible for most of the killings and violence of the world, but the human being. Really, do we expect God to fix all the problems we ourselves have caused out of the blue? If we are not aware of anything else, be aware of this: A God helps those who help themselves. 
Whereas I started off as a great grandchild of a Methodist preacher, which meant that there was enough religious influence around me in the person of my kindly great Aunt, I broke away as many young people do, aided by the fact that my Father was a non-believer since an accident he had in an amphibian vehicle cost the lives of his crew. But as a young child I came into a brief but impressive contact with the far eastern religions in Malaysia, and growing up I was continually confronted with different systems of Religion. That seems to have followed me into my adult life, again aided by experiences that made me ‘look between the lines’.
I wanted to prove that the Christian Faith was a farce at 28 years of age, having reached the stage when young people tend to break with their backgrounds, bought a Bible and set myself down to sorting this issue out. But, although I had natural reservations, there was an underlying current that I discovered – even if I couldn’t explain it at the time – that made me curious. I went along with the church, but became disillusioned with the daily practise, because I to was naturally a child of this rational age, and wanted something tangible. I got caught up in an exotic group of Christians that had ties with Billy Graham and gained a profound knowledge of the Bible, albeit with said influence.
I broke with this group theologically, although not personally, because I recognised a disabling tendency to take things literally which I came to understand were figurative examples, and the exclusive nature of their religion. It was a tearful farewell having become a prominent preacher in the group, but I found that I couldn’t pretend to agree with them, as I became more and more aware of the mythical nature of Scripture and the need for contemplation, meditation and practical expression of faith. My personal assuredness led me into a position that showed a degree of contention but also a deep peace.
I had already become a Care Nurse, and found myself being promoted steadily, but seven years of intensive palliative care, experiencing regularly the last days and hours of the elderly, deeply influenced my own theology. It became even more reconciliatory and spiritual, I advanced the ecumenical cause and loosened my need for ‘right faith’ or orthodoxy. I made contacts to Catholics, Jews and Buddhists and Moslems in Germany, we had heated debates but found an underlying communion. My wife and I visited Sri Lanka and spent a week with Buddhists who explained their philosophy of life. We went to Egypt and tried to understand the Islam and the deep historical sources of Judaism, travelling along the Nile.
In this time I understood more and more how assuredness and faith grew and grows, how people gain the ability to become committed to values and traditions. I too gained the reputation of a ‘Sage’ – which I must say, was more a case of being a one-eyed amongst the blind. But I learned that mystical faith is very soothing but also very active socially. I was soon voted to be an elder of our parish, even if that post has more to do with the administration side of a parish. But I am also a controversial figure who strays from Dogma, because I believe that a big heart is more that all orthodoxy.
Mystical faith doesn’t rely on historical figures. It helps us in no way to claim that something happened thousands of years ago has a bearing on my life today – it helped at the beginning, when the movement was starting. What help us far more is the gathering of wisdom that cultures have attempted to gather over the centuries and millenia. Sadly, we are loosing this ability. To me, rather than argue whether something is historical or not, the attitude that the mythology of Christ invokes is far more important, saying: ‘this is the way the world is and this is the archetype we need to overcome.’ It isn’t whether this archetype existed, but that he is effective that is important!
As a passing remark, I believe the very fact that Christians who had known Jesus were at odds with the ‘hellenists’ who didn’t know him is proof of the existence of Jesus, but it is secondary.
The fact that there are archetypes has proven comforting for thousands of years, giving humankind examples to derive from, copy, use as pattern or emulate is frowned upon today, although we too look for some kind of orientation. The mythology of the New Testament tells us that the ‘risen’ Christ is present in the Holy Spirit – and as a spirit always present. That means that we only have to reach out spiritually to be able to derive from Christ’s example. We only have to allow the Holy Spirit to ‘rule’ our being, and we will emulate Christ – and in so doing we will fulfil the law of God. These are typical statements of mystical faith and not something that needs to be confirmed by science. It is ‘known’ intuitively, not by means of any kind of hard facts presented by archaeology or whatever.
I you like, Christ is the current archetype in a long line of examples - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Josef, Moses, David, Elijah … all portray a stage of faith in the Eternal One. One could argue that each presents an enhancement on the other - but I’m not sure. They derive from each other, and NT Mythology portrays a rise to perfection - Christ being ‘sinless’, or not separated from God, but it is an exclusive view that I don’t support. The discussion of pre-existence is not helpful, since according to Jesus the ‘Sons of God’ are peacemakers and redeemers, following his example.
If you read the Bible from the beginning, you can see that Genesis is compiled of legendary stories about the beginning of life, about the beginning of faith, about the encounter with the great Mystery we call ‘God’, how the people of Israel came into being, what the covenant is, how they received the book of the covenant and what this instruction tells us. They may not describe modern society, but they are intuitively comprehensible.
The second lesson is to take scripture seriously, by accepting the nature of the texts, not assuming that everything is rational thought. Much of it could be compared to a love letter - which generally becomes quite ridiculous if it is taken literally. But if you can open your soul and understand intuitively what is meant, you can begin to receive an insight of what the ancients have understood and experienced. This is the foundation for your own spiritual learning.
As well as taking the text seriously, you need to hold the ancient texts in reverence, stepping carefully over the statements that reveal the special circumstances of that age, following the development towards the Prophets and the Mystics to Jesus, where Jesus himself becomes a timeless figure and the symbol of a new epoch. Paul teaches the meaning of this new mythos as a new theology of liberation and deliverence, much as Abraham, Moses and Elijah stand for different era’s of understanding.
Thirdly, it is important to find our own peace, our balance and right to be here. We are not just an accident of nature, but we are all spiritually receptive if we can avoid the bright lights, the loudness of our world and the brutality of our fellow man. If we can open ourselves to the underlying grace of existence, to the spirit of love and the principle of mercy, we become receptive for the message that is waiting for us and assurance or faith.
Think about the songs we sing or hum to, when we take on the identity of the lover or the disappointed in the song almost without thinking about it. Or think about the adaptation of personalities in stories by children or when they ‘play’ their parents in games. These are means of getting a ‘grip’ of life and it has been a common means of understanding what cannot be ‘grasped’ physically. The same happens with literature, theatre and film today, when (not just young) people adopt the posture and language of their heroes or idols.
Unfortunately, the subculture of youth has often been superficial or, to some degree, destructive. Many of the idols of youth have been tragic personalities who end their lives with drug or alcohol abuse, with a retreat out of society, with death by misadventure or accident, or they disappoint by returning to tedious normalcy. It is understandable, since these characters portray the situation of many young people who lack significant Myths, in a world where reason and rationality are assumed to give answers for everything.
Some feminists have called women back to their role as story-tellers, finding many ancient stories wholesome and good for the development of children, relationships and society. They say it was when Men took over the storytelling that things went wrong and women became subjugated. Again, those stories were Myths transporting elementary truths which reason and logic has no access to and support the thesis of Mythos complementing Logos.
It is the enactment of the Grace of God by his Children by means of liturgy or lifestyle that brings this Mythos to life. God is the great Mystery at the beginning of the world, the source of life and of wisdom. This grand Prime Mover created a world with everything to sustain life - a planet that astounds mankind, full of fascination and challenge. Somewhere at the beginning of civilisation the Mythos develops, and Abram leaves his old tradition behind to become the father of as many people as there are stars. A spiritual man, a mystic, a visionary, stumbling through life, blown here and there by the cultures of the half-moon, collecting wisdom and preserving it, by sustaining a culture of Mystical Myth. How it all continued you can read in Genesis.
In Germany I read a number of books by ‘Magister Hellmuth Frey’ written thirty years before in 1950. Those thin books in the old German script - an exegesis of Genesis – were fascinating because they showed the Mythology of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be an exciting narrative that needs to be read in the night around bonfires. The great gap between Jacob/Israel and Moses is only artificially closed by the editor of Genesis, and if you read closely you know that this Mythology had been taken up by a people who probably weren’t his biological relatives at all.
But that again is a point that Jesus picks up when he says that God can create children of Abraham out of the rocks in a river. It isn’t the biological lineage, but the spiritual lineage that is valuable. It is the trust of Abraham with which the covenant is made – made one-sidedly at that, God being the only partner who goes through the ancient rite. Abraham is ‘excused’ – as he often is during his ‘trials’. The children that will be ‘as numerable as the stars’ are those that pick up the tread of this Mythos and live it on. The Tale is full of archetypes, just as Moses too, is a model of the new Israelite, like Joshua, emerging from Mizraim, assumed to be Egypt, picking up the thread that ended with Jacob/Israel and his sons.
This tradition transports the mystical experiences made with the Eternal One, or with “I am he, who is†– a clear proof that mankind cannot know the name of the Mystery, cannot grasp him, or have influence over him. Like Moses is told: “ Tell them ‘I am has sent me to you’†it is a tradition that can be picked up by people like me thousands of years later – providing we don’t mix Logos with Mythos.
That is the nature of mystical Christianity and I find no problems with it. I can’t offer you rational arguments or proofs, but a lot of experience in those stages of existence that we tend to blend out of society. I have the strength I need out of my faith in the fundamental principles of existence that are personified in Christ, and I follow his example.
Shalom
Bob