So, Zazzle and CafePress have decided to stop carrying Psalms 109:8 merchandise:

Here's the article at Crooksandliars.com.

Good for Zazzle and CafePress! I'm impressed with companies that aren't afraid of losing a few customers in order to do the right thing. Maybe the creepy bible misinterpretists (< made up word!) will take their balls and go home too? Sadly, I'm sure accusations of LEFT WING LOONIES CENSOR THE BIBLE!!!!! have already been thrown around by the gang at Fox News.

Even though I am not an Obama supporter, I find that verse quite offensive.

Can someone put some context around the verse for me?

Psalm 109 is basically a long prayer for vengeance. Here it is in the New International Version Bible

So it's not intended for a specific person, but anyone who doesn't share your beliefs?

It was written by David. He's praying to have God destroy his enemies and his enemies' families. I do not recall if they were of a different belief, but it is probable.

In one Jewish commentary I read, many of the "imprecatory psalms" were actually intended as a warning for Israel itself, by writers who thought the nation had gone astray.

(Most modern scholars agree that the psalms are the work of many hands, most of them writing post-exile, long after David. But, the earliest material in the book may date back to the earliest songs of temple worship. Even conservative scholars contend that David only wrote some of the psalms, and then helped anthologize other sacred songs into the book.)

I suspect the Christians behind the "Obama prayer" merchandise stumbled across the verse, saw the line about someone taking over the office, and thought they were being oh-so-clever. I doubt they paid the slightest attention to context. I'll even bet that if they were taken to task about "Let his days be short," they would say "Oh, we only mean his days in office. We would never wish death on anyone." And they would disclaim any attempt to add adjacent verses.

In other words, they have cherry-picked, which is something the fundies are long-practiced at. (So adept that they don't see it is themselves they are deceiving.)

On the other hand, I've heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the lord ...

I would say that this practice is not exclusive to "fundies." If I were asked for proof, I'd point to this thread.



I said, "IF."

Not exclusive, but fundamentalists of all stripes have certainly perfected the art, at great cost to humanity.

Even the venerable C.S. Lewis thought psalm 109 was horrible:

"In some of the Psalms the spirit of hatred which strikes us in the face is like the heat from a furnace mouth. In others the same spirit ceases to be frightful only by becoming (to a modern mind) almost comic in its naivety. Examples can be found all over the Psalter, but perhaps the worst is in 109.

The hatred is there--festering, gloating, undisguised--and also we should be wicked if we in any way condoned or approved it, or (worse still) used it to justify similar passions in ourselves."

I believe Lewis' sentiments are probably shared by the vast majority of practicing Christians, (at least, those who actually bother to read the Bible at all) but then, why do they continue to venerate these ancient writings? I know I went through many years of cognitive dissonance myself before I abandoned the whole enterprise.

You're all wrong. The Qur'an has a corner on the market of offensively murderous content. It's the ONLY religious tome that calls for the death of one's enemies.

Didn't Scientology believe that "Neither can live as long as the other survives"?


....oh, that was Harry Potter, wasn't it ?

I will point out that in Christianity, there is a tremendous difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. In the old covenent with the Jews as the chosen people, it was pretty much kill everyone who stood in the way. After the new covenant, being the death and resurrection of Jesus, the gospel was available to all and there was no more call to completely obliterate all the non chosen. I think that context is frequently lost, even at times among the Christians. I suppose the crusades might be the biggest example of that.

For that reason, unlike with the Quran (though I am NO expert on the Quran, certainly), I beleive that the old testament calls for vengeance, etc, are to be discounted and they are historical in nature, not to be applied today.

Of course this does not mean every Christian thinks that way. It would be a better world if they did.

Most if not all of the Old Testament killing occurs not because other groups had not been chosen to receive the law or the land. It's because they got in our face.

We remember that in our prayers and in the way we test our fountain pens.

Or they were in the way of the conquest of the promised land.

I can't decide if it is a huge improvement for things to move from "we'll kill you ourselves" to "convert or you'll suffer eternal pain and punishment beyond your very capacity to comprehend."

I guess since I consider the latter mythmaking, for me it is an improvement. If I believed in this god I think the latter would be much worse.

I am, of course, relieved that most Christians agree with you. What I don't understand is why any of them think the old testament god was anything but a monster. (If they really think the old testament is historical and true, that is.) Christians are fond of saying that Jesus/God is unchanging, (the same yesterday, today and forever) but they also seem quiet certain that this god did in fact change for the better.

Anyway, that discussion could go on forever. I will repeat my earlier contention that some of the most frightening curses and imprecations in the OT were very likely written much later than tradition would tell you, and written expressly to freak out post-exile leaders in Israel. As Judaism was busy assimilating itself into the metropolitan culture at large, and temple worship was in steep decline, psalms such as 109 make a lot of sense. They are the voice of reactionaries warning a straying people that they had sure as heck better not anger YHWH, because look at how mad it makes him!

I've also read that many/most of the stories of massive slaughter are almost certainly fictitious, and amount to chest-thumping. ("You guys may be in charge now, but look at what we did to the Midianites a few centuries ago! And we just might do it again!")

Such scholarly revelations, if valid, do much to de-fuse the nastiness of the biblical texts. It beats having to make justifications for a deity who gleefully engages in atrocities.

Summary: Every major religion has, at some point, abused their position of power and justified atrocities by pointing to documented proof of their divine right to do so. It is independent of the actual content/intent of said documented proof. It is common to all religion because it's common to all people. Religion didn't invent it, religion just makes it easier to justify to the masses.

Indeed, this theological discussion could go on ad infinitum, but I will address one thing related to the Christian view of the unchanging nature of God.

The reason the the sacrifice of Jesus was necessary was that God cannot be in the presence of what is determined to be sin. The innocent split blood of Jesus is an eternal sacrifice for that sin (as opposed to the frequent animal sacrifices), atoning for sin for all sinners forever.

I have read (and no, no links at presense - no time to find anything right now) a lot of the archeological history, and in fact, recently watched a really fascinating History channel special on the war tactics of the Isrealites in the Bible. Pretty cool. Wish I could remember the name of it.

The day I realized that this was incredibly horrible (and nonsensical) was the beginning of the end for my faith. I don't say that as a challenge or reproach. It's just where my inner thought-life took me. Many more of my family and friends agree with you than agree with me, and I adore them all. But, really, ugh.

Serious question:

Would you be willing to detail this sentence a bit more (per your faith and understanding, not asking you to speak for all)? I've not seen it before and it strikes me as a significant handicapping of god. So I assume I'm not understanding it correctly.

Basic Christian doctrine states that man is separated from God by sin. God cannot be in the presence of sin, or rather sin (and the sinner) cannot be in the presence of God. This is why in the Old Testament, when priests would enter the area of the temple called the "holy of holies", they had to go through very specific and stringent purification rituals. I think (and i can't specifically recall) there is an account in the Old Testament somewhere of a priest entering the holy of holies and literally frying to a crisp. Anyway, the righteousness of God, being what it is, cannot be around sin for this reason. This is what the sacrifice of Jesus did - once and for all, a permanent ultimately pure sacrifice covered the sin of all and made it possible once again for man to be in the presence of God. Rather than extremely long purification rituals or daily animal sacrifices, this was the final sacrifice required.

Is that what you were looking for?

I really don't get this. If man is now without sin due to Jesus' sacrifice, then what are christians still worried about? Why feel remorse for sins?

Ok, I guess what is confusing to me is this: Is not the Christian god omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent? If so, how it possible to not be in god's presence?

I think on this point it is more that we've been absolved (to some degree, it doesn't seem perfect since there's still a question for some faiths of what the status of an infant is) of original sin. We're still on the hook for our own sins but at least we're no longer screwed over by that tramp Eve and her wily seduction of Adam into sin.

Not without sin - able to ask forgiveness without making sacrifices ourselves.

So in terms of personal worry....I don't have any personally as to my final desitination upon death. I believe the reason for outreach to non-Christians, at least for those who are not interested in controlling the lives of others, is that belief and acceptance of the sacrifice made by Jesus is a prerequisite to eternal life. It isn't automatic to everyone. Just to those who acknowledge it.

As long as we're already in the Parking LoT...

wow. god sure seems like a petty creep, eh?

My pastors would have answered along these lines:
A Christian is not without sin, but considers his/her sins to be covered by the blood of Christ, so that when they are brought to the final judgement, God the father will not see that person's sin, but will only see the covering of Christ's perfection. In the earthly meantime, Christians expect that Jesus living within them will change their formal worldly nature into a Godly one, and thus, they will be more inclined to obey God's law and less inclined to fall into temptation. (All the Christians I know consider themselves still sinful and pray for help in being less so.)

So, at least in my evangelical past, acceptance of Christ as personal savior was a prerequisite for salvation (absolutely no one is good enough on their own) and once Jesus dwelt in one's heart, other life changes were to be expected - bringing the person closer to God via a direct relationship with Jesus.

Others can tell me if I have that right. I'm no longer at all on board, but I remember the words pretty good.

I would regard petty as being "wow, my creation sucks and they all deserve to be obliterated". I wouldn't regard what has been described as petty at all.

And Flippy, for the most part, that's about right.

I'm afraid so. When I was still an evangelical, this really bothered me.

But then, I also spent years as a liberal Christian trying to pretend the awful things in the book were untrue but that the nice things were absolutely so. That didn't work out either.

Abandoning belief brought a sense of vast relief. (Yeah, so I had to shuck the afterlife. Small price to pay, actually.)

You mean like when he flooded the earth?

(sorry, couldn't resist.)

I'm glad my summary of the faith seemed reasonably accurate to you. I try hard not to set up and criticize straw men. It's not always easy.

I hear ya, sca. I regard petty as "I made you and all the rest of everything that exists, and if you don't hold a certain belief that's not apparent by the nature (that I also created), then you will suffer for all eternity."

I would describe "worship me for no other reason than that I had someone else say that you should or face eternal pain and punishment" or "here, have some free will but if you use it you'll be sorry" to be at least a little bit petty (and this part survives into the New Testament).

But I'm trying to not debate, still curious about the "in the presence of god" part above as I'm still sure it is just a difference in word usage that has me confused.

This is where faith comes in.

The idea of god being unable to dwell in the presence of sin seems odd to me because it puts an "unable" next to a presumably all powerful entity.

On the other hand, if phrased as "God is everywhere, but is angered by sin, and cannot (or will not) accept a sinful person into his eternal kingdom," that sounds more like the phrasing I was brought up with.

(If Jesus is co-equal with god and is of the same nature, he clearly was able to hang about with sinners during his earthly life. Did he have an ability that God the father did not? This is the sort of question that is often answered with the phrase "it's a divine mystery." Answers like that were like live bait to some in my Sunday school classes of yore.)

He certainly had the ability to suffer on the cross, which God the father did not.

Absolutely your right and privilege. I can't seem to manage it myself. I hope I would defend your right to faith to the death if it came to that, and could expect the reciprocal. (and I'm really glad it hasn't come to that!)

Not able to respond in deatil at this time - not avoiding the question. You might have to wait until tomorrow.

Reminds me of an old Sunday school jest - Q: What is something that we all can see but that God cannot see? A: An equal.

Okay, not a knee-slapper, but instructive church humor seldom is. (On the other hand, seminary students that I know can't get enough of 'Holy Grail.')

If you take "hell" to mean the complete absence of God, and if you accept hell as the punishment for sin, then in order for Jesus to take on the sins of the world, he had to take on their punishment too, which is the absence of God within him. Only then could he truly "suffer" for their sins, thus paying their spiritual debt so that everyone thereafter could be saved from hell themselves by accepting his sacrifice.

Or something.

There's no honor to being good if you never had the option to be bad. Prisoners in solitary confinement are chaste, but we don't admire their commitment to chastity the way we do nuns.

Those are very weighty "ifs" in your premise.

Accepting them, however, it seems a little unfair that Jesus only had to endure this punishment for about a day and a half, and yet others get an eternity of it.

Mind you, there are sects that believe that Christ is in some sense, right now, in hell undergoing torment on our behalf, at this very moment, and will be until the final judgement. This is not a widespread belief, but it does have some very serious adherents.

Perhaps, but the injustice in this system is in degrees. ETERNAL suffering for everything from genocide to rolling through a stop sign?

It's true that virtue untested is no virtue at all. On the other hand, it's also no real virtue if the only reason you have for doing good is to avoid punishment.

it turns out that we humans have a lot of very rational, unspooky reasons to do good. Encouraging a cooperative, compassionate and safe society improves the quality of our lives, reduces costly social imbalances, discourages crime, reduces fear, allows the species to propagate and even (we hope) extend our knowledge and abilities to aid others, including other species and even the planet. Idealistic as heck, yes, but rational. Lots of people want all of these things, and not because they think they HAVE to want them for fear of angering an invisible being, but because we've all seen the benefits and want our own lives to be happy, safe and comfortable.

Conversely, there's no honor in being good if you are only good because you fear the punishment if you're not. So either you can fool god by being good when you're really not and reap the rewards (in which case god is a bit of a fool) or god can separate the truly good from the not in which case the thread of eternal punishment is unnecessary (and god is just petty). (This is one thing I like from Jehovah's Witness theology: hell is simply eternal death. No painful punishment, just eternal non-existence. There was a very interesting This American Life story a couple years ago about a prominent megachurch evangelical preacher who removed hell from his theology and the rejection he faced for doing so.)

Say "you can do whatever you want without fear of punishment" then see who is good. In this regard, one could argue that me not being a murderer is more impressive than scaeagles not being a murderer. I have no fear of eternal damnation and still don't do it (we both face the same earthly justice system).

Wait, so the only thing we were absolved of through Jesus' suffering was the requirement to burn animals and grain at the altar? Or is there some other suffering that was required before Jesus was born, suffering that Jews had/have to undergo? Or maybe no one was saved before Jesus showed up?

For Jews, the reason we no longer make ritual sacrifice is simply that we don't have the Holy Temple in Jerusalem anymore, and that is the only place to do it.

I knew a girl in high school who once came up to a group of us non-christians in tears, saying "I just fully realized that all of you are not going to make it to the afterlife, it's horrible." She finally realized it didn't make sense to her.

If you really believe that all your heathen friends are going to not get afterlife (or go to hell or whatever you believe, there are so many variations), doesn't that upset you? Doesn't that make you want to save everyone? Doesn't that make you question God? Just being ok with it seems like the most creepy response in my book.

Part of it has to do with the concept of holy places and divine intervention. God may be "everywhere" but he is purposefully there in certain places. In ancient times you removed your shoes at the Holy Temple same way Moses did at the burning bush. When the god concept is one with a mind a decisive actions, you can and will differentiate. The "hand of God" is here, the "absence of God" is there. Yes, God could watch you go to the bathroom, but he does not, and you are not supposed to bring a holy book in there either.

As others have said: Or something.

They stole this from the Jews.

Yes, but you get to eat shrimp and skip company birthday and Christmas parties. So obviously they significantly improved on the idea.

I am assuming that Jesus died for my sins and I am making sure that his death was not in vain

You owe me a box of screen wipes now, you bugger !!! :D

Thanks, but that was actually a joke. Confronted with the dearth of conventional historical evidence proving a primarily mystical event, Christians will often invoke their faith.

I was suggesting that the possibility that the Jews did not commit all the not terribly mystical barbarism attributed to them in the OT would prompt a similar faith-based response. (What do you mean we didn't? Of course, we did.)

Goyim.

Yeah, I kind of figured that out after the fact.

Hey, an entire day on this topic, and the atmo is still pretty sphere. Nice.

Yeah, I kind of figured that out after the fact.

But hey, I'll boldly stand by my easy virtue response anyway.

I've always said you're a man of easy virtue, Flippy !! :p

OK, lots to respond to.

Alex, the short answer to the omnipresent thing....as I understand it, this has to do with the Holy Trinity, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. Obviously the son, Jesus, could endure being around sin, and he took all sin upon himself. The omnipresent aspect is the Holy Spirit, and I would presume (though I can't point to any specific scripture reference for this) that the Holy Spirit must have the same sort of thing going on.

CP, Jesus was called the ultimate and final sacrifice, setting man free from the old covenant of law to a covenant of grace and forgiveness. Prior to that, forgiveness was something that had to be earned through atonement and sacrifice. Now forgiveness is there simply by asking because of that sacrifice.

And I do struggle all the time with with whether or not i think that the judgement of God is fair or not. That brings me a little bit toward what Alex commented on, as far as goodness. I think the issue is that no one is good enough in Christian theology. Hell, I do crappy stuff all the time that certainly do not match up with my faith. While there are those out there (and I hate it that it is this way) that think someone has to clean up and be good to decide to become a Christian, i think that if you have made the decision, you desire to do the right things. when people point out Christian hypocrisy, like with your Jimmy Swaggarts and whomever else, yeah, that sucks, but they are human just like anyone else and make mistakes. when you're public in your ministry and lact holier than thou it might be a good idea to make sure you're living it, but the fact is no one can.

I never want to stand in judgement of someone else and their eternal soul. I have always thought that was the whole purpose of the "judge not lest ye be judged" thing (rather than making moral statements on behavior). That's not my place. My place is to be charitable and relational and make efforts to meet the real needs of people (I won't go deep into it, but in the book of Acts the apostles basicaly say they are too holy to waste time feeding the poor, and after that the focus moves from them to those who do take the time to meet rea, physical needs). I know people who say "mormons won't go to heaven". Who are they to say? I have certain doctrinal issues with mormonism, but last I checked they profess the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as well.

I have rambled on quite a bit here. Sorry if I missed anything anyone wanted a comment on.

I think you do a nice job of not being holier-than-thou in these occasional faith discussions, sca, and I would have heartily agreed with your answers back in my devout heyday.

Which means, of course, you just never know where your views might end up in the future. (:evil: Join us ... join us ... he he he :evil: )

Interesting stuff - still sounds like a Get Out of Jail Free card to my Jewish ears, but it does make some sense.

My counter would be, isn't the road to hell paved with good intentions? I could seriously beg for forgiveness and really mean it after I've cheated on my husband or abandoned my children or betrayed my friends, but does that mean I've been a force for good in this world? I'm sure there really are people who feel honest remorse after doing horrible things, but still, you did horrible things, and there has to be a line drawn somewhere, right?

I think I'm still confused on this. I read your post a few times and I feel it could mean a few things. Are you trying to say that you believe all of your non-Christian friends are going to be ok in the afterlife, because in your estimation everyone falls short of the ideal? Or that you would rather not think about it so you choose to ignore it? You may not want to judge people but when it comes down to it, we're talking about the ultimate fate of people you care about.

It's this exclusionary concept that, as others have mentioned, leads to wanting to be among "your own kind", so you don't have to worry about the horrible fate of others. I felt this pull myself during my religious years. If everyone else is wrong, how can you even look them in the face?

Again, I think too many get caught up in good vs. bad. The idea is that everyone is unable to be good enough, and that's why the sacrifice of Jesus was so important. And there's enough of it for everyone. There's a parable called the parable of the laborers. Vineyard owner hires some people at sunrise and says he'll pay them a days wage to come work. He goes out late in the day and hires more and pays them the same. The land owner rebukes the jealous that worked all day because they still got what they were promised. So, if someone has been horrible and a murderer, but truly repents and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus before he die he receives the same forgiveness.

When I say I don't want to stand in judgement of someone's eternal soul, I mean it isn't for me to say what is in their heart based up on their actions. I would hope that someone would try to live their faith as much as possible.

As a Christian, I want to build relationships with people and yes, share my faith with them. I've never been a turn or burn kind of guy, thinking that kind of abrasiveness turns pretty much everyone off to what I believe Christianity is. So how can I look them in the face? How can I not look them in the face? Why would I not want relationships with those who don't share my faith? How else would I ever share it with them?

If all religions claim to be the only way and everyone else goes to hell (or whatever they call for that faith), that's an awful lot of people that are still "good" but just believe something different. Sounds like a spiteful God to me. Believe in Me or suffer the consequences.

I keep trying to come up with posts without coming across as the angry atheist. It's hard.

I'm not angry at any individual for having their faith, though I will forever be baffled as to how adults can't recognize all of these competing ideas of God as nothing more than man's imperfect attempts to synthesize our shared gut desire for order and morality into fables and tales that make it easier to impart the lessons. Why people can't accept that it's myth, not literal, and instead spend time making up new rules to justify the increasing improbability of this unknowable being, is beyond me. So much energy spent in service of an analogy that could be better spent taking care of reality.

But for the most part I don't really care what other people believe. But as I get closer to having a kid, I'm growing more and more frustrated as the difficulty of being an atheist becomes clearer to me. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I guess that my parents (my mom at least) would have more easily accepted me coming out as gay then if I told her I'm raising my child without the Jewish faith. And what's crazy about that is that my parents are NOT religious people, per se. They are the epitome of cultural Jews. They're in it for the traditions, not the theism. They made a strong effort to teach me that all these things I was learning about god were allegory, that the REAL reason to be good wasn't because of fear of God but because making bad choices had real consequences, for myself and others.

Yet I know that even THEY would have difficulty letting go of that.

And I struggle mightily with how to handle it with my own child(ren). I still value much of what the structure of the religious tradition did for me. It's a ready-built community that makes the early imprinting of morality and responsibility very straight forward. Duh, that's why organized religion has been such a successful meme, it's good at what it does. And certainly my parents managed to balance their disagreement with the dogma with their desire for that structure and connection to family, immediate and extended. And I definitely don't want to disconnect my child from his family by not having him share the cultural foundations that tie us together.

But then I picture us, after a Seder, standing and looking at an open door with a full cup of wine on the table calling, in some relatively aggressive language, for Elijah to return and for God to strike down the nations of our enemies and I cringe. I picture a 13yo giving a bar mitzvah speech, talking about how he'll dedicate his life to god's teaching, and I feel a rush of dishonest shame.

I want the cultural continuity without the theistic dogmatism. But even my search for like-minded secular Jews has only turned up depressingly touchy-feely agnostics that just do a find and replace of the word "God" with "binding spirit energy that unites us all" or other such nonsense in the holy texts.

I know I'm asking for the impossible. That I can't just hope that secular communities with the strength of a community with thousands of years of consistency are just going to appear in the face of overwhelming societal pressure against it, even though I believe their impossibility to be simply a matter of circumstance, not nature. And I know that in the end I will in all llikelihood do what my parents did and do my best to take the positive community aspects while de-emphasizing the rampant smiting and rigid dogmatism.

Wow, that was a long way of saying a whole lot of nothing. I've lost my original point. I guess mostly I just want to parrot what Flippy's been getting it, that no matter how you drill down and come up with ways to allow for your particular view of a supreme being to operate and account for the apparent contradictions that arise, they all being with one very big, unavoidable "if". And "if" that is by its very nature impervious to logic.

And as a final note - does anyone mind if I pop this out into its own thread? It's far too civil and intellectual to be part of this one.

[quote=scaeagles;307267]Again, I think too many get caught up in good vs. bad. The idea is that everyone is unable to be good enough, and that's why the sacrifice of Jesus was so important. And there's enough of it for everyone. There's a parable called the parable of the laborers. Vineyard owner hires some people at sunrise and says he'll pay them a days wage to come work. He goes out late in the day and hires more and pays them the same. The land owner rebukes the jealous that worked all day because they still got what they were promised. So, if someone has been horrible and a murderer, but truly repents and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus before he die he receives the same forgiveness.

[\QUOTE]

That totally goes against my sense of fairness. I know I know. Life isn't fair. Whatever.

GD - at some point you just wing it. I tell my kids what I believe personally, what their grandparents believe and what others believe. Then I tell them I want them to decide what they believe.

For quite awhile Amy wanted to go to church with her friend. (a friend I didn't particularly care for I should add.) I told her if she wanted to experience church, she could go with her Grandparents. That way it was about religion and not the friend and I had some idea of what she would be getting into. She declined. (she wanted to go and hang out with friends more then learn about God and religion.)

Not too long after she decided her "friend" was a hyprocrit. Lot's of talk about God and being good but ultimately didn't practice what she preached. Now she's probably more atheistic or agnostic than not but I left things open for discussion.

What was important to me was to let her know I loved her if she believed in God or not.

Thus the parable of the laborers.

Which leads to my biggest issue with Christianity. It's ALL about the afterlife. Earthly life is entirely unimportant. We're just biding our time until Rapture when all of this horrible life on earth can end anyway, so it doesn't really matter what goes on here, as long as you find your path to heaven, yuo're good. Considering that I'm pretty well convinced that this is all I get, it bums me out that there are such a large number of people treating this place like an airport boarding terminal rather than focusing on improving this life for themselves and others.

I don't really understand why you think that way.

True Christianity is all about helping others. If you refer to my earlier posting which I referenced the book of Acts, the focus goes onto those who don't consider service and meeting real needs as below them.

Someone please just tell me how many steering wheels I need to grab when the time comes.

I don't mind - it has grown legs of its own.

GD, I can easily relate to your post. If I were starting a family, I would be dealing with many of the same issues. I loved half of my religious upbringing (the episcopal half) - In the Episcopal church, I felt very accepted and valued, and there my early interests in music and the arts were encouraged and nourished. I loved the traditional music and liturgy, and I'm really happy I had that experience. I would want to share that kind of thing with my children, but, it would be so tough, since much of the the content of that liturgy now makes me grit my teeth. (I know some who can treat the whole thing as metaphor and smile happily throughout - as I myself did for a while.)

I am intrigued by the Celebrant movement - people who create non-religious ceremonies to commemorate significant life passages. Celebrants customize their ceremonies to include their clients favorite music, verse and so on, and the result is a means of creating community and significance for those who can't get on board with traditional religious observances.

Last year, I lost an aunt (a really cool aunt, I should add) to breast cancer. She got married just a few months before her passing to a man who himself is a celebrant, and their wedding was just such a ceremony. I saw a video of it, and I was knocked out by how beautiful and open-hearted it was. Ever since I saw this, I have been wanting to learn more about it, perhaps even get involved. (There are several foundations that train for this, including one run by the Institute for Secular Humanism). At this point in my life, I have been feeling a pull toward finding some way of filling the gap left by my lack of communal ritual and shared observance. Is this the way? I don't know, but I'm looking into it.

Your interpretation of true Christianity. But when heaven is the reward, and forgiveness is the only qualification for the reward, it's not hard to see where that leads. Sure, the workers may stop grumbling for the day since they were given what they were promised. But if that same vineyard comes by the next day, what motivation do they have to work with him again if they can instead just work the short evening shift and get the same pay?

Suicide was a regular occurrence for Christian sects. It took until the 6th century to realize that there was a nasty loophole in the whole "heaven is the ultimate reward" thing, that too many people were taking the shortcut and Christians were killing themselves out of existence. Thus suicide was declared to be a sin punishable by hell.

In modern times you have to look no further than the success of the 700 Club to see that the view of the afterlife as the only real goal is alive and well. They're friends of Israel not out of a great love of Jews, but because they want the temple reestablished to bring the end times. They have millions of followers, all doing whatever they can to bring trigger the destruction of earth as we know it.

I should recant a bit and include pretty much all religion in this. Judaism is not exempt from elevating the reward of afterlife over this life. The difference being that the price of entry according to Judaism is directly related to your actions in this life, no shortcuts allowed.

My interpretation? I would argue it would have to be the definition of anyone who has studied the life of Jesus. His was a life (or at least a ministry once he began his ministry) of service. He taught, but he also fed and healed and met real physical needs. Christianity by definition is the desire to be like Christ.

Christians do stupid things all the time. Back in the 70s, when so many evangelicals were convinced they were going to be raptured by a certain date (don't recall what the date was), many went out and ran up HUGE credit bills, thinking they would never have to pay. Well, that's stupid. Stupid like the whole suicide thing. And there are plenty of stupid Christians.

The biggest obstacle to my personal faith was always the people who professed to beleive it, including certain close relatives. What I realized in my life was that Christianity wasn't about those who professed to believe, it was about what was being believed in. That being said, Christians are the face of Christianity, and doing stupid stuff sure make what they profess to believe in look bad.

GD,

I'm with you down the line. I think that if I were to raise a child now, I'd probably be teaching him or her about Ethical Culture, a la Felix Adler. The Los Angeles group is here.

I'm so confused. Was this thread created as a spin off of the off color thread?

Yes, it started there, presumably as Gn2Dlnd considered the topic of psalm 109 fitting the "random off color" theme. But with 60+ posts of level headed discourse regarding belief, I thought it deserved to be pulled out of there.

Whew! I'm glad to have another angry atheist on board. Now I can go back to being contrarian and believing in god. And homeopathy. And Andrew Weil.

Crap. Level headed? That sucks. The LoT might get back to being what it was supposed to be then. I don't know if I can take that.

Don't forget Santa!

No, I"m going to have to stick with "Convincing your kids of the existence of Santa is morally abhorrent and a minor form of child abuse."

That's just too fun of a position to give up.

When my son Jake discovered there was no Santa, he cried that a nice man such as St. Nick was actually dead.

I can't actually remember believing in Santa so I don't recall how I felt (I do know that when I was 7 I helped my mom fill the stockings for my sisters so I was onto it by then).

Am I bad to hope that my youngest figures it out so I don't have to pretend anymore?

No! You were bad for lying to him in the first place, you mild child abuser (told you this position is fun to have).

Tell him the truth now! Then you can team up and lie to other children!

I recall an Easter sermon by the liberal minded bishop who ran Grace Cathedral where he said something along the line that you don't have to believe that the resurrection actually happened to be a practicing Christian. I think that's ridiculous.

I also think that while the phenomenon of cultural Judaism is real, it's also a little lazy. Our kids are raised in my wife's church because I didn't want to be one of those atheistic Jewish men that I read about in Alan Dershowitz's "The Vanishing American Jew" who marry Christian women but insist that the children be raised Jewish, not because they believe in God or love Judaism but because they hate Christianity. I've tried to revive a personal practice of Judaism and, at the end of the day, I truly can't be bothered. Maybe it's my loss, but there it is.

So, GD, and, perhaps, CP, I must ask, and by asking, I don't mean to badger, but . . . if you don't believe as a matter of historical fact that the Old Testament God told someone referred to as Abraham, "Do this!", then why are you circumcising your son?

Cause everyone else does it?

and by the way - if they give you the option to watch, I highly recommend against doing so.

I believe I've said this before. The state of my child's penis is not a topic in which I intend to engage in this forum.

I just assumed it would be California.

Or Florida, which is, according to Homer Simpson, "America's wang."

As they say in court, dude, you opened the door.

But I'll rephrase. What is the rational case for cloaking any practice--salutary, neutral or harmful--as being commanded by a god in which you do not believe?

Put simply, inclusion. As I think I've made clear, I'm well aware that organized religion exists and is pervasive for a reason. A document, agreed upon, set of baseline rules and rituals that allow a society to efficiently impress those too young to understand the complexity of reality with the basics of moral and ethical behavior is a damned useful and attractive thing. I happen to not believe that the only possible such set HAS to involve teaching the supernatural, however for better or for worse (I'd argue worse), that's the option I'm faced with. It's not ideal, but especially in light of my firm belief that family connectedness is an essential component in my life and in my child's, I don't have a whole lot of other avenues open to me. Yes, I could (and will) explore groups like the secular humanists who are trying to bridge that gap, and may be doing so quite well. But the fact remains even if that turns out to be as good as it can be, they are still not my family and I'm still left with the choice of abandoning that which connects me to my family vs. making some compromises and hope that I can get the message across sufficiently that we do so by choice, out of tradition, to connect to a community, not out of superstition.

Is this thread still LoT-eyes-only? (not sure if Daily Grind has the same viewing restrictions as the Parking LoT)

No, the Daily Grind is publicly viewable.

Gosh, and here I am, an atheist who is currently playing Santa Claus for money. (If it's any help, I'm not enjoying it in the least.)

"I'll tell you what you can call her if you like...in fond remembrance of me, the Easy Virtue."
NA might get this reference right away. (But not for the reason you think.)
:D





I read an article today wherein Richard Dawkins said this: "Religion teaches us to be satisfied with non-explanations..." I think that's one of the things about organized religion that bugs me.
Source

Ah, well that precludes me really saying what I think of Christianity.

Needless to say, it's not good, based on personal experiences with a [at the time about-to-become] Mega-Church.

If you wanted to, you could look up the book "People in glass houses" by Tanya Levin.

What, are you suggesting I'm not a virtuous woman? Me and Tracy, old pals.

Hey look! I started a thread!

I hope no one minds if I repost my OP to the thread from which it came. The disingenuous use of an offensive statement is germane to the original thread.

Although, it is interesting where it went instead.

That just makes no sense. No sense at all.

You say "being good when you're really not" but who we are is defined by our choices. Harry Potter is a Gryffindor, not a Slytherin, KWIM?

Okay, wanna say a few things, forgive me for skipping around here, but:

On the topic of Jesus' sacrifice - You have to accept the sacrifice for it to do you any good. However, accepting the sacrifice means realizing that you believe in Jesus and what he says. What he says is "Go forth, and sin no more." So there IS a commandment to follow through with your "faith" in your future actions. In context, it's about your intent. We are still sinners, we will still sin, but we're supposed to try not to. If we really believe, then we believe that we're supposed to do what God wants us to do. Accepting the sacrifice is about committing, in your heart, to the faith, not JUST lip service.

On the topic of other religions:

There's a reason I consider myself a non-denominational Christian. I believe there are many paths to God, and that none of us have it exactly right, not even us Christians. In the end, I think what matters to God is that you believe in God, and that you make an effort to be a positive influence on the world around you. Since I accept the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross, I consider myself a Christian. But most of my personal religious belief has to do with a direct relationship with God. I do not buy into dogma, but rather look for underlying intent behind behavior. A good Muslim (and by that I mean the kind of folks who keep reminding us that Islam is a religion of peace, not the terrorists or other fanatical creeps that every religion seems to be plagued with (and in this sense I consider atheism a religion too), but the general, normal, GOOD people who have chosen a particular path to God), has just as good a chance of getting into the presence of God as I do, but he must follow his own path, unless life leads him to accept a different path. The differences in religions prove that religion has been too influenced by man, and is not purely of God, even if it's about or inspired by God. I think that it's arrogant of any man to believe he can truly understand everything about God, and therefore, no religion taught by men can possibly be 100% right. But that doesn't mean God doesn't exist or that there's no reason to be a good person. Each religion has some things it probably gets right, or close to right, and each religion has things it gets wrong.

Personally, my mind gets completely blown just trying to comprehend the vast infinity of the universe (eg: how can something possibly go on forever, existing with no beginning and no end, how did it come to be, was there anything before it, how could there not be, but if something existed before the universe, what? And if that's God, what existed before God that he came into existence?) I cannot scientifically prove infinity, and I cannot possibly understand it. I just accept it as the closest my little alligator brain can possibly wrap itself around, and is therefore all I'm probably meant to know about it. Same thing with God. We don't know everything about God. We're probably not meant to, it's way over our heads.

God feeds us the info we need in the way he feels we'll find most accessible. This is why I believe there are different religions in the world. He has provided many paths to his grace and gives us the freedom to find our way there. We also have the freedom to reject his insistence and make ourselves the center of our own universe, even if that takes them farther from him. And many say that in death you receive a greater measure of that which you desired in life. If you desired nearness to God, (eg: if you truly believed in your faith, and in God, and demonstrated that by doing good for the world like God wants you to), then you dwell in the presence of God for eternity. If you reject God, and do not desire his presence, then you will receive it, in abundance. That's why so many view hell as simply the absence of of God - cold and dark, not like the fire and brimstone with dancing devils and Satan and Saddam sharing a condo that we've seen portrayed.

So with that belief, how do I account for injustice or punishment for crimes?

Here's where my belief really diverges from any sort of dogmatic version of Christianity, and probably also isn't covered anywhere in the bible, it's just what I believe...

I feel we're all here with a purpose. Each person has their own purpose in this world. For some, it may be to perform a certain function in the operation of the world (eg: exist to parent someone so that that person may fulfill their purpose), for others, and perhaps for all, to learn something or teach something. I don't pretend to know why we might need to learn something, but I believe that God created this world for whatever his purpose might be, and we are sent here to do whatever it is we need to do. I think many of us go through life accomplishing our purpose without ever knowing what it was or when we've done it. This is how I explain the existence on this earth of a child who may live only a few days, hours or even minutes before departing this world. Their purpose may have been the effect that their death, or their existence at all, has on others. (The whole butterfly flaps its wings thing).

Hold on to your seats kids, because it gets trickier - there are things I don't absolutely believe in, but believe in the possibility of. The undefined aspects of my faith.

Per the previous section regarding purpose, let me say that I believe in the possibility of reincarnation. Come to earth, fail to fulfill whatever your purpose was? Do it over again. And again, and again, until you've fulfilled the purpose of your soul and return to heaven.

I do not know if heaven, or dwelling in the presence of God, means remaining a separate entity amongst entities, or becoming part of the collective soul that is all of heaven aside from God, or God itself. The idea of returning to join God, or for your soul to reattach itself to a sort of God-collective (the holy spirit?), makes a lot of sense in light of the "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end."

I'm not sure I believe in the existence of a hell that eternally punishes. But I do consider the possibility that hell, and purgatory are simultaneous, and defined by our experience. In other words, maybe we're there. Maybe our souls split from God, needing to perfect something in order to return. Eternal damnation as a result of refusing to learn things like compassion and love mean that our soul continues to dwell on Earth through many lifetimes, until that lesson is learned. And that this is evidence of the compassion and mercy of God - even though God hates sin, I believe that a merciful God gives us infinite chances to turn that around, live a good life, improve the world, and ultimately attain his Grace.

Though I'm by no means a scholar of Jewish law or all the specifics of Kosher rules, and for that matter I'm not a great student of the bible either, having only read some parts of it and taking from it that which made sense to me, the overriding theme I gather from that which seems to be God's law, is that God loves us and wants the best for us, and that these rules of how to live our lives are really about trying to give us a life that is good, healthy, and hopefully happy. And that "disobeying God" is doing something that is either unhealthy for us, or will make our lives more difficult/painful. In this sense, the "laws" look a lot more like "guidelines". For example, if pork is not kosher, and many Jews are allergic to pork, then perhaps the reason pork is "forbidden" is so that Jews don't get sick. Or perhaps certain things are not kosher because they involve intelligent animals (pigs again) or because one meal requires the extermination of too many lives (shrimp), and that god loves pigs and shrimp too. But obviously, we're not forbidden to eat meat entirely (unless you're Hindi?), so there's a certain natural order to the world, where animals must eat each other, but perhaps that is the life purpose of dumber animals or animals who can create a meal more efficiently.

It's weird, I know, but I've delved into my musings here, areas I think about but haven't really made decisions on.

And now I've rambled on so long that I've entirely lost any other point I was trying to address.

In summary, I don't think you have to toss out the concept of God entirely, even if you wholesale reject the convictions of his followers. Perhaps God wants you to take a different path, or your own path, or any path other than thinking that there is no God, because if there isn't then how/why does the world exist? If it sprang out of nothing, where did it come from? What was nothing? If it always existed, how can that possibly be? The God explanation makes more sense to me. Strip away the bull**** of dogma and get back to the world exists, something is greater than us, souls do not spring up into existence out of nothing from nowhere. And the miracles of the world that science has uncovered and is trying to uncover are proof of the incredible complexity of God's intelligence. Evolution is so amazingly perfect a way for the world to adapt, continue, and change, that only God could have thought of it. (Yeah, I've never understood people who think that belief in evolution is at odds with belief in God). And we are NEVER EVER going to understand it all, aren't meant to, and probably couldn't wrap our brains around it even if we could know all the truth, so God spoon-feeds us a version of what we need to know to do what we need to do in our brief time here.

Sorry for the total ramble

No, not really. Especially when your next post includes this:

If the intent behind apparently good acts is simply a desire to avoid punishment and not a desire to do good then I'd argue that your "goodness" is questionable. Though yes, it is often true that the beneficiary of such apparently good acts probably doesn't care.


What about the part where he says there's only one path to God and that is through him? Such as in John 3?

My question to scaeagles, Morrigoon, whomever is still interested in the conversation is this. Let's imagine that tomorrow you were presented with concrete, indisputable, utterly convincing-to-you proof that no god exists (I'll leave discussion of "burden of proof" to another time). If so, would your behavior change going forward? Would your personal desire to be good and do good things and treat other people "right" disappear? If not (as I imagine, and hope, is your answer), where does that leave the necessity for belief in god?

Also on the "if proven" side, if proof were indisbutable, I'd believe. But I'd like to think that doesn't mean I would blindly follow. As mentioned above, the god described in the Bible (throughout, not just the Old Testament) is one I find reprehensible. This is true for the holy texts of most other religions as well.

To me, the demands for worship made by gods are no more reasonable than a domineering mother saying "I brought you into this world and therefore I get to pick your clothes and friends and job when your 40."

And no less valuable than the advice of a parent who says: "Get good grades, go to college, shower every day, and don't date a woman just for her good looks" because they love you and genuinely want to see you have a good life.

First, I don't think that proof can or will ever be presented to me. I know something greater than me exists. Many things greater than me exist, starting with the Universe. Even if you could present some kind of "proof" to me that the Old Testament God didn't, I could point to the vastness of infinity and ask you where it came from. It came from somewhere, and if it didn't, if it is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of existence, then we've come full circle. Then all of existence is God, God is everything, all souls come from the universe and return to the universe.

You can rip apart man's texts all you want, and I'll acknowledge their flaws right along with you. Again, because I think independently about my spirituality. But you can't shake my faith in something greater than myself. And you can't convince me that there's nothing after death. If there isn't anything after death, I really haven't lost anything believing in it.

I don't think life is in any way remotely enriched by a disbelief in God. I just don't see the upside. "Being right" is not an upside (if we take the assumption that you are right.) There's no prize for dying and going "Haha, I'm dead, see? Really dead, and there's nothing else - ever!" In fact, if you're right, you'll never really know it. Believing in life after death, if I'm wrong, I'll never know it, never have lost anything by being wrong. If you're wrong about God and life after death, there's a pretty tremendous potential downside.

Sure, there's a freedom from dogma, but I have that, and I didn't have to reject any idea that involved a being greater than myself. In fact, I find a certain dogma in atheism, and definitely a lot of proselytizing. Cemeinke is the first, and thus far only, non-proselytizing atheist I've ever met. So you've traded religion of a supreme being for religion of the non-existence of a supreme being. So what's the change?

I don't think my behavior would change as a result of the non-existence of a supreme being, but that's a silly reason* to actually stop believing in the existence of one. And certainly, there are times when the thought that being a good person, which I am for its own sake, might be pleasing to God, puts an extra note of sweetness to it. Like an extra spoonful of sugar in an already good cup of tea. Not that I go around every day asking myself if what I do is pleasing to a supreme being. But if I stop to think about it, I think, "Cool, yeah, he probably likes this". Sometimes I wonder about things, like when what I believe in my heart is right conflicts with what is written about the topic, but ultimately, I go with what my heart tells me, because I think right is right, regardless of what's written. And if I'm wrong, well, then I was wrong and there will be a price to pay, or not, but ultimately my measure of what is "right" comes from my heart, and I hope God agrees with me.

(*- the "silly reason" being whether or not my behavior would change, not the non-existence. Obviously if God didn't exist, it'd be a pretty good reason to stop believe in his existence. But whether or not a hypothetical non-existence would change my behavior, isn't.)

The advantage of being a monotheistic independent thinker is I can cherry pick information from the existing texts without having to reconcile what seems right with that which doesn't. Text are imperfect because man has written them (Divinely inspired, perhaps, but written, rewritten, and repeatedly edited by fallible men). "Right" is an immutable truth, and is not changed by man. I have to hope (faith?) that my heart tells me the real truth, even when it conflicts with what man's texts tell me.

I'll put a question to you, GD, and I genuinely want to know: what do you feel is the upside to discovering you were atheist? Was there a benefit to this conversion? Is there some area of your life that has dramatically improved by becoming an atheist that would not have improved if you merely become agnostic?

You get my Award For Honesty with this one. Lots of Christians I know cherry-pick and insist that they are actually finding the "true meaning" of scripture.

As an atheist, I think it is fun, stimulating and wise to browse the (purportedly) holy texts of history and give consideration to those ideas that seem useful, both in and out of their original contexts. So, I honestly applaud your willingness not to be bound to any sect or ideology, and to gleefully roll your own.

I know that you asked GD and not me, but I'll briefly say that my own embrace of no-god-ness felt like a release from prison. I don't have time to go into it now, as I'll soon be running late for work, but the benefits went well beyond simply feeling "right." In my own case, it helped me get rid of some nagging double-think, helped me drop some prejudices, and re-ordered my priorities a bit, but on the whole, I'm very much the same person as before. I feel more clear-headed on some topics, but I don't know everything. (including whether or not there is a massively powerful intellect hiding behind the cosmic curtain.) In fact, I now know that I know almost nothing at all.

More later if it seems appropriate.

(P.S. - You may find that what secularists call atheism, most people of faith call agnosticism. What most people of faith call atheism, most atheists reject. - In other words, atheists do not believe there is a god or gods, but most do not claim to know there isn't. To many, atheism and agnosticism are not even two different things, maybe only a matter of degree. More later if it seems appropriate. DP)

I've never believed in a god or anything supernatural (being bluntly honest, to me defining god as "the universe" is absurdism) so I can't speak to the benefits of a "conversion." All that happened was eventually I found the nerve to tell my parents I thought it was a crock.

On the topic of labels, I've said previously that if you want to get technical I'm not an atheist. I don't know there is no god, no supernatural entity. So, technically I would be agnostic. It is simply that in the absence of any evidence or reason to assume such an existence I live my life as if there is none (just as I live on the assumption that all the other infinite things for which there is no evidence or reason to assume don't actually exist). I can't recall if I saw someone else say it or I made it up but I refer to this as pragmatic atheism.

As for benefits, to me I see it as not wasting time on things that don't matter. You reference Pascal's Wager in your post (why not believe in God since if you're wrong there's no penalty and if you're right the reward is huge) but the flaw in that is too glaring to me to ignore. Namely that it isn't a binary choice of believe in god or not but rather believe in the wrong god or not. Sure, I could choose to belief (if "choice" is truly possible) in a god that accepts all, but my definition of god does not create such a god. So even if I choose to believe odds are I'll still get it wrong (what if the only people who have it right are one of those uncontacted Amazonian tribes, may decision of faith will not have served me any purpose).

Plus, the big harm I see in the magical thinking of religion (faith in that for which there is no evidence simply because it feels - or someone has convinced you it is - right) is that it conditions people to believe in magical thinking in other areas of life where it most definitely has harmful impacts (water dowsing, psychic healing, and homeopathy are orders of magnitude reasonable, based on available evidence, than god. Also, and while this is not true of everybody, religion misused removes the possibility of debate as a social tool. Received wisdom can not be argued.

Yes, the tools of science can and frequently are misused but it contains within itself a process for debate and while it can be slow it generally works.

Ultimately, though, I just don't see the benefit of believing something to be true simply because it makes me feel better to believe it. And if I did, there are things I'd believe in long before I got around to worrying about what happens after I die. Such as believing that if I'm fat long enough I will eventually gain the power of flight and invisibility (which, from my point of view, isn't any more silly an idea than the thought that God created the universe so that Jews would have somewhere to live).

As for proselytizing atheism, I honestly don't care what other people believe up until they start trying to use those believes as a tool for managing other people (and this is true of religious and non-religious thought). That said, I do like to explore what people, including myself, believe. But me saying "I think you've got it all wrong" does not mean "I think you should change just because I think that."

Another note on labels: Richard Dawkins (surely the world's most famous atheist at the moment) posits a 1 to 10 scale of belief, where 1 denotes Ï know there is a god,"" and 10 denotes Ï know that there is not a god." Dawkins points out that the majority of believers have no problem listing themselves at position 1 - they proudly say that they are certain in their knowledge that a god exists, but very few atheists put themselves at position 10 - most acknowledge that we don't yet know enough about the universe to say. Dawkins himself says he is something like an 8.7 - he regards the probability of a deity as vanishingly small. I would feel comfortable putting myself at a 9.

Morigoon - speaking only for myself, I find it refreshing to be invited to even talk about these things openly. In my day to day life, there are very few people who are even interested enough in the topic to engage in a conversation.

Oh! Gotta go!

OK - As I was saying:

In my face to face life, I'm never invited or encouraged to talk about this stuff, so it's delightful do so here. I hope I don't come off as proselytizing. I value your input as much as everyone else's.

I think a trap non-believers get into is the presumption that belief in God is something singular. The various philosophical "proofs" of God seldom provide evidence of the vengeful God of the old testament, or the forgiving God of the new, or even the pantheon of Hindu or polytheistic faiths. Perhaps there are some other 1-10 scales to rank your belief in God on omniscience, omnipotence, benevolence, and singularity.


For myself I take an Occam's razor approach and find the belief in God to be unnecessary for me to live my life and make decisions. But should I have some numinous experience with the mysterium tremebdom, who knows? I can only live out m own life based on my own experiences, I know people who believe they have experienced God as a very real way, and its as fruitless for me to convince them their experiences were not real as it is for them to discount my own experiences.

Indeed, the numerical score is of limited utility, mostly just as a way to clarify how I'm using terminology.

Happily, from my own perch, belief is not a precondition for enjoying the numinous. I've brushed against that and want more of it.

I'll try to respond to some of this without too much parroting of what flippy and Alex have already said very well.

Yes, when you get down to it I am technically an agnostic in that I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility that I might one day be handed proof of the existence of a being capable of the things purported by religious folk. However at this point I prefer the term atheist just because "agnostic" to most people seems not to imply, "I do not have any reason to believe a supreme being exists, and won't until presented with evidence," but rather most people seem to take it to mean, "Oh, so you believe in some sort of supreme being you just don't believe in any of the versions codified by organized religion." The latter simply does not fit.

As for the benefit to me in "conversion", see flippy's post. I tried the agnostic thing for a while. But eventually I grew weary of the constant mental dissonance it caused. I found myself continually redefining this nebulous belief in "something greater than me" over and over to try to make it fit what my experience in the world was telling me to be true, that no matter how amazing, beautiful, infinite, spectacular, breathtaking, etc. my experiences, none of it required a supreme being to have occurred. And so I just felt like I was lying to myself, playing mental games simply because I felt like I was supposed to believe in something. Until I just stopped because it was unnecessary.

Yes, the infinite is difficult to ponder. Yes, the existence of something beyond the infinite is something that makes sense. However, there is nothing that says to me that that "something" is any more likely to be something remotely resembling any amalgamation of god figures humans of convinced themselves of than it is to be an all powerful teapot. No more likely to care one bit about, or have the ability to interact with, my daily life and thoughts than I'm able to care about or interact with the firing of a particular single neuron in my brain.

As I've said, I find value in the fact that religions are attempts to synthesize into easy-to-passs-on form theories about how people should comport themselves in order to maintain a functioning society. No less valuable in that sense than the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, what have you. But (parroting Alex some), mistaking the origin of those for magic leads to poor conclusions and prevents people from evaluating things objectively. Yes, we can all cherry pick that which works and that which doesn't, but to my eye, if you are not accepting that what you're cherry picking from is of entirely human origin, that it is the result of an entirely non-supernatural process of evolving into social beings, then you drawing your conclusions starting from a false premise, the same false premise that all of them started from, and aren't likely to improve much on their flaws.

This is fascinating. So where would you guys each rank yourselves on that scale?

Just popping my head in, I'd say about 7-8. Considering I used to be a 1, that's quite a shift for just one Pastor to facilitate, wouldn't you say?

I would say "So?, their loss", but they've gone on to become a religious juggernaut in the Australian Christian Scene (c)(tm)(please donate 10% at the door for using this term) so I don't think my departure caused much loss to them at all.

Bitter? Much? Heck, not me !!

The criteria for intermediate values on Dawkin's scale aren't well defined so it is hard to be very precise in placing myself on it. But since it is his scale and I am very close agreement with him on the major points (1. I've had no personal experience that suggests the existence of such an entity; 2. I see no gaps or contradictions in our understanding of the universe that suggest no other possibility than that such an entity exist in order to be reconciled; 3. The existence of such an entity would contradict everything we think we know about the nature of the reality around us; 4. When examined, every real world evidence of such an entity claimed has proven vaporous; 5. The odds of such an entity existing seem vanishingly small.) so I guess I would be near an 8.7 as well.

Perhaps helpful would be to look at how "atheist" I am on other items.

Unicorns: 7 on the existence of the form, 9 on their magical properties. The existence of unicorns would not violate any physical properties of the universe. However, the initial reports of such creatures are known to be the result of faulty observation and it is unlikely that there remain many large mammals to be discovered but it does still happen leaving open the door for discovery of a creature matching the physical description of unicorns.

Homeopathy: 9.2. A theory that exists entirely within the realm of scientifically testable hypotheses and yet fails conclusively. The theory was developed from philosophy rather than evidence based need and its validity would violate everything we know about reality around us.

Sub-atomic structures: 2.0. Theory derives entirely from observation and filling gaps. Allows for predictions about the reality around us to be made that are then demonstrated through testing. However, much of it relies on indirect observation which heightens risk of misinterpretation of root cause or that only a subset is being described and in a way that is technically incorrect (like how Newtonian physics is correct within its realm but missed relativity and quantum mechanics). Also, ultimately I am relying on the expertise of others as the expertise necessary for personal discovery is quickly beyond me.

Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theories: 6.5. If forced to choose I still fall on th side of accepting that Oswald was a lone gunman. However, many conspiracy theories do not lie outside the realm of physical possibility though suffer for relying on questionable evidence or simply Argument from Personal Incredulity. However, I would not be at all surprised if I eventually have to accept I'm on the wrong side of this one.

Quality Full House Episodes: I've seen them all so personal experience argues solidly against the evidence of any good episodes of Full House. Bob Saget and David Coulier are involved and so any quality resulting would violate known physical properties of the universe.

GD brings up another good reason I avoid the agnostic term. A lot of people think of it as meaning someone just isn't sure, or is still "seeking." I'm pretty sure, just not dogmatic.

Also, I hope that by embracing the term atheist, I can make do my little bit to remove the still considerable stigma that gets attached to that word. (certainly here in the South.) There are plenty of decent, compassionate non-believers out there, and the more open they are, the more the world can see that 'atheist' is a perfectly cromulent thing to be, even if it isn't their cup of tea.

I have stopped over-thinking the issue. I dislike organized religion for the "group think" properties it creates. Most religions don't seem to leave room for individual thoughts or beliefs. Beyond that, I have (as I have stated before) decided that there is some sort of power greater than me and that I probably can't comprehend or fully understand what that is, so I just accept my belief and go about my life doing the best I can.

excuse me?

Sorry to interrupt this current line of conversation (thoroughly engaging as it is) by returning to some earlier posts, but I just saw something that I find pretty relevant.

Sarah Palin has let slip a clue that she is among the nuts working to bring end times.

link
Seeing as there is nothing happening in the world right now that would make that statement make any sense, the only possible conclusion is that she's referring to end-times prophecy about Jews returning to Israel, rebuilding the temple, and triggering rapture.

Now, I don't for a second worry that the end times will get here. What I do worry about is the considerable number of people who seem to be perfectly happy to vote someone into high office who is willing to make policy decision based on magical prophecies. That I find intolerable.

This is the problem. Yes, the later books of the bible are chock full of excellent examples of how to be good people. However as long as people are convinced that the entire thing is the word of a magical being, the rest of it will be relevant to those people, and the rest of it includes very specific predictions about what is going to happen to the world and how we should all prepare for it. And that is guiding how people are making decisions about world politics, decisions about when to go to war and start killing people. Utterly unacceptable in my opinion.

Are you suggesting she's trying to have a 2-year presidency?


(Think Mayans)

Worth repeating. Hear hear!

Further proof of the non-existence of God: the sty.

Whoops. Make that "stye."

That pigs have a proper home is proof of God's benevolence. Though they be unclean.

Oh, great. I rarely get them, but it seems like every time someone mentions the word stye, I get one. At least people don't talk about them much. If I don't get one this time, I will have to thank you for breaking the stye curse.

Coming in a little late to the discussion over the last several days.

GD asked that if it could be proven there is no God (alluding to the logic of not being able to prove something like that) would i continue to believe. I suppose the answer is no, I would not continue to do so, but i would of course be incredibly confused and it would take time to reconcile. I suppose it would something like the 5 stages of grief - denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance (or whatever the 5 are). I suspect that there will come a point in time where someone will claim proof that there is no God, and that proof will be disputed, with some swearing by it and others pointing out flaws. I wonder what the point of absolute proof would be for me, as i can't think of anything that could serve as proof of it (which is, of course, something that was alluded to when the question was asked).

Answering the question that way, though makes me wonder about the nature of faith. Is it really faith if I stop believing should there be some earth shattering development, or does faith endure?

That's not really the question I asked.

The question I asked is, if you it were to be proven satisfactorily to you that god does not exist, would your behavior, and your desire to do be what you consider to be a "good" person, change at all?

And what I alluded to was the concept of "burden of proof". But it's a distraction from the question I originally posed and find more interesting, so I don't want to get into it now. The question I'm interested in is if your sense of morality and of right vs. wrong, is contingent on your belief in god, or if it would remain in tact without it.

If it helps to imagine, rather than proof god doesn't exist (and consider my version an add-on to GD's so I don't undercut him), how about if you received proof that god exists but you were completely wrong about its fundamental nature.

Say, it shows up, offers convincing evidence of who it is but says "Yes, I invented the universe but I moved on to other projects immediately afterward. There is no afterlife and all religions founded on earth have been entirely human constructions. Nothing you all do matters in the slightest to me, I was just cleaning a closet and stumbled across this old project so I thought I'd drop in. Boy did evolution go in a completely different direction than I expected. Anyway, ta ta for now, might stop by again some day."

What does that do to your moral behavior.

You keep opening the door.

Query, though. Which is worse? Adhering to a moral code that is not necessarily self-evident out of a belief that it was commanded by a God that you believe to exist, or deriving a sense of community by hopping on one foot at prescribed times of the day and pretending that doing so was commanded by a God in which you don't believe?

I believe your premise would most likely be dismissed as a temptation.

Where did I ever say I'm pretending that doing so was commanded by God?

You say it with every Baruch atah that you don't really mean.

GD to answer your re-posed question:

My sense of right and wrong is occasionally in conflict with my religious beliefs, or rather, cause me to question whether my understanding of right and wrong is off, or whether the world is wrong about the nature and desires of God. In the end, I go with my conscience, and hope that if I'm wrong I will be forgiven.

Oh, you mean pretending for other people. In that case, I personally consider neither a good option, but yes I consider the former worse because the latter does not require accepting magic as truth. For the most part, I do not lie about the reasons I continue to take part in Jewish rituals. I'm fairly open with (or at least I would be if they asked) most of my family that I do so simply for tradition's sake rather than belief. And the negative reaction I'd anticipate would be purely because of the break in tradition and the fear that it would distance them from their grandchild, not because of some concern for my eternal soul.

With the exception of a select few for whom that truth would cause more family strife than it's worth. In that sense, yes there is pretense there. But the harm that would cause by being honest is not worth it to me.

Sure, said rituals do involve voicing certain supernatural beliefs. But I don't consider taking part in that "pretending to believe in god" any more than I consider reading The Giving Tree "pretending to believe that trees have human-like emotions." It's just a story framework to teach and reinforce certain lessons. And as soon as my child is old enough to understand that, that's what they'll learn.

All right, I'm back. Had to go say the Lord's prayer with the family at tuck-in time.

Where were we?

Or when requested by friends, ie: eating Gefilte Fish. ;)


well, it was almost a ritual....

:rolleyes: If you're trying to provoke me you're doing a piss poor job of it. I'm really not sure where you're going. I don't think I can say any clearer where I stand. Given the choice I'd prefer to do a forklift replacement of Judaism for an entirely secular set of traditions and rituals to connect me and my child(ren) to my family. That option being an impossibility, I'm settling for the less preferable, unftunately impefect, but only-avenue-available option of retaining the ritual while puttiing it in context of being a matter of family, fable, and myth with the intended purpose of teaching some moral lessons, and not of divine magical origin.

Because I find the admitted pitfalls of that route preferable and more easily overcome than the pitfalls of the alienated family route. Their support is too important to me.

Sorry about that. That's what I get for trying to catch up on a thread too quickly.

I don't imagine my behavior would change, nor would my concept of what is right and wrong. I do suppose certain of my social viewpoints might be altered a bit, but in terms of my personal moral code, I don't think it would. I think the concepts of what is good in Christianity are good in general. Love your neighbor. Visit the sick (I suck at that one...hate being around sick people). Feed the hungry. etc, etc. etc.