The God Fuse

[The Dreaming]

Orthodoxy is a religion I have a great deal of admiration for. (I wish there were more of them in the states.) The average American Christian isn't really representative of the rest of the world. I constantly bemoan the fact that we had to get the puritans while Australia got the convicts.

The kind of Christian Malik describes is exactly the kind I am talking about when I speak of people who think of religion as a club, and use it as a way to feel superior to other people. (Which is how a lot of evangelicals think) Yes, the only people going to heaven are those in attendance at the third street Baptist church in Podunk Iowa. I'm sure

There is a lot of old wisdom in some of the older, more organized religions. I have been to evangelical services, they make me cringe. I went to a service once where the theme was "Do all Religions lead to God" and expected to get a nice sermon about ecumenism. Instead I was told that Catholics are going to hell because they are Idolaters and pray to the pope. (Which was a new one to me!)

The problem is, a lot of these people claim to know stuff they have absolutely no way of knowing. It always makes me think of the story of Socrates, who kept being told he was the wisest man in Greece. He repeatedly said, "I can't be the wisest man in Greece, I don't know anything! This man claims to know things I certainly don't" He would then visit this supposed wise man, and discover that he didn't really know the things he claimed to know. He did this until he learned he really was the wisest man in Greece.

If a catholic priest tells you he knows who gets into heaven, and it's only Catholics, he is in violation of Church teachings. The only people the Catholic Church claims to know for sure are in heaven are saints. (By the way, that’s ALL sainthood means. It's a claim that if this person isn't in heaven, no one is. So you can pray to them and they will take your prayer to God because they are with him)

And eternal punishment? There is almost no biblical evidence for perdition. Most of what people claim to know about the Devil and Hell comes from Paradise Lost. Honestly, it never really came up when I went to church (I had a good one). IMHO, the idea is a holdover from more ancient religions, and to me has little bearing on Christianity. As something of a deist, I put little stock in the existence of the devil, or any being of "ultimate evil". I honestly believe that hell is just a collection of leftover detritus from the ancient world. (Along with angels and all that other garbage). What really matter are God, Christ, and the divine inside all of us.

[rusmeister]

I can relate to that. I was raised as a fundamental Baptist, underwent a crisis at 15 and began seriously practicing the Baptist faith on my own, Wednesday night Bible study, door-to-door soulwinning... but over a few years the ardor cooled down. By the time I joined the Navy, I dropped that faith like a hot rock and I spent 20 years as an indifferent (and intellectually lazy) agnostic.

Point is, I know the ones Malik is complaining about from the inside, AND I have found a Christianity that 'licks the other one hollow'.

The wisdom of older Christian faiths - absolutely. The Anglican Church has a 400-year continuous tradition (that seems to be in definite change now), compared to the 50 years or less of most independent churches. But what is even that to the continuous tradition of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches - which are almost 2,000 years old? The accumulated wisdom, thought out, worked out and clarified over time beats the stuffing out of our mere 20, 40 or 60 years of experience, and bears no resemblance to the extremist Christianity that gets the credit for being 'what Christianity is'.

Good one on Socrates.

Re: the saints, it's the same with the Orthodox Church.

The one thing I have to disagree on (if I understand you correctly) is on the Biblical basis for hell. I'm afraid there is such a basis - even Christ Himself spoke of it more than once. However, I do agree that a lot of western understanding (that both Christians and non-Christians have) is based a lot more on Milton than on the Bible or Church Tradition.

[The Dreaming]

The idea of salvation and damnation, this doesn't come from Judaism. The dualistic nature of most modern religions probably comes from Zoroastrianism, which depending on your model of the ancient world, may even predate the Exodus and the Amon-Ra cult.

I really need to get around to studying the Bible more, I havn't read the new testement in ages. I know that the serpent in Genesis was ret-conned into being the Devil after Milton.

I probably differ with the Church when it comes to damnation, I don't see it as being a vital part of christianity, except to scare people into acting straight. The definition and nature of evil, that is a discussion for another thread I think

[Cail]

Orthodoxy is a religion I have a great deal of admiration for. (I wish there were more of them in the states.) The average American Christian isn't really representative of the rest of the world. I constantly bemoan the fact that we had to get the puritans while Australia got the convicts.

The kind of Christian Malik describes is exactly the kind I am talking about when I speak of people who think of religion as a club, and use it as a way to feel superior to other people. (Which is how a lot of evangelicals think) Yes, the only people going to heaven are those in attendance at the third street Baptist church in Podunk Iowa. I'm sure

There is a lot of old wisdom in some of the older, more organized religions. I have been to evangelical services, they make me cringe. I went to a service once where the theme was "Do all Religions lead to God" and expected to get a nice sermon about ecumenism. Instead I was told that Catholics are going to hell because they are Idolaters and pray to the pope. (Which was a new one to me!)

The problem is, a lot of these people claim to know stuff they have absolutely no way of knowing. It always makes me think of the story of Socrates, who kept being told he was the wisest man in Greece. He repeatedly said, "I can't be the wisest man in Greece, I don't know anything! This man claims to know things I certainly don't" He would then visit this supposed wise man, and discover that he didn't really know the things he claimed to know. He did this until he learned he really was the wisest man in Greece.

If a catholic priest tells you he knows who gets into heaven, and it's only Catholics, he is in violation of Church teachings. The only people the Catholic Church claims to know for sure are in heaven are saints. (By the way, that’s ALL sainthood means. It's a claim that if this person isn't in heaven, no one is. So you can pray to them and they will take your prayer to God because they are with him)

And eternal punishment? There is almost no biblical evidence for perdition. Most of what people claim to know about the Devil and Hell comes from Paradise Lost. Honestly, it never really came up when I went to church (I had a good one). IMHO, the idea is a holdover from more ancient religions, and to me has little bearing on Christianity. As something of a deist, I put little stock in the existence of the devil, or any being of "ultimate evil". I honestly believe that hell is just a collection of leftover detritus from the ancient world. (Along with angels and all that other garbage). What really matter are God, Christ, and the divine inside all of us.

Excellent, excellent post!

Sums it up nearly perfectly.

[Zarathustra]

Murrin, good post on Pascal's Wager. I copied and saved that for my own.

Since Non-Existence is a negative, and can’t logically be proven. (This is simple logic, negatives can't be directly proven). Since you can no more prove God's non-existence than a Christian can prove God's existence, what you have isn't a scientific proof, you have a belief structure. What I am saying is you are on similar logical ground.

I disagree that non-existence can't be proven. For instance, consider a pregnancy test. It proves whether or not there's a baby in the womb. A positive result proves it's there. And a negative result proves it isn't there. Easy.

The reason it's more difficult to do this with the God hypothesis is because that's a non-falsifiable hypothesis--which is another way to say it isn't scientific or rational. For this reason, belief and non-belief aren't on the same logical footing. It's a lot more reasonable to believe something doesn't exist when no one has ever produced evidence for it, than to believe that something exists when no one has ever produced evidence for it. The burden of proof, in other words, lies with those who claim God exists. It's a perfectly scientific attitude to proceed on the assumption that entity x doesn't exist until evidence has been provided.

Indeed, the fact that the "God hypothesis" can't be falsified is one of the reasons why it's not a reasonable hypothesis. If something can't be proven false under any circumstances, then there's no way to test for this hypothesis because testing involves a condition in which the test can come up negative. In other words, there's no conditions where that entity's existence or non-existence makes any perceptible difference upon tangible reality. Therefore, an existence which is indistinguishable from non-existence isn't really existence at all.

I don't think to believe in some purpose in the founding of the universe is as silly as believing in Unicorns. After all, not all beliefs are equally valid. I think it's a lot less silly. Is it possible that I look at the natural world, see its elegance, and feel compelled to think of the divine?

I didn't use the word "silly." That's your word. I didn't bring up unicorns to make fun of the God concept. I brought it up to show how unbelief regarding something no one has ever seen isn't unreasonable. To not believe in unicorns is a perfectly reasonable attitude. And the reasons for not believing in them are similar to those for not believing in God.

In fact, the more fantastic the entity, the more reasonable this attitude is (and the more reasonable the request for evidence). You'd think one would notice an infinitely powerful, infinitely benign, infinitely loving God. It's hard to hide something that's "bigger" than the entire universe itself. Where is God hiding? Why is the most effective being in all of creation the one that has no apparent effect whatsoever?

Also, any theologian will tell you this world, this life IS important.

But the importance of this life is only relevant as a means to decide your fate after this life is over. The single most important thing about Christianity--the deciding factor which determines whether or not you're a Christian at all--is Salvation. Christians are "saved." The rest of us are not. That's the whole point of the crucifixion. It wasn't to make this life more meaningful, but to "save" us. Christianity begins with Christ. The single most important thing about Christ is that he died. That's why your most sacred symbol is an instrument of murder (the cross). I don't care what "any theologian" might say. Christianity begins and ends with death. The whole point, the entire goal, is the afterlife. That is where life achieves its meaning . . . beyond the grave. Heaven is more than just a reward at the end. It's not a prize for good behavior. It's the whole point. Would Christians still be Christians if everyone got sent to hell?

Let's see, in Orthodox Christianity (aka Eastern Orthodoxy) we don't have original sin in the RC understanding, or inherited guilt. We did inherit the consequences of Adam's sin, so we die (that was something we were not created to do - we are intended to be a hybrid of physical and spiritual being). We also have a natural tendency to turn towards self. But we're responsible for our own sins, not Adam's.

We don't inherit Adam's guilt? Then why do we need to be saved? Are you saying that it's possible to get into Heaven without being baptized to "wash away" Adam's sin? I'm not talking about some primitive native tribe member who has never heard of Christianity. I'm talking about someone like me. I've heard of it, and rejected it. Can I still get into heaven without baptism if I don't sin?

This idea that we inherited death from Adam is exactly what I'm talking about--the idea that death isn't natural. This is a denial of the natural world, of the truths of this existence. It interprets the entire physical world as a place that has something fundamentally wrong with it. It requires one to look at physical reality, and conclude: "No, this can't be right. I must infuse reality with an entire host of untestable hypotheses in order to make this reality bearable." It is based on a rejection of the world as it really is (full of dying creatures), and substitutes a supernatural mythology as a means to facilitate this rejection of tangible facts. That's what I mean by "inauthentic."

And it's colossally unfair: the idea that death for all living beings is a punishment for something we didn't do. If you don't believe we inherit Adam's guilt, then the fact that we die is even worse, because now we all die even though we don't deserve it. It's a pretty crappy thing to kill billions of humans for the actions of one. It is unfair to give one man a choice that the rest of humanity couldn't possibly have: the choice to live in the Garden without sin, to be created without damnation from the beginning. If Adam hadn't sinned, then Hell wouldn't be an option for him. But it's basically the "default setting" for the billions who came after. You say we don't inherit his guilt. But a system which sends you to Hell if you don't get saved is the same as saying you're guilty until you take the necessary steps to have your guilt removed.

[Cybrweez]

Ah, Pascal's wager. A pretty flawed way of looking at the issue.
Hal Duncan made a pretty good deconstruction of the wager in one of his "Halls of Pentheus" essays.

Atheism isn't a bad wager if we're dealing not just with X and Y but with a million different Xs and Ys, none of whom we have any more valid reason to believe in than we have for any other. The more gods they throw at you to choose from, the smaller the chance that this or that one just happens to be, in actual fact, the One True God.

No opinion on Pascal's wager, but Duncan here is pretty far off. Washington DC is the capital of the US. If you throw more and more cities at me as an option, does it lessen the chance that DC is the capital? No, truth is truth, regardless of options. I couldn't read that any farther b/c its ridiculous. I mean, maybe Duncan would say he has no reason to believe one city over another, but most would say there is a valid reason to believe one over any other.

[I'm Murrin]

That is an empirical fact. That the god worshipped by one faith is any more real than another is a matter of pure opinion. You cannot possibly compare the two.

Though it is correct that the truth is the truth no matter what, there is no way to determine what is the truth, when it comes to the various religions.

[Xar]

Murrin, good post on Pascal's Wager. I copied and saved that for my own.

Since Non-Existence is a negative, and can’t logically be proven. (This is simple logic, negatives can't be directly proven). Since you can no more prove God's non-existence than a Christian can prove God's existence, what you have isn't a scientific proof, you have a belief structure. What I am saying is you are on similar logical ground.

I disagree that non-existence can't be proven. For instance, consider a pregnancy test. It proves whether or not there's a baby in the womb. A positive result proves it's there. And a negative result proves it isn't there. Easy.

The reason it's more difficult to do this with the God hypothesis is because that's a non-falsifiable hypothesis--which is another way to say it isn't scientific or rational. For this reason, belief and non-belief aren't on the same logical footing. It's a lot more reasonable to believe something doesn't exist when no one has ever produced evidence for it, than to believe that something exists when no one has ever produced evidence for it. The burden of proof, in other words, lies with those who claim God exists. It's a perfectly scientific attitude to proceed on the assumption that entity x doesn't exist until evidence has been provided.

Indeed, the fact that the "God hypothesis" can't be falsified is one of the reasons why it's not a reasonable hypothesis. If something can't be proven false under any circumstances, then there's no way to test for this hypothesis because testing involves a condition in which the test can come up negative. In other words, there's no conditions where that entity's existence or non-existence makes any perceptible difference upon tangible reality. Therefore, an existence which is indistinguishable from non-existence isn't really existence at all.

I don't think to believe in some purpose in the founding of the universe is as silly as believing in Unicorns. After all, not all beliefs are equally valid. I think it's a lot less silly. Is it possible that I look at the natural world, see its elegance, and feel compelled to think of the divine?

I didn't use the word "silly." That's your word. I didn't bring up unicorns to make fun of the God concept. I brought it up to show how unbelief regarding something no one has ever seen isn't unreasonable. To not believe in unicorns is a perfectly reasonable attitude. And the reasons for not believing in them are similar to those for not believing in God.

In fact, the more fantastic the entity, the more reasonable this attitude is (and the more reasonable the request for evidence). You'd think one would notice an infinitely powerful, infinitely benign, infinitely loving God. It's hard to hide something that's "bigger" than the entire universe itself. Where is God hiding? Why is the most effective being in all of creation the one that has no apparent effect whatsoever?

Malik, I strongly disagree with your intepretation of the scientific principle. First of all, it has often been stated by many scientists (at least the serious ones) that there are some things beyond the sphere of science - that is, some things cannot ever be proven or disproven by science. One such thing is the existence of God, which is the province of philosophy and theology, not science. But even not considering this: where did you come up with the idea that in science you believe something doesn't exist until someone produces evidence for the contrary? It seems to me that if that were the truth, then most physicists should quit their jobs - because much of their work is based upon theories which have not been proven right yet, and which might not for some time. Take all the physicists who studied string theory and worked on it - and we haven't observed the existence of a single string yet. By your logic, we should assume strings don't exist and those physicists should stop wasting their time.
Or let's talk about biology. It is assumed that there is a scientific basis for memory - something at a physiological level, a change that causes your brain to retain a certain memory. It is also assumed this has to do with dendritic spines and synapse plasticity. But nobody has definitely proven that this is the case, and as the history of science teaches us, many theories which were taken for a fact were eventually proven false. So should we just assume that, since no convincing evidence has yet been found regarding memory formation, that memory formation doesn't exist?
You see, your approach is flawed because the way you formulate means a scientist should assume nothing exists until he can prove otherwise. But that's not how science works. A scientist formulates a hypothesis about the existence of something, and then goes on to prove whether that something exists or not. But a good scientist does not start with prejudice one way or the other: he doesn't perform his experiments expecting to see the existence or non-existence of the phenomenon. He simply performs the experiments and reasons out the conclusions.

In fact, the reason why the existence or non-existence of God is beyond the realm of science is that you cannot be 100% sure that God is or is not intervening in the world. There is absolutely no way you can know for certain that event X was a natural occurrence or was triggered by God's will. There's no reason why God, should He wish to trigger a particular event in the world, should do so in a way that's plainly unusual: for example, if God existed and wanted for some reason to prevent you from going to an important meeting, He wouldn't necessarily appear out of thin air to awe you with His presence, or raise a wall of bright light to imprison you. But He might simply cause your car not to start, or your bus to be late, or a tree to fall on the street so you can't pass, or a thousand of other inconveniences, and you'd never know it was God's hand at work. Should God place His signature on each action he takes just so you know it was His doing? If you say that you are sure God doesn't intervene you imply you would recognize God's intervention, and to assume that you could do so would mean assuming a concept of "God" which fits the parameters of your imagination (and is therefore finite like your imagination). There's no reason why God shouldn't act like the butterfly flapping its wings in New York and causing a tsunami in Japan - in other words exerting only a minimal amount of force to perform an action which cannot be distinguished from a natural occurrence but which brings about the desired result (remember that the concept of God includes omniscience, which means He would know which exact action to take to obtain the desired outcome). Even humans can start chains of actions through a simple and innocent event - why not God?
This also addresses your concept that "God is hiding". It could simply be that none of us is equipped to perceive His presence through His actions - and that the people who have faith are simply those who perceive His presence directly. Under the circumstances, it's an equally viable hypothesis.

[rusmeister]

Orthodoxy is a religion I have a great deal of admiration for. (I wish there were more of them in the states.) The average American Christian isn't really representative of the rest of the world. I constantly bemoan the fact that we had to get the puritans while Australia got the convicts.

Heh heh heh... Your wish is granted!
www.orthodoxyinamerica.org/

[Zarathustra]

Xar, a scientist forming a hypothesis about the existence of something doesn't mean they believe it exists. Until the effects of black holes were observed, it was perfectly reasonable to believe they didn't exist. Belief in the existence of an entity isn't necessary to carry on experiments to test for its presence.

Take cold fusion. Back in the 80s, two guys claimed to have achieved it. The rest of the scientific community had a right to be skeptical about the existence of this phenomenon until they had witnessed the evidence themselves. That's just the way science works: the burden of proof is on the person claiming to have experienced something no one else has ever seen. The Big Bang theory wasn't widely believed until the background microwave radiation was found. How is this antithetical to the scientific method? It's how science is done.

There are lots of areas of research where a known entity or phenomenon implies other unknown entities or phenomena. It's perfectly reasonable to "track down these leads" even though they involve things we've never witnessed, because the evidence or the theories imply them. This is different from the God hypothesis, which isn't implied by any theory (despite the best attempts of the Irreducible Complexity and Intelligent Design people).

No opinion on Pascal's wager, but Duncan here is pretty far off. Washington DC is the capital of the US. If you throw more and more cities at me as an option, does it lessen the chance that DC is the capital? No, truth is truth, regardless of options. I couldn't read that any farther b/c its ridiculous. I mean, maybe Duncan would say he has no reason to believe one city over another, but most would say there is a valid reason to believe one over any other.

Cyberweez, your unwillingness to read the rest of that piece is based on a basic misunderstanding on your part. It's not ridiculous. It's just going over your head. At the risk that you'll think this is ridiculous and just skip over my words, I'll try to explain the basic misunderstanding you exhibit. Your analogy to DC, as Murrin pointed out, isn't an apt comparison. Pascal's Wager is presented as a way to make up one's mind about an unknown (the existence of God), based on the available choices and the possible outcomes of those choices given EITHER the existence or non-existence of God. There's no reason to bet whether or not DC exists, because we know it exists. Pascal's Wager is presented by theists as a means to counter atheism, while taking into account that God's existence can't be proven. The argument goes something like this: "Even if we can't know for sure whether God exists, the risk of an atheist being wrong is much greater than a Christian being wrong, because eternal damnation outweighs merely holding an incorrect belief."

However, Duncan's point (well, one of them anyway) is that the odds go way down when you don't start from the assumption that the Christian God is the only alternate belief to atheism. Pascal's Wager, presented by Christians, is an unfair way to state the wager. If it all comes down to a bet (assuming that betting is a reasonable way to decide the nature of reality, which itself a questionable premise) then polytheism makes a lot more sense than theism. But the Wager is never used that way, because it's really not about being reasonable, even though it pretends to be. It's a way to scare people into belief . . . a tactic similar to all Doomsday Cults like Christianity.

[rusmeister]

Indeed, the fact that the "God hypothesis" can't be falsified is one of the reasons why it's not a reasonable hypothesis. If something can't be proven false under any circumstances, then there's no way to test for this hypothesis because testing involves a condition in which the test can come up negative. In other words, there's no conditions where that entity's existence or non-existence makes any perceptible difference upon tangible reality. Therefore, an existence which is indistinguishable from non-existence isn't really existence at all.

You make a jump here that presupposes materialism when you go from 'tangible reality' (which evidently doesn't include feelings, emotions, or those other 'non-tangibles') to non-existence.

But the importance of this life is only relevant as a means to decide your fate after this life is over. The single most important thing about Christianity--the deciding factor which determines whether or not you're a Christian at all--is Salvation. Christians are "saved." The rest of us are not. That's the whole point of the crucifixion. It wasn't to make this life more meaningful, but to "save" us. Christianity begins with Christ. The single most important thing about Christ is that he died. That's why your most sacred symbol is an instrument of murder (the cross). I don't care what "any theologian" might say. Christianity begins and ends with death. The whole point, the entire goal, is the afterlife. That is where life achieves its meaning . . . beyond the grave. Heaven is more than just a reward at the end. It's not a prize for good behavior. It's the whole point. Would Christians still be Christians if everyone got sent to hell?

The mistake here, from the Christian point of view, is when you say

The single most important thing about Christ is that he died.

Actually, that's not true. Everybody dies. The most important fact is that He RETURNED FROM THE GRAVE (aka resurrected Himself). This was what blew everybody away in the ancient world and constitutes the Gospel (good news). He came BACK, to THIS earth; had a physical body, ate and drank, get 'felt up' to test the truth of His physical existence and was HERE, in a BODY. (Sorry about the capitals, but this really really needs to be hammered in.)

Let's see, in Orthodox Christianity (aka Eastern Orthodoxy) we don't have original sin in the RC understanding, or inherited guilt. We did inherit the consequences of Adam's sin, so we die (that was something we were not created to do - we are intended to be a hybrid of physical and spiritual being). We also have a natural tendency to turn towards self. But we're responsible for our own sins, not Adam's.

We don't inherit Adam's guilt? Then why do we need to be saved? Are you saying that it's possible to get into Heaven without being baptized to "wash away" Adam's sin? I'm not talking about some primitive native tribe member who has never heard of Christianity. I'm talking about someone like me. I've heard of it, and rejected it. Can I still get into heaven without baptism if I don't sin?

Well, no, you can't, actually. You are in the middle of the Atlantic. The Titanic has sunk. You are rejecting the lifeline that is being offered from the Carpathia, preferring your piece of driftwood. The fact is, you already sin. the trouble with sin is that when you are cheek-to-jowl with it, you don't realize just how much so you are. The worse you are, the better you think you are. A perfectly bad man thinks that he is all right. Your only hope now is repentance and that very Baptism you fear - to acknowledge that you really CAN'T save yourself. (Might help to think of 'saving' in computer terms. The Programmer will save every program that checks off its access box, enabling the Programmer to go in and save the program. The ones that refuse to do so will ultimately be deleted. I suppose their fate might not be so dissimilar to programs permanently deleted from the computer by wiping the drive.)

This idea that we inherited death from Adam is exactly what I'm talking about--the idea that death isn't natural. This is a denial of the natural world, of the truths of this existence. It interprets the entire physical world as a place that has something fundamentally wrong with it. It requires one to look at physical reality, and conclude: "No, this can't be right. I must infuse reality with an entire host of untestable hypotheses in order to make this reality bearable." It is based on a rejection of the world as it really is (full of dying creatures), and substitutes a supernatural mythology as a means to facilitate this rejection of tangible facts. That's what I mean by "inauthentic."

This is not exactly correct, again. (Please bear in mind that you're asking me to encapsulize a terribly complex theology /worldview, and I'm just one limited man) There is no denial of the truths of our existence. We die; we know we die. At the same time, God created the world, and when He created it, He said it was GOOD. The Fall, the choice to turn to God, away from self, to being our our lords instead of submitting to God as Lord, the free choice offered - of which the wrong one was made), caused that good - of which we still see remnants - to, well, have something wrong with it. It doesn't 'require me to look at reality and say it is not right'. I saw that even as a lazy agnostic. All I have to do is say, "Iraq" or government corruption" or "waterboarding"(for example) or whatever, and you'll say "that's not right!", and a good thing, too! You'll see a road kill and you'll know that the purpose of that creature is not to lay there dead. Death is NOT our purpose. (Note that I am presupposing a purpose to our lives - hope I don't have to prove that we desire a purpose to our lives and to our deaths). In any event, everything hinges on the understanding of what is 'real':

It turns on making him feel, when first he sees human remains plastered on a wall, that this is "what the world is really like" and that all his religion has been a fantasy. You will notice that we have got them completely fogged about the meaning of the word "real". They tell each other, of some great spiritual experience, "All that really happened was that you heard some music in a lighted building"; here "Real" means the bare physical facts, separated from the other elements in the experience they actually had. On the other hand, they will also say "It's all very well discussing that high dive as you sit here in an armchair, but wait till you get up there and see what it's really like": here "real" is being used in the opposite sense to mean, not the physical facts (which they know already while discussing the matter in armchairs) but the emotional effect those facts will have on a human consciousness. Either application of the word could be offended, but our (ed. note: the demons speaking in the novel) business is to keep the two going at once so that the emotional value of the word 'real' can be placed now on one side of the account, now on the other, as it happens to suit us. The general rule which we have pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are 'real' while the spiritual elements are 'subjective'; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality and to ignore them is to be an escapist. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, ch 30

And it's colossally unfair: the idea that death for all living beings is a punishment for something we didn't do. If you don't believe we inherit Adam's guilt, then the fact that we die is even worse, because now we all die even though we don't deserve it. It's a pretty crappy thing to kill billions of humans for the actions of one. It is unfair to give one man a choice that the rest of humanity couldn't possibly have: the choice to live in the Garden without sin, to be created without damnation from the beginning. If Adam hadn't sinned, then Hell wouldn't be an option for him. But it's basically the "default setting" for the billions who came after. You say we don't inherit his guilt. But a system which sends you to Hell if you don't get saved is the same as saying you're guilty until you take the necessary steps to have your guilt removed.

Again, this supposes a simplistic, "God doing it to us". The understanding is much closer to this: God is the source of Life. When we choose what WE want, rather than what God knows is best for us (sound familiar, parents?) we cut ourselves off from that source of Life. We cut the life support line and say, "I can live in space without oxygen on my own!" And then we are shocked that we die. We are clearly not sources of eternal Life.
It's true that we find ourselves in a mess being born into this world. But it's equally true that we choose what WE want, again and again - when we're young, instead of what our parents want. If you have any kids, you'll know that giving them good things is impossible when they set themselves in rebellion against you. First they have to submit and apologize and listen to you - THEN you can give them good things.

You speak of 'getting saved'. Hey - I'm not saved yet. I won't be until and unless I fight a good fight, finish the course and keep the Faith. I am STILL free to reject God's salvation if I choose.

Does that clear up anything?

[Zarathustra]

Rusmeister, no this doesn't clear anything up for me. These are things I've already known. Of course you believe Jesus rose again. I know the story. But rising again isn't what washes away our sins. It was his sacrifice, his death, which did that. An all-powerful being performing miracles isn't the point. The point of the Jesus story is that an all-powerful being submitted to being mortal, and allowed himself to "die for our sins." That's why people wear little symbols of murdering devices (crosses) around their neck: to celebrate this sacrifice. If Jesus had been shot with a gun, Christians would be wearing gun necklaces.

You make a jump here that presupposes materialism when you go from 'tangible reality' (which evidently doesn't include feelings, emotions, or those other 'non-tangibles') to non-existence.

Feeling and emotions are subjective experiences. While I know they exist (because I have my own subjective experience of them), this is entirely different from a supernatural being who is NOT merely one of my subjective experiences, but his own distinct person. If his existence makes no discernible difference--and I include my own subjective emotions in there--then his existence is indistinguishable from his nonexistence. If he died right now, I wouldn't know the difference.

To make matters worse, apparently He can take on human form, or be a burning bush, or give you 10 Commandments, or part the Red Sea, or . . . anything he wants. For such a being who is--apparently--so involved in the material world, and yet at the same time we must accept without any tangible evidence whatsoever in order for our faith to be "pure," it doesn't add up. Either he meddles in the world's affairs in dramatic supernatural manner, or he doesn't. The argument that we must have faith without evidence is merely an excuse to account for the fact that he doesn't really do miracles. And as far as we can tell, he never did.

Well, no, you can't, actually. You are in the middle of the Atlantic. The Titanic has sunk. You are rejecting the lifeline that is being offered from the Carpathia, preferring your piece of driftwood.

A more accurate analogy would be: the Captain disobeyed a direct order, and then some benevolent Admiral who loves us all sank the ship from afar for this disobedience--sending all the innocent people who had nothing to do with the Captain's disobedience to their deaths. And then supporters of this story ride up to "save" us in the name of this curious, unseen admiral, but they won't do so merely out of the goodness of their hearts. No, first we must accept the existence of this curious, unseen, boat-sinking admiral, order our entire lives around his moral codes, and agree to give 10 percent of everything we earn to him . . . when he's the one who sank the ship to begin with. Yeah, thanks for the rescue.

You can't get God off the hook for condemning every living human to death just because of Adam's mistake. We wouldn't need "rescuing" if God hadn't punished a bunch of people who had nothing to do with Adam's sin. And being forced to live with a tyrannical overlord who won't let you believe what you want isn't my idea of rescue in the first place. Neither is spending eternity with a bunch of judgmental Christians who think things about me like this:

The fact is, you already sin. the trouble with sin is that when you are cheek-to-jowl with it, you don't realize just how much so you are. The worse you are, the better you think you are. A perfectly bad man thinks that he is all right. Your only hope now is repentance and that very Baptism you fear - to acknowledge that you really CAN'T save yourself.

Honestly--and I don't say this to be mean--but I wouldn't want to spend an hour having dinner with someone who thinks this about me, much less an eternity in heaven.

It doesn't 'require me to look at reality and say it is not right'. I saw that even as a lazy agnostic.

You're just talking about your personal preferences. I like this world.

When we choose what WE want, rather than what God knows is best for us (sound familiar, parents?) we cut ourselves off from that source of Life. We cut the life support line and say, "I can live in space without oxygen on my own!" And then we are shocked that we die. We are clearly not sources of eternal Life.
It's true that we find ourselves in a mess being born into this world. But it's equally true that we choose what WE want, again and again - when we're young, instead of what our parents want. If you have any kids, you'll know that giving them good things is impossible when they set themselves in rebellion against you. First they have to submit and apologize and listen to you - THEN you can give them good things.

Yeah, the difference is that I wouldn't send my children to hell no matter what they did, or how badly they mess up. Would you? Eternal torment for your children? Does that make me more compassionate than God? Who would WANT to worship a god so heartless?

[Marv]

I don't believe in a creator god, nor do I hold sway with any of the organized religions. I do consider myself fairly spiritual and I like to think there is something more than the physical that binds us to this world. Something that exists beyond the influence or understanding of humankind. I guess that's why I have a profound belief that we are all interconnected, that none of us make decisions or act in isolation. Everything we do effects someone else.

I think that christianity is a denial of the fact that none of us really know the truth of our own nature and the details of our function. We are, for the most part, and shall be (as far as we know) forever ignorant.

Ultimately my rejection of organized religion boils down to my fundamental antipathy towards basing a system of morality on something that is not fully internalized and independent of external authority.

[Tjol]

I think it's too bad that theology is not even as common a school of pondering as philosophy.... and you have to admit, most people these days don't ponder philosophy. Sure some dig up philosopher's quotes to advocate their position, but they don't actually ponder philosophy.

I think a lot of what is called agnosticism or atheism are not quite so absolute as their definitions. No more than any of the world religions' followers having identical beliefs with all of the others. I think if theology were a more thought of and discussed school of thought, agnosticism and atheism would have much different definitions than they presently do.

How many atheists and agnostics really even fulfill the modern definition? Are agnostics really ambivalent about the existence of God, or just the nature of God? Do atheists really believe there is no God, or do they simply not believe that God is not of any of the natures described by the world religions?

[rusmeister]

Rusmeister, no this doesn't clear anything up for me. These are things I've already known. Of course you believe Jesus rose again. I know the story. But rising again isn't what washes away our sins. It was his sacrifice, his death, which did that. An all-powerful being performing miracles isn't the point. The point of the Jesus story is that an all-powerful being submitted to being mortal, and allowed himself to "die for our sins." That's why people wear little symbols of murdering devices (crosses) around their neck: to celebrate this sacrifice. If Jesus had been shot with a gun, Christians would be wearing gun necklaces.

You make a jump here that presupposes materialism when you go from 'tangible reality' (which evidently doesn't include feelings, emotions, or those other 'non-tangibles') to non-existence.

Feeling and emotions are subjective experiences. While I know they exist (because I have my own subjective experience of them), this is entirely different from a supernatural being who is NOT merely one of my subjective experiences, but his own distinct person. If his existence makes no discernible difference--and I include my own subjective emotions in there--then his existence is indistinguishable from his nonexistence. If he died right now, I wouldn't know the difference.

To make matters worse, apparently He can take on human form, or be a burning bush, or give you 10 Commandments, or part the Red Sea, or . . . anything he wants. For such a being who is--apparently--so involved in the material world, and yet at the same time we must accept without any tangible evidence whatsoever in order for our faith to be "pure," it doesn't add up. Either he meddles in the world's affairs in dramatic supernatural manner, or he doesn't. The argument that we must have faith without evidence is merely an excuse to account for the fact that he doesn't really do miracles. And as far as we can tell, he never did.

Well, no, you can't, actually. You are in the middle of the Atlantic. The Titanic has sunk. You are rejecting the lifeline that is being offered from the Carpathia, preferring your piece of driftwood.

A more accurate analogy would be: the Captain disobeyed a direct order, and then some benevolent Admiral who loves us all sank the ship from afar for this disobedience--sending all the innocent people who had nothing to do with the Captain's disobedience to their deaths. And then supporters of this story ride up to "save" us in the name of this curious, unseen admiral, but they won't do so merely out of the goodness of their hearts. No, first we must accept the existence of this curious, unseen, boat-sinking admiral, order our entire lives around his moral codes, and agree to give 10 percent of everything we earn to him . . . when he's the one who sank the ship to begin with. Yeah, thanks for the rescue.

You can't get God off the hook for condemning every living human to death just because of Adam's mistake. We wouldn't need "rescuing" if God hadn't punished a bunch of people who had nothing to do with Adam's sin. And being forced to live with a tyrannical overlord who won't let you believe what you want isn't my idea of rescue in the first place. Neither is spending eternity with a bunch of judgmental Christians who think things about me like this:

The fact is, you already sin. the trouble with sin is that when you are cheek-to-jowl with it, you don't realize just how much so you are. The worse you are, the better you think you are. A perfectly bad man thinks that he is all right. Your only hope now is repentance and that very Baptism you fear - to acknowledge that you really CAN'T save yourself.

Honestly--and I don't say this to be mean--but I wouldn't want to spend an hour having dinner with someone who thinks this about me, much less an eternity in heaven.

It doesn't 'require me to look at reality and say it is not right'. I saw that even as a lazy agnostic.

You're just talking about your personal preferences. I like this world.

When we choose what WE want, rather than what God knows is best for us (sound familiar, parents?) we cut ourselves off from that source of Life. We cut the life support line and say, "I can live in space without oxygen on my own!" And then we are shocked that we die. We are clearly not sources of eternal Life.
It's true that we find ourselves in a mess being born into this world. But it's equally true that we choose what WE want, again and again - when we're young, instead of what our parents want. If you have any kids, you'll know that giving them good things is impossible when they set themselves in rebellion against you. First they have to submit and apologize and listen to you - THEN you can give them good things.

Yeah, the difference is that I wouldn't send my children to hell no matter what they did, or how badly they mess up. Would you? Eternal torment for your children? Does that make me more compassionate than God? Who would WANT to worship a god so heartless?

Look, Malik, this seems a little silly. You say you want to play fair, and I try to explain to you how the view YOU hold of Christianity doesn't match ours, and then you insist that it does. You're seeing what you want to see - it certainly is easier that way, as it justifies your current position, but it's not an attempt to understand Orthodox (or similar) Christian teaching. You're just expounding on your own understanding.

I can keep saying that it's not about God sending us anywhere, or that Christians do not, in fact, celebrate the killing of Christ - that's what the world does, not Christians, but if you keep twisting it back to say that He does and we do, then there's not much I can say to you.

I'll just say that you do NOT understand Orthodox teaching, and until you WANT to, you can't. Nor can you honestly present your version and say that it is the definitive understanding of Christian teaching. In short, go on beating your straw men.

I hope that doesn't come across as insulting. Please forgive me if it has.

[Avatar]

Thing is, you're essentially saying that all non-orthodox christianity, (in other words, the kinds that we're most frequently exposed to), is wrong, and that we are basically at fault for not being exposed to the "right" kind of christianity.

Your "definitive" christian teaching is no more definitive in the eyes of the agnostic or atheist than any other. Of course we base our opinions of christianity on our experiences thereof. How can it be otherwise?

To say that our understanding of christianity is wrong because because we've only experienced the wrong types seems a little disingenious. Shouldn't it be up to the Christians then to make sure that they only present the "right" kind?

(Oh, The Dreaming...Mithraism came before Zoroastrism IIRC. That was the first "dual god" (one good entity, one evil entity) view of the universe. Later gave rise to the Albigensian heresy, because the christians couldn't conceive of a good god allowing evil...so evil was a result of the equally powerful and eternally opposed evil god. The Abigensians were exterminated by the inquisition.)

--A

[The Dreaming]

Take cold fusion. Back in the 80s, two guys claimed to have achieved it. The rest of the scientific community had a right to be skeptical about the existence of this phenomenon until they had witnessed the evidence themselves.

Skepticism IS NOT dismissal. Of course be skeptical! No person should live without a decent supply of Skepticism! In fact, it is impossible for anyone to be anything but skeptical when it comes to a person who claims to know the answer to life's greatest mysteries. We are just saying you should be as skeptical of your own answer as you expect us to be of ours.

I think I made my point pretty clear that anyone who claims to know who is going to heaven is lying. It is the Catholic Church's official position that it is a complete mystery who is going to go to heaven and who isn't. What the Church does is set up a series of rules for those of us who want to be "extra" careful. If you follow the Church's rules exactly, there is no way you can't be saved. (Hence the existence of the Sainthood).

I know my personal views aren't part of the discussion, but I feel as if unless you can be in the presence of God, and reject him, you'll be all right. (That or damnation isn't that bad... think Shaw)

Classically, salvation is a primary purpose of life. But what is important about morality isn't how closely you follow the rules; it's how you choose to live your life. So many of the people in this country who spew fire and brimstone in this country are to me, the moral equivalents of the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the time of Christ. Ostentations of morality, how closely you profess to follow the laws of god, can end up having little to do with right and wrong, especially after 4000 years. Christ gave us a different path, the path of Empathy, the path of Love. To emulate Christ isn't to avoid eating meat on Fridays, abstain from pleasure, and condemn those who don't act as righteous as you. That is to emulate the Pharisees. (Whenever a Christian group accuses someone of Blasphemy I cringe. Do they even read this stuff!)? To Emulate Christ is to love god, and love all mankind.

The purpose of religion is to guide us into leading a life as much like Christ as they can. Even a die-hard secularist would have to admit that the world would be a pretty awesome place if more Christians actually acted like Christ.

Gandhi perhaps is the closest approximation of Christ who has lived in the past century. If it were up to me, I would canonize him. I would accept damnation over a God that would reject him from heaven for not receiving enough sacraments. Can anyone imagine a God who would not accept him? If you can, I am extremely scared of you.

[Zarathustra]

Even a die-hard secularist would have to admit that the world would be a pretty awesome place if more Christians actually acted like Christ.

Gandhi perhaps is the closest approximation of Christ who has lived in the past century. If it were up to me, I would canonize him. I would accept damnation over a God that would reject him from heaven for not receiving enough sacraments. Can anyone imagine a God who would not accept him? If you can, I am extremely scared of you.

Finally, some common ground!

One of the funniest scenes in any South Park cartoon was in the movie (Bigger, Longer, Uncut) where Kenny goes to hell and sees Hitler and . . . Ghandi.

The problem is that, according to millions of Christians (and the Bible itself), Ghandi IS in hell. He wasn't a Christian. Didn't believe in the Christian God. And wasn't baptized. So the only way you, Dreaming, can say that Ghandi can get into heaven is if Adam's sin doesn't cover us all with the need to be saved. Your willingness to let him into heaven means that you agree he saved himself, through his good deeds. Which invalidates the need for Jesus' sacrifice.

Anyway, the fact that even in this small community we have Believers who can't agree with each other on the very basic ideas like hell and salvation . . . is there any wonder that there are people like us, who stand back and watch you Believers contradict yourselves, and shake our heads in disbelief? If you guys can't come to an agreement on what gets you into heaven, why should we believe anything you say?

I honestly think that most of the Christians today, if they had been born as members of the Mayan civilization, they'd be performing human sacrifices. The need for a supernatural belief system is nearly universal. But the fact that people can't make up their minds about what to do with this yearning shows that it's perhaps our single biggest weakness. Unless every single religion on earth is correct simultaneously, then this is the single most misleading yearning in the history of mankind, because given this "universal" yearning, we pursue it in a 1000 different ways. And according to most of these different sects, all the other guys are wrong.

From South Park BLU

[addressing the damned]
Hell Director: Hello, newcomers and welcome. Can everybody hear me? Hello?
[taps microphone]
Hell Director: Can everybody... ok. Um, I am the Hell Director. Uh, it looks like we have 8,615 of you newbies today. And for those of you who were little confused: uh, you are dead; and this is Hell. So abandon all hope and yadda-yadda-yadda. Uh, we are now going to start the orientation PROcess which will last about...
Protestant: Hey, wait a minute. I shouldn't be here, I was a totally strict and devout Protestant. I thought we went to heaven.
Hell Director: Yes, well, I'm afraid you are wrong.
Soldier: I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness.
Hell Director: Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well.
Man from Crowd: Well who was right? Who gets in to Heaven?
Hell Director: I'm afraid it was the MORmons. Yes, the MORmons were the correct answer.
The Damned: Awwww...

[Avatar]

I honestly think that most of the Christians today, if they had been born as members of the Mayan civilization, they'd be performing human sacrifices.

Totally agree.

--A

[rusmeister]

Thing is, you're essentially saying that all non-orthodox christianity, (in other words, the kinds that we're most frequently exposed to), is wrong, and that we are basically at fault for not being exposed to the "right" kind of christianity.

Your "definitive" christian teaching is no more definitive in the eyes of the agnostic or atheist than any other. Of course we base our opinions of christianity on our experiences thereof. How can it be otherwise?

To say that our understanding of christianity is wrong because because we've only experienced the wrong types seems a little disingenious. Shouldn't it be up to the Christians then to make sure that they only present the "right" kind?

(Oh, The Dreaming...Mithraism came before Zoroastrism IIRC. That was the first "dual god" (one good entity, one evil entity) view of the universe. Later gave rise to the Albigensian heresy, because the christians couldn't conceive of a good god allowing evil...so evil was a result of the equally powerful and eternally opposed evil god. The Abigensians were exterminated by the inquisition.)

--A

Your first statement is correct - the second is not. I'm not saying that you're at fault for what you are exposed to - indeed, one of our beliefs is essentially that you are judged based on what you ARE exposed to and how you react to it. An aborigine, never hearing the Gospel, will not be judged by the same criteria as a person who did, and rejected it. To an extent you WILL be judged by your works, but it is not your works that actually save you - in the end it is only by His mercy and grace, but again, like the father who accepts the 3-year-old child's scrawl for the best drawing it really can do would not be as happy at the same scrawl from a 14-year-old.

If you look at the history of Christianity and look at a globe and realize that after the schism of 1054 Rome controlled Western Christianity, you'll see that it's not so strange that you would be largely unaware of Eastern Christianity.

What a friend posted in user-friendly language:

Here's an extremely oversimplified version of our history:

Jesus Christ is born, dies, and is resurrected and ascends to heaven. His followers form the Church/the Holy Spirit is poured out at Pentecost.

Notwithstanding a few wacky heretics here and there, there is just one Church for the first 1000 years. No denominations. It is overseen by 5 major Sees, or bishoprics - Rome, Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.

In 1054, Rome breaks away from the other 4 sees and begins making her own rules, though the break had been coming for a while. While this was one of the most horrible events in history for obvious reasons (schism is always bad), it also created the problem of Islamic domination. With Christendom weakened by the split, it opened the door for Islamic invaders to take over the holy lands. Many had been overtaken already, but this just sort of sealed the deal, and those lands still have not yet been returned to the Christians.

Anyway, the Roman bishopric was the head of what eventually became knows as the Roman Catholic Church, and the other 4 bishops the heads of what became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Rome (in our opinion) continued to change the rules that had been in place for 1000 years. We believe in Jude 3 - the faith was revealed once for all to all the saints, and didn't need to be changed. 500 years later, Martin Luther decided he didn't like what was happening and broke away. Any church that is not some form of Orthodoxy or Catholicism can be traced directly to this split. His reasons were right, but his actions were wrong - he and his followers should have returned to the Orthodox Church, rather than creating a whole bunch of new ones.

So, that's it in a nutshell - again, waaaaay oversimplified and the blanks can be filled in as you learn, but I didn't want to overwhelm you.

Views of Christianity that leave out the Eastern world are distorted by definition. All of your interpretations are springing from the development of Christianity in the West.

To base your knowledge only on your own experience is ultimately non-intellectual. Any scientist will tell you that.

The reason that Christians do not present a unified view are historically caused. You have to study a little history. I'm just saying that you really don't know the history of Christianity - you're just reacting to what you see today.