One a day, plus iron

Well, I'm not a godless Heathen, but this struck me as attempting to pigeonhole God at the most annoying.

Do we have to describe things we cannot even begin to understand? I suppose that's the nature of humankind. But still...let's limit the God we're supposed to have faith in (I mean that writer) by categorizing him and I really don't think God spoke to him personally and told him all those things.

And it does rain frogs. Every so often in different places around the world. It's not a once and done phenomenon, it's natural. So we're judging now that every time a rain of frogs appears it's God's judgement against someone? That's like those Predestination people who say that only good people are wealthy, and the poor are poor because they deserve it. God has sent them hardship to punish them. Feh!

I have...as you might have noticed, a problem with that.
Oh. Forty years. They got the forty year (so sayeth the Bible) because they disobeyed God. Moses died within sight of Canaan. He disobeyed God and wasn't allowed in.

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When I say "this" I mean that sermon, not your comments.

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which-chick.livejournal.com

The sermon in question is Puritan-era stuff -- they were a lot more fire-n-brimstone back then, as I understand it. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was a piece of early-American writing that we had to read in high school... and I've remembered it since then.

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My favorite quote from back then is Cotton Mather (the witch hunter).

"The devil invented gin and fried food."

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But then there was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." :)

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I think you and I basically agree about God and religion, Sue. :)

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I think so.

And too, I agree with which chick that we have a social compact that enables us to live together. It does not take a fundamental belief in God to be a good person, or to do things that are right for our species.

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Very, very true.

I actually find the people who say "The only reason I don't murder/rape/pillage etc. is because of the fear of God and Hell" rather terrifying, because what they're saying is that they don't have any internal compass of their own.

Even after 10 years of being with Abner (an athiest), I'm not sure I really understand how people can not believe in God--to me the existence of God is as obvious as the sun and the moon--but I don't doubt for a moment that people can be good, upstanding, ethical people without that belief.

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I have believed for a long time that God will sort things out.

So I have faith that the people I love who do not believe, which includes the majority of my friends at Otakon etc. will be taken care of.

And I don't mean taken care of like taken out and shot or anything.

I always found it interesting that my fundy, judgemental M.I.L. never knew the beliefs of her churches, for example the belief that babies are sinful. A baby is one of the most selfish beings on the planet. But it's okay for her to believe that babies are automatically "saved", but not the old sinner down the street that she doesn't like, or even the good person who does lives a godly life but doesn't belong to a specific baptist church.

One of the saddest things about people like that, people who are so busy judging their family and neighbors that they don't look to their own behavior, is their effect on their family. Karl's dad left him a note in his will about how he hoped Karl and Becky would be saved. It was like a blow. he judged his own son (who is a believer, by the way, but doesn't follow exactly what his father did), something we are told Not To Do. No "I love you", nothing like that. I suppose it seemed like a good idea to him when Karl's dad wrote it. But it was an awfully cold thing to leave his children at a time when they needed comfort.

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staceman.livejournal.com

That's the biggest thing that disturbs me about the so-called Christians; They're so busy judging others, that they rarely look at themselves. And they feel that they don't have to; they feel that since they simply go to church and are doing right by their peers and their pastor, that they are surely great, godly people. The truth is, they really don't even truly understand their religion. The God thing, ends up being nothing more than a big name to drop to associate themselves with, and a big scary monster that's gonna get you if you don't believe and live like they do. (God is gonna GET you! Rawwwrrrr!) All in all, religion is just a way to make them feel superior to others, and to another extent, a drug to make them feel better about the mystery of what happens when they die.

Since we're disclosing our belief systems here, I'll take a stab at trying to explain what I believe. I believe in a higher power that designed/created us. I don't believe that it wants/needs to be worshipped, nor does it judge or punish- I believe that it designed us to be self-punishing. (this is probably starting to sound like George Carlin's "Big Electron" theory!) It's like we're machines, programmed, if you will. Actions and consequences, good or bad. When we go against the programming, bad things happen, not unlike throwing a monkey wrench into delicate clockwork. It works like logic. I believe that things like, for instance, how stress can affect your health, are good clues to this.

As for the bible, I believe that it is indeed full of good things, common sense things that go along with how we are designed and programmed by the higher power. But of course, it is an interpretation by *people*, and thus was subjected to things like personal bias by the people who wrote the particular books. Good intentions, horribly bad presentation. Not to mention what may have got lost in the various translations. You can't deny that a lot of the stuff is really out there. (http://www.landoverbaptist.org has some fine examples of really bad verses, that you can even get on T-shirts and coffee mugs if you so desire!) One good example, among a load of others, is Revelations. However, I don't think that it can easily be passed off as total bull. Amongst all the crazy symbolism, I believe are things that have came to pass, happening now, etc.. But, I believe that it was all simply a logical calculation, someone many many moons ago sitting down and thinking of possible outcomes that could come about if people as a whole were to continue on certain wrong paths. I also believe that the bible isn't really neccessary reading, I believe that many common sense things, as I mentioned, are programmed into us, and naturally come to you through clear thinking and perhaps meditation. But in today's world, clear thinking is tough, with all the distractions, peer pressure, and temptations of doing things to excess.

Unfortunately, things like this are very difficult for me to put into the right words, so I'm not sure if I quite explained myself correctly. Take it as a brief, flawed summary of what I believe. ;) It all makes my brain hurt, and I don't like discussing it much. I know what I know, if ya know what I mean. :)

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My big problem with Revelations is that here is a sermon preached to a specific group of people. And it's being taken as prophecy about the end of the world. I truly hope that nobody ever does that to some of the sermons that i've heard from people.

Just like Paul preaching to a group about covering their heads because the women of a specific congregation, freed from the constraints of head coverings for the first time in their lives had been sporting more and more elaborate hairdos to out do each other, needed to be thinking about what was being preached, not having better hair than the next woman.

Do I think that the Revelations of Saint John is a prophecy of the end of the world? No.

But again, that's my opinion.

There's a lot of common sense in the Bible. People don't tend to read it though.

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The problem is that a lot of the common sense in the bible is hidden by the culturally specific, the mythological, and the just plain...don't know the word...horribleness of it. I mean according to Leviticus it's an abomination to wear mixed fiber clothes, kids should be stoned for disobeying their parents, and gays deserve death. Yuck!

The signal to noise ration in the Bible is not so very good, in my opinion. And I say this as a committed Jew (though one who is having issues with some of the theology).

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staceman.livejournal.com

http://www.cafepress.com/landoverbaptist/75553

Good Stuff™

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Even after 10 years of being with Abner (an athiest), I'm not sure I really understand how people can not believe in God--to me the existence of God is as obvious as the sun and the moon--but I don't doubt for a moment that people can be good, upstanding, ethical people without that belief.

I can answer that one, or at least answer it a little bit. I was raised by agnostics. (When I was six years old, I apparently asked my parents why we didn't attend church. They told me "Because we're not hypocrites.")

So I was raised to question everything. I had no religious experience whatsoever, other than the experiences one cannot escape in the popular culture of our overly religious nation, until I went to Catholic high school. (The local public school was a disaster area.)

At that point, I was smacked in the head by two thousand years (or, if one includes the pre-Christian traditions, five thousand years) of contradictory theology laid atop ancient magical beliefs. (I'm sorry if this characterization of it bothers some people, but I can't think of a way to make it more palatable without making it incomprehensible.) It took me about a semester to decide I was an atheist.

With more experience, I realized that the questions asked by theists are fundamentally unanswerable. Is there a being, more powerful than we can possibly comprehend, that created the Universe? Heck, how would I know? An alien with ten million years' worth of evolution on us could show up, move the Moon out of its orbit, read everyone's minds with some sort of advanced technology, and declare itself to be God. How would you disprove it? So, the fundamental question of theology: "Is there a god of any kind, be it good or evil or clockwork, in existence?" is unanswerable, except through faith, which appears not to have been installed in my particular version of Human 1.0.

On the question of "Is there a God such as is described in the Bible?" I came to a simpler answer. No. There is no way that the world could be as it is, with villains prospering and the good dying in horrible conditions, if there were a loving and omnipotent father-god. That's the modern definition of atheism in America (y'all dunna believe in Gawd!) so I'm an atheist.

Although, I will say that back in college a friend asked me if there were any thing I would ask a prospective candidate for God, to prove His existence and power. I said, "Make two plus two equal five."

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I agree with you absolutely that God As Described In The Bible does not exist. I even understand, very well, that God As Described in The Bible is exceptionally unappealing. I wouldn't worship that being.

Abner and I have discussed this extensively and I've come to the conclusion that he sees all the things that to me reveal God (or let's call it the Divine, to get away from that Judaeo-Christian-Islamic thing) in the universe. He even has, as near as the barrier of language rather than direct communication will let us determine, much the same emotional reaction to it (awe, wonder, amazement, occasional giddiness at the sheer fucking *coolness* of the universe). He just doesn't then make the leap to thinking then that there is something Divine in that sheer coolness. Which is cool--it is quite probably something that is either hardwired into an individual's operating system or not. To me the Divine is as obvious as the chair I'm sitting on--but I get that either I'm telling myself fairy stories or you and Abner are missing something I'm seeing. One or the other. :)

I've always joked that what it would take for Abner to believe in God is simultaneous supernovae spelling out "Abner, don't be a shmuck!" across the night sky. He says it doesn't have to be personal like that--but simultaneous supernovae spelling out something intelligible might do it. :)

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He just doesn't then make the leap to thinking then that there is something Divine in that sheer coolness.

The question that I ask in this case is: How could I see the divine in something that's an integral part of being human?

I've always joked that what it would take for Abner to believe in God is simultaneous supernovae spelling out "Abner, don't be a shmuck!" across the night sky. He says it doesn't have to be personal like that--but simultaneous supernovae spelling out something intelligible might do it. :)

If that happened to me, I would probably spend the rest of my life in a mental institution, trying desperately to convince the psychiatrists - who would presumably have seen the celestial light show and believed in it - that I was mad. How do you determine, to your own satisfaction, if you're sane when you've undergone an immensely improbable experience like that? Heck, the psychiatrists to whom you think you're talking could be hallucinations, too!

Is there such a thing as being too sane? 'Cause I think I may actually be utterly deficient in whatever lets people believe in things. :)

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The question that I ask in this case is: How could I see the divine in something that's an integral part of being human?

What are you referring to as the integral part of being human here--the coolness of the universe or the ability to see and appreciate it?

I mean the universe would be incredibly cool whether we were here to notice it or not, right?

And I don't actually think everyone is able to see that awesome coolness--I don't think it's necessarily an integral part of being human. Maybe. Hrm. I might need to think about that more.

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The ability to see and experience the coolness is a vast part of our humanity. It may, in fact, ultimately turn out to be what makes us human as opposed to a very dextrous ape.

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Ah, fair enough. On more reflection, I think I probably agree with you about that. Which means that there are some H. sapiens running around that aren't entirely human.

Like that's a shock.

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teflon-tim.livejournal.com

Make two plus two equal five.

If memory serves me right, O'Brien did that in 1984 -- or at least he did so as far as Winston Smith was concerned. Richard Burton played O'Brien in the movie. Does that make Richard Burton God?

Seriously, though...

I'm not convinced that there is a God. However, I'm not convinced that there isn't one, either. I hold open the possibility of a higher existence because I'd like to think that there's more to life than just the proverbial moment of light and warmth as the sparrow flies in the window and through the house. But you'll need to do a bit better than asking me to "take it on faith." I need more supporting evidence than someone simply saying "God says so," or "It's written in the Book of so-and-so."

I suppose that makes me an agnostic. Or maybe I don't have Faith 1.0 installed in my OS either. :)

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I think I'm a really, really strange sort of theist--because I'm not sure I believe that there's more than this life (though I'd like to believe in reincarnation, I'm not sure I actually on a gut level *do*). We live, we die, we rot (or get eaten--I prefer eaten, personally). Some people try to make that sound insignificant--but really it's not. It's really, actually, quite a lot. Not a little thing at all to live and love and move through the world and appreciate the beauty. I mean there's mystery there and awesomeness, in just one life and then the oblivion of the grave.

But I still believe that there is something Divine in the universe. Like, as Terry Pratchett says, I believe in the postman.

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But I still believe that there is something Divine in the universe. Like, as Terry Pratchett says, I believe in the postman.

I imagine this is what it's like to be colorblind. I honestly see no evidence of the divine in the Universe. It seems like a great, blind clockwork that's running along at an immense rate of speed across vast, mostly empty distances. While it's awe-inspiring, it's awe-inspiring in the way that the Grand Canyon is. It's huge, and it's beautiful, and it obviously took a lot of time to get there. :)

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It may be a hardwired difference between us. It may also be the way that each of us was brought up. Your family are agnostics. I was taken for walks in the woods when I was small, and, in fact, to see the Grand Canyon, and we talked about the Divine, my mom and I. Hardly ever went to church, but walked in the woods and felt the mystery a lot.

You may be colorblind, and I may be like Arthur Conan Doyle, seeing fairies where there are none. (Only I don't write as well. :) )

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I had a family background with strong faith. So I see the divine in a lot of things. Love for one thing.

And again, since I don't understand God, it makes it that much harder to describe him. My understanding is that the original spirit, what became the Holy Spirit, was female in the original versions of the old testament. Until I learn those languages, I won't know for sure, and even then can't. Nobody can. There are no vowels. So open to misinterpretation.

In any case...the old testament is description of something in terms that the people then would understand. It might not hold meaning for a lot of people today. On the other hand, I've read some fairly wretched translations. so I prefer to read as close to an accurate translation as I can to get some idea of what the history of my system of belief is. Not everyone feels the need to do this.

Which is why the Bibles my church hands out to 3rd graders translates "Eunuchs" as "Government Officials".

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