posted April 19, 2008 05:04 PM         

~ Marcel Proust (agnostic)

posted May 03, 2008 04:11 PM         

See:

Hi,

First, I come in peace. I saw your video "the athiest delusion", and I thought it was clever. Dawkins interests me too. In my late teens and early twenties I was a rabid enemy of fundies everywhere (I'm 29 now). I am less hostile to religion now, though, perhaps, no less intolerant of its misinterpreters (who tend to be the vast majority of believers, as well as atheists). I see theology now as nothing more or less than a pictoral, symbolic, or archetypal, and poetic form of philosophy; the difference between mythology and religion is that mythologies are just dead religions, or religions that have substantially lost their hold on the collective imagination. I think Jesus of Nazareth, or whoever spoke many of the sayings and parables attributed to him, was an especially great philosopher and artist, and he was, more or less, forced by the political atmosphere of his time and place to deliver his doctrines in the veiled manner that he did. I have a great interest in altered states of consciousness, and the mystical state, in particular, but my personal philosophy shares the greatest affinity with Friedrich Nietzsche, who I take to be a new kind of shaman for western civilization. But thats another story. Here is what I wanted to say...

Before you can decide that God does not exist, you must first define "God" in such a way as to negate "Him". Whether you are distracted into thinking of God according to the narrow definitions offered by others, or whether you have originated a theory of your own, in either case, you are defining God independently of the known universe, and proceeding to evaluate the incongruities between the two. This is absurd. A better manner of operation would be to begin with the creation, to reason out a legitimate theory from there, and to be prepared to adjust your theory when new evidence presents itself. It has been said, "the finest line does not divide"... If you are willing to examine the matter with an open mind, you will find that science and religion need not be approached as though they were mutually exclusive enterprises. I say God, you say Order, or Being, or Universe... I say tomato, you say tomato. So, why do I prefer to say God? Because I have the soul of a poet, and, for me, the word God has a resonance which words like Universe and Being do not have. In other words, I take poetic license. The important thing, for me, is to hold the world, and all it contains, in an attitude of profound reverence. If you can do this without the use of the word "God", I invite you to do so. But I doubt you'll ever convince the world to abandon the word entirely. The best we can do is get them to redefine the word in benign terms. Thats where I come in, lol.

Thank you so much for your time.

take care,
Stephen

posted June 05, 2008 01:02 PM         

quote:

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Before you can decide that God does not exist, you must first define "God" in such a way as to negate "Him".

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Indeed! Hence, a nonbelief in God is in Reality, a belief in God

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted June 05, 2008 09:23 PM         

"First, I come in peace." I like that.

quote:

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If you are willing to examine the matter with an open mind, you will find that science and religion need not be approached as though they were mutually exclusive enterprises.

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