Anti-Semitism In France!

[Ron Cusano 0]

See! Miracles DO HAPPEN!!

Yep! We agree!

[anonemouse 1]

PS - If you think about it, this leads right back to when we started this thread, when I asked you how you came to the belief that there was no God and what you had based that belief on.

Yeah, but if we keep going, we'll wind up where we just were.

But, I'll indulge you. I've never believed in God, because I just haven't. I don't really know how to explain it. Even as a child, it seemed like a made-up story. It never resonated with me like it does with some people. Nothing I have learned in the years since then has made it seem more realistic. To me, it's just a story. I have never seen or heard of any evidence that would corroborate a higher power. I guess I just lack the gene that helps me believe in spiritual things. To me, God is no more believable than aliens, Bigfoot, the Easter Bunny, Santa, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

To that same end, I can't comprehend why people do believe in God. It literally makes no sense to me.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

That works for me! And it goes without saying, that I don't believe your take on evolution, and you don't believe my take of the Bible!

Does that mean we can teach evolution in science class without teaching the Bible (Creationism or Intelligent Design) in science class?

[anonemouse 1]

I guess I just mean that we are not born with the belief that there is a God. That belief has to be taught to us. Some of us just aren't susceptible to the teaching, IMO. I think the people that are susceptible to the teaching were born with the "God gene", and are more open to spiritual thought and inquiry.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

There is only two people that I can recall who claim to be Christians that have a problem with how I understand scripture. One who is apparently from a very liberal demonination that does not accept the Bible literally, and the other who professes to be a Conservative Christian but does not have the conviction to stand behind his supposed views, but flip-flops back and forth because he doesn't want to "argue". I know you find that admirable, but I find it a major cop-out and wimpish!

There were a lot more than two.

There are one or two others who had a problem with what the preceived as my "attitude" and while I may disagree with them, it had nothing to do with interpretation .

There were many more than two.

By beliefs are not based upon MY interpretation, since I believe the Bible interprets itself. In face the scriptures say that the Bible "is not open to any private interpretation"! If you accept that the Bible is to be taken literally, then the subject changes fron one of interpretation to one of "What does the Bible say", and "what is the context in which it is being said". If you want to challange my understanding of what the Bible means, then you need to support it with the BIBLE, not ideas, feelings and opinions.

Then how do you account for thousands of of ministers who do not interpret it the same ways as you?

Are they all wrong, while you are right? Or do the scriptures only interpret themselves for you (and people who agree with you)? I am not as educated on scriptures as well as some of the ministers I speak to, so I just accept the ones who agree with my interpretation of scriptures as being correct.

[Ron Cusano 0]

That is an honest answer and I appriciate that. I used to feel the same way. I never knew much about the Bible or the whole God thing. I was brought up as a Catholic but never really know much about God or Jesus, let alone had a relationship with him.

Actually, it was a book written long ago called "Chariot of the Gods" by Eric Von Danakin (spelling might be wrong) that claims the Bible was inspired by space aliens, that got my curiosity up. I started reading the Bible, listening to what various people had to say about it, and after a time, all the pieces seemed to fit together, and it made perfect sense. Then I started looking into prophecy with an open mind, actually trying to disprove it. What I found blew my mind! When I looked at all the evidence collectively, with a really open mind, I could come to no other conclusion than it was for real, God was for real and Jesus was for real. I have been studing, reading, teaching and writing about it ever since. To be perfectly honest, blind faith had nothing to do with it at all. It was facts and evidence, and determination to find out the real truth.

Yeah, but if we keep going, we'll wind up where we just were.

But, I'll indulge you. I've never believed in God, because I just haven't. I don't really know how to explain it. Even as a child, it seemed like a made-up story. It never resonated with me like it does with some people. Nothing I have learned in the years since then has made it seem more realistic. To me, it's just a story. I have never seen or heard of any evidence that would corroborate a higher power. I guess I just lack the gene that helps me believe in spiritual things. To me, God is no more believable than aliens, Bigfoot, the Easter Bunny, Santa, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

To that same end, I can't comprehend why people do believe in God. It literally makes no sense to me.

[anonemouse 1]

Believe me, I had an open mind about it. For a time, I actively searched for something that would help be believe, but I couldn't find it. I think being able to believe would make life much easier. If someone asks what religion you are and you tell them that you don't have one, that you're an atheist, they get this look of vague (or sometimes outright) disgust on their face. For a long time, I wondered what was so different about me that I could read the same passage that a friend read and not see the "rightness" that they saw. It's just that nothing I read or heard about God ever resonated as "real" or "right" with me. Eventually I came to the conclusion that maybe I wasn't finding something to believe in because it wasn't there, at least not for me.

[Ron Cusano 0]

I do believe you, and I can imagine it can be very uncomfortable, and maybe even lonely when you fill your beliefs are different. I guess thing starting for me when I asked myself if everything that I see around me, i.e land, sea, plants, trees, animals, the planets, the sun, the moon, the air, EVERYTHING just happened? As I said, I am not a scientist, but as I understand Einsteins Theory of Relativity, everything in creation (the universe) is getting older. In my way of thinking, that means everything was once younger . . . and younger, and younger. Until it had a starting point! If matter, energy, etc. wasn't created at some point, then where did it come from. That alone seems to have the hands of creation all over it. As someone who is educated in science, what is your take on that?

Once I came to grips that there was a creator, it was a matter of searching to see who or what that creator is. I quickly ruled out the "what" because I saw intelligence in creation. I once heard someone use the anology that if you were walking in the woods and found a watch on the ground, what would you conclude? That the watch just happened over a period of time, or that some intelligence made the watch. I know this is in simplistic terms, but I think you can get the picture.

Coming to believe was a step by step thing for me and not something I could embrace immediately, and it took a lot of logic to convince me.

Believe me, I had an open mind about it. For a time, I actively searched for something that would help be believe, but I couldn't find it. I think being able to believe would make life much easier. If someone asks what religion you are and you tell them that you don't have one, that you're an atheist, they get this look of vague (or sometimes outright) disgust on their face. For a long time, I wondered what was so different about me that I could read the same passage that a friend read and not see the "rightness" that they saw. It's just that nothing I read or heard about God ever resonated as "real" or "right" with me. Eventually I came to the conclusion that maybe I wasn't finding something to believe in because it wasn't there, at least not for me.

[anonemouse 1]

If matter, energy, etc. wasn't created at some point, then where did it come from. That alone seems to have the hands of creation all over it. As someone who is educated in science, what is your take on that?

Why does something have to have a beginning? Can it not just exist? I personally think that there is an explanation out there for everything, but those explanations may not be within our grasp. That's one reason I think religion is so universal. We, as thinking animals, need explanations for what we see and religion gives us that. I think www.talkorigins.org explains it best:

Some questions are harder to answer than others. But although we do not have a full understanding of the origin of the universe, we are not completely in the dark. We know, for example, that space comes from the expansion of the universe. The total energy of the universe may be zero. Cosmologists have hypotheses for the other questions that are consistent with observations (Hawking 2001). For example, it is possible that there is more than one dimension of time, the other dimension being unbounded, so there is no overall origin of time. Another possibility is that the universe is in an eternal cycle without beginning or end. Each big bang might end in a big crunch to start a new cycle (Steinhardt and Turok 2002) or at long intervals, our universe collides with a mirror universe, creating the universe anew (Seife 2002).

One should keep in mind that our experiences in everyday life are poor preparation for the extreme and bizarre conditions one encounters in cosmology. The stuff cosmologists deal with is very hard to understand. To reject it because of that, though, would be to retreat into the argument from incredulity.

Really, the claim is "I can't conceive that (fill in the blank)." Others might be able to find a natural explanation; in many cases, they already have. Nobody knows everything, so it is unreasonable to conclude that something is impossible just because you do not know it. Even a noted antievolutionist acknowledges this point: "The peril of negative arguments is that they may rest on our lack of knowledge, rather than on positive results" (Behe 2003).

The argument from incredulity creates a god of the gaps. Gods were responsible for lightning until we determined natural causes for lightning, for infectious diseases until we found bacteria and viruses, for mental illness until we found biochemical causes for them. God is confined only to those parts of the universe we do not know about, and that keeps shrinking.

If you think about it, by saying that everything must have a creator, you also must ask the question "Who created the creator?". Are there successively "higher" creators out there?

[anonemouse 1]

Coming to believe was a step by step thing for me and not something I could embrace immediately, and it took a lot of logic to convince me.

But logic can also be misleading. When sailors would sail away hundreds of years ago, they would sometimes never return. People back then thought it was logical that they fell off the edge of the sea or were eaten by sea monsters.

[Ron Cusano 0]

Since we understand the creator to be spirit and not matter or energy as we know it, we understand that the creator always existed. Christians also believe that time ans space are part of the creation, and the creator exists outside of time and space. We call it eternity.

If we accept that everything just always existed, then how can we understand that everything ages? I have never heard anyone, even a scientist, suggest that everything always existed without having an origin.

I think that to believe that would take far more faith that believing in a creator. It's something to think about.

Why does something have to have a beginning? Can it not just exist? I personally think that there is an explanation out there for everything, but those explanations may not be within our grasp. That's one reason I think religion is so universal. We, as thinking animals, need explanations for what we see and religion gives us that. I think www.talkorigins.org explains it best: If you think about it, by saying that everything must have a creator, you also must ask the question "Who created the creator?". Are there successively "higher" creators out there?

[anonemouse 1]

Since we understand the creator to be spirit and not matter or energy as we know it, we understand that the creator always existed. Christians also believe that time ans space are part of the creation, and the creator exists outside of time and space. We call it eternity.

But it still exists. And, by your argument, everything that exists has to have a creator. So who (or what) created it? To me, you explanation is no more valid than my explanation was to you.

[Ron Cusano 0]

Pewrhaps I used the wrong terminolgy then. I wasn't too bright in grammar either. What I was trying to convey was that all they we call "creation" i.e. matter, energy, etc. had to have a creator. Since God as we understand Him is neither, and does not exist in "time and space", this would not apply.

But it still exists. And, by your argument, everything that exists has to have a creator. So who (or what) created it? To me, you explanation is no more valid than my explanation was to you.

[Ron Cusano 0]

I think that we can both agree that there are things at play here that neithe of us, perhaps no one can fully understand. My feeling is that your scientific training and mindset is such that it prevents you from considering the possibility that God exists. Maybe that is where the faith part comes in, when we take the leap to say that yes, maybe there could be a creator that we call God. I think that if we put all the evidence together and used courtroom rules, we as the jury would conclude that there is enough evidence to prove the case "without a reasonable doubt"

"Without a reasonable doubt", as we know, is not infallible, so the faith thing comes into play, as does reasoning and sense. As you know, even in science, "proof" is subjective and subject to change. If we can give science that latitude, why is it so hard to give God the same latitude??

[green 6]

I guess I just mean that we are not born with the belief that there is a God. That belief has to be taught to us. Some of us just aren't susceptible to the teaching, IMO. I think the people that are susceptible to the teaching were born with the "God gene", and are more open to spiritual thought and inquiry.

I was amused when I read this because I have often thought that this might be the case with our family. I, and the rest of my family, except with the possible exception of my mother who wasn't exactly Christian but was a very spritual person, seem to be devoid of the ability to believe. Just as some people are colour blind and others are tone deaf, it would seem that some of us are unable to make sense of something which resonates powerfully for so many others.

There has been a few times that I have regretted this inability to make this leap. My saddest experience came after I became friends with a Christian mystic. He was, of course, courting me for Christ and he wrote me the most extraordinarily beautiful and passionate letters concerning the Scriptures and faith. These documents were hand-printed on white, 14 inch long foolscap, they were usually many, many pages long - the longest one I received was 50 pages - and they were, well, extraordinary documents.

I wasn't the only one in this fellow's class. Enclosed with my letters were photocopies of letters he had written to others.

I wanted to believe. I really did but in the end I could not. None of it made sense to me.

I, however, have saved this magnificent correspondence, how could I not?