The evolution-creation question is settled. Man evolved and was not created. To argue the question with a creationist would be like standing in a driving rain and letting him try to convince you that it wasn't raining. Or vice versa. No mileage there. Forget it.Same thing as regards arguing with jehovahs, evangelical Christians, Islamists, or other fantasists whether heaven exists or some other superstition is true. Especially Muslims with dynamite strapped around their torsos.
Putting that out there for you is my gift to myself and to you for my birthday today. Happy my birthday to you too.
Later the same day
Shortly after publishing those paragraphs, a birthday card arrived from one of my sisters. She appealed to me to read the Billy Graham clips she'd enclosed. There are three of them, apparently from a Q&A column of Dr. Graham's titled "On Christianity."Question 1:
DEAR REV. GRAHAM: Do you think Christ will come again and the world will end in 2009? I get very discouraged when I see the way the world is going—the economic situation, terrorism, crime, warfare, etc.—and I wonder how much longer God is going to let this continue.Do you get even more discouraged when you realize that there is no heaven and your body isn't going to be restored to its young sexiness?
Question 2:
DEAR REV. GRAHAM: My friend (who doesn't believe in God or religion) tells me that if I really believe the Bible, then why don't I follow all the laws in the Old Testament? I do believe the Bible is God's Word, but am I doing something wrong by not following these laws?No, dear, and neither would the ancient Israelites have been wrong to ignore them, except that the religious elders would have banished them from the community.
Question 3:
DEAR REV. GRAHAM: If God is real, then why are there so many religions in the world? They can't all be right, can they?They sure can't all be right, now, can they? Lots of people (who still want to believe in heaven) think that it almost doesn't matter what you believe. In Charles M. Blow's December 27 op-ed piece in The New York Times ("Heaven for the Godless?"), he reports on the June publication of
the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life['s] controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.I hope that puts my sister's mind at ease.
This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." But the survey suggested that Americans just weren't buying that....
And they didn't stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven—dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt—and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.
I appreciate your gift, but money would be nicer.
ReplyDeleteSteve in Germany
Almost forgot. Congratulations on another glorious year.
ReplyDeleteSteve
Thanks, Steve. Battered by age and the loss of much of my sexiness but still glorious.
ReplyDeleteE.P.,You,and Me. Happy brithday to all of Januany's children.
ReplyDeleteI had an Aunt that died a few years back. She went to church every Sunday; never preached at anyone about having a drink or anything else. My uncle didn't go to church with her, and I asked one day if she ever tried to get him to go. She said she was having a hard enough time getting herself into Heaven. If he wanted to go... he knew what time she pulled out of the deiveway.
If there is something after this life--I believe they are both there.
ed
MO
ReplyDelete1) There is no difference between someone who says,
"I believe God exists"
and someone who says
"I believe God does not exist".
Both are beliefs that cannot be proven on this earth, today.
2) It may well be true that all religions are equal in the eyes of God - everyone who believes in any religion (or no religion) may get to go to heaven. We cannot presume to know what God thinks. Jesus said what Jesus said, but God may be more understanding.
3) To think about why God allows bad things to happen, and continue to happen, consider the following quandary. If God wants man to have free will, to be good or evil, then What should God do when man decides to be evil?
Happy Birthday to you
greg
Greg,I like your point about evil. Here is a step along that road. What is evil in the eyes of God? Forget everything man has written about evil and you are left with only the question. ed
ReplyDeleteGreg, I think there is a huge difference between the two propositions in your number 1; the evidence and arguments for god's non-existence are far, far better than those for god's existence, which tend to be of the hopeful, wishful variety. Given that god's non-existence is far more probable than god's existence, your numbers 2 & 3 are moot.
ReplyDeleteAn argument won or evidence proved is judged by the majority. While there is good evidence for your argument; there is something to be said for 98% of Americans believing there is a God. It is hard to discount that many people as just nuts. (Yes, I know the majority once thought the world was flat.(smile)
ReplyDeleteEd, you really had me going until you flashed that smile to let me know you were only joking about the majority's deciding what's proved. Whew, what a relief!
ReplyDeleteHave you read Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? "When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion."
Sent to me directly by email and published here with Greg's permission –Moristotle
ReplyDeleteIf your first statement were true, the I'd agree with #2 and #3. But belief is belief. There is nothing more. No truth. No false. Just belief. Statistics about what you believe do not influence the ultimate truth or falsity of your belief.
Look at it this way. Picture 4 choices.
Heaven (God) does/does not exist.
You believe/do not believe.
If there is no heaven (God) then it does not matter what you believe. Believe = not believe. Both lose.
If there is a heaven (God) then
1) if you believe you probably get in. You win.
2) if you don't believe, then you probably do not get in. You lose.
Thus:
In one of four you win if you believe.
In zero of four you win if you do not believe.
If I believed in statistics, I'd probably pick "believe".
Theological games are fun.
Greg, this is indeed fun, and you are a delightful interlocutor. However, your approach to the whole thing is (obviously) much different from mine. You imply that it's a game, first off. To me, it is not a game, and I am not playing.
ReplyDeleteSure, "ultimate truth" leaves a sliver of room to be surprised (or not, for we must continue to exist in order to have any experience). Granted. However, after years of spiritual turmoil (with no game-like excitement whatsoever), I decided that I'd go with my strong impression, based on all of the evidence that I had myself observed and all of the reading and thinking I had done, that it is very, very unlikely that god exists. (I'm talking about a "personal god" of the Abrahamaic variety: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Of course, "god doesn't exist" really says more about men's religious beliefs down through the ages than about "god.") To me, your 50/50 position (besides being probabilistically way, way out of line) is wimpish, trying to have it both ways, as your rendition of Pascal's Wager seems to indicate. (Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, in their recent books on this subject—The God Delusion and God Is Not Great, respectively—persuasively make Pascal's Wager out to be the rather simple-minded, sophomoric argument it is, however novel at the time and all that. The whole enterprise rests on silly assumptions about what god would approve of and requires that god be so dense the he/she/it would be fooled by someone's "believing" just for the sake of possibly winning a wager! I mean, come on, Greg, don't you agree that's asinine? If you don't, then arguing with you, too, about this might be rather like standing in the rain letting you try to convince me it isn't raining. Rain is a metaphor—originally presented to me unconsciously by my muse—for evidence and thought. The two people standing in the rain arguing have much different frames of reference with respect to what is evidence; they may as well forget it, as I said in the essay we're commenting on. I.e., you, in this example, seem to have a different sense than I do of what constitutes rain.)
I'd like to rephrase your first sentence, to make it more accurate: If I had the information you, Moristotle, have, then I'd see that your first statement is indeed true, and I'd agree with you about it as well as agree about #2 and #3.
Sent to me directly by email and published here with Greg's permission –Moristotle
ReplyDeleteFeel free to fire away on your blog. I appreciate keeping it to anonymous first names.
Life is a game. If it is not fun, then you shouldn't be doing whatever it is. Do something else. (We may well be defining "game" differently, but that's part of the fun.)
I recently did a series of courses—The Teaching Company—on the Great Religions of the World. Every one made conceptual sense except Buddhism. I could never understand what it was all about, even though I thought I understood Hinduism, out of which Buddhism came. I've not given up, just have not had time to get back to it. Good friends are devout Mormons, so I've had the opportunity to learn lots about that religion. There, "belief" takes on a whole new dimension.
My understanding is that God is both personal and universal. All-knowing. Made everything.
But doesn't mess with your freedom to do stupid actions and face stupid consequences.
OK. You caught me, I was having fun with the probability. I figure that is about as simple as belief in God, or not, gets.
To go off a bit on a side track, though there is a good bit of religion in a couple of these:
I can't swallow evolution—at least "big" evolution that says I'm descended from pond scum—small evolution is right-on.
I can't swallow the Big Bang.
Man causes Global Warming—nope.
Politicians—nope.
Somewhere in there is consistency, but it's often a mystery.
Grag I've ask this question before; maybe you have the answer.
ReplyDeleteWhen man first started out to explain the wonders around him...he settled on the idea there must be a God.
How did it come about that one person from the tribe became the only one that could speak to God?
God or no God, the idea that so many people turn their belilfs over to a man because he stands in a pulpit is worrisome.
Remember, sometimes a question is just a question.
Thanks ed
An old friend wrote me privately on my birthday that his sister used to believe in a God (a Jewish one) until her oldest son died of brain cancer at twenty-six.
ReplyDeleteMany men (and a few women, too, I guess) have misused their marvelous brains to try to explain why god would let bad things happen to good people. But the true explanation is that there is no god who is "letting it happen." Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all concocted on a non-existent entity.
My old friend replies:
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, it appears to be the same god for all three.
Without deep thinking or any reading, it seems to me that monotheism sets the stage for for an authoritarian religion, as there is only one source of "the word." Certainly the fundamentalist branches of each of the three are very authoritarian. That gives the medicine man a lot of power.
One passage from the bible that sticks out to me is where god explains that he is a "jealous god" and the we should have no other gods before him. Who are these other gods and what kind of deal are they offering? An jealousy is unbecoming, especially in a supreme being.
Right, the same non-existent entity for the three mentioned religions. Funny that the "same source" in each of their cases is providing incompatible "words." And there's the Latter-Day Saints, who have their American version as revealed to Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon being yet another of the same source's "words." They need to give it up, already. (Fat chance, huh?)