[_Stefan_]

Yes Paul, it does :p Wishful thinking is the root of it all isn't it?

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

Paul,

Disclaimer:
There is more than one faith, although only one true faith; the mormon faith.

Remember now you made this statement!! and Mormonism it is more unacceptably to me and any thinking person than those of most cults/sects I have come across during my life.

I have had visits from young so called "elders" just out of their teens still wet behind the ears trying to influence me with this abject nonsense. I can take a stand point and point out that it is huge colossal nonsense

I know a great deal about Mormonism and dislike just like every other "ISM"

Mormon doctrine for instance god is an exalted man from another planet who came to earth had intercourse behind poor Josephs beloved to be wife Mary, Thus committting both adultery and fornication to produce his biologic son jesus. not "JESUS"

So by this jesus is a bastard!!

They have no idea about who created the universe and unlike my hypothetical of one great intelligence, the universe has billions and trillions of gods just like the one they serve.

"Utter nonsense" you brought it up not me and note amongst my many studies and interests one is that of comparative religion of which Mormonism is the most ridiculous.

[paul.fr]

Alan,

Thanks for your reply, I don't have the time to give a full reply, but I wonder if you could clarify a few things from your last post?

Mormon doctrine for instance god is an exalted man from another planet who came to earth had intercourse behind poor Josephs beloved to be wife Mary

So, he had sex behind Mary. But who with?

So by this jesus is a bastard!!

What has jesus got to do with it? He is a poor Latin American immigrant who mows my lawn! He is not even a member of this forum!

I will reply more fully on the morrow.

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

Paul,

So, he had sex behind Mary. But who with?

Mary of the holy family of the bible. []

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

Of course this is abject nonsense!! POOR JOSEPH

[DoctorBeaver]

When Jesus went to Mount Olive, Popeye punched him in the mouth  []

[Soul Surfer]

Alan you and I are precise opposites. 

I do not believe in any form of God that acts with intelligence in this universe or any form of afterlife but I do believe in religion as a vital part of creating a cooperative and cohesive society and the concept of a loving and knowing God as a simple model for interacting with others and our environment so I am a member of the Church of England and a regular church goer.

The big problem with religion today is that it cannot change fast enough to cope with the last hundred years of discovery.

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

Soul Surfer

I do not believe in any form of God that acts with intelligence in this universe or any form of afterlife but I do believe in religion as a vital part of creating a cooperative and cohesive society and the concept of a loving and knowing God as a simple model for interacting with others and our environment so I am a member of the Church of England and a regular church goer

Religion used sensibly, that does not force its ideology doctrines and dogma down my throat are Ok with me and give the community a guideline of morals.

I cannot rap my mind around the fact as an atheist you can attend and pretend to believe in a God that your priest must believe.

Do you pretend to your wife and priest (the one who dresses like mother and expects you to call him father)that you believe in god?. What purpose can you possibly have in having the words of a non-existent god talked about week after week; heck it must be really really boring.

I have never belonged to any organized religion and never will until they come up with sound reasonable explanations about ideas such as. How evil can exists side by side with "THEIR OMNIPOTENT ALL GOOD GOD?". It just makes no sense to me

I can go on listing contradictions like this if you want, but I think you are most likely aware of most of them. Have you asked your priest about this type of thing?

Regards

Alan

[DoctorBeaver]

Church services are just magical rites that have been legitimised.

[Soul Surfer]

Alan and Beaver  you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Human beings are fundamentally social animals and must live in groups and cooperate to survive and succeed.  Religious communities are the only really caring communities that look to the long term life of the planet and not to the individual. To live a whole life it is vital for every human being to belong to a creative and constructive community otherwise there is a fair chance they will belong to a pillaging rampaging and destructive community.  So choose the community that suits you best it does not matter which religion.  There are some very good points to being a modern pagan.  I chose C of E because it is the most common local variety and will accept me and my wife at the time followed that religion.  I explained my position to the vicar before I was confirmed.  He thought deeply for days and then accepted it.

The human mind  works by creating models of things that are most likely to happen based on experience.

Language and all communication works by using symbols to represent these models.

Religious writing uses the symbols of the time to describe these models and ideals in the best way possible and must always be understood in the context of the environment in which it was written.

Most destructive religious thinking comes from taking these models to literally and out of context.  Once you have got over this there is no problem.  I can say the creeds with no problem because they fit perfectly with my understanding of the symbols.  This does not coincide with many other people's understanding at the moment but I have hopes that they will eventually come round to my way of thinking.

As to attending services.  I feel it is a good discipline to have some time out to think of others and I find them very mentally refreshing.

[Soul Surfer]

If you wish for a simple interpretation of the way I understand some important religious symbols let me explain a few.

God The father  the entire universe/multiverse     totally neutral

God The son  Life on this planet in all its complexity personified into a historical individual

God the holy spirit  the process of physical and organic evolution that has led to our physical universe life on this planet and our ability to understand it.

The communion service  a deeply symbolic reperesentation of recycling in which we must all die to enable life to continue set in the context of a meal.

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

OK but I don't like being recycled like some junk by a mindless uncaring god.

I cannot see why we must sing worship and make symbolic jesters to an energy source.

I agree we are social animals and getting together in a peaceful loving way in church can make some sense.

But never on false pretences

When Stephen Hawking abandoned the big band idea his first committed Christian wife took stand and divorced  him. good for her she stood by her. beliefs

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

Here is another view point on our existence

From different poets consolidated in my collection

The world is poor
Her fortune is buried in the sky
And all her treasure maps
Are of the earth

Authentic Messiahs cannot cease
Their meditations on vast human hurt
To heed the pain of nails
Damnation, senseless
Killers! Oh, for a fee

Cassandra, if the worlds on fire
We must save a cup of ashes for
The seed.

Hell’s logic consists in
Preventing murdering by
Murdering the murderer
Heavens logic greets every
Murderer with grace
Dying when the time comes
With beatific face.

A God too large to walk in
Human shoes
Has outgrown hope of
Human use
And heavy skeptics weighted down
With doubt
Can never rise to
God’s about

A  humanist in chocking sea
Called for help presently
Received in full intensity

“You must swim, if you would be.
Self –reliance makes one free
   “That’s nice”
He said and floated easily
          And died I misery

Evil finds a ready home
Where beauty is despised
And ugliness enthroned

Prayer is most real when
we refuse to say “Amen”

We most love heaven when
We will not end our

Conversations quickly
Who found their “Amens
       Close at hand

Come to the court of God
Having eyes unwashed with
Dreams and you will see
    Nothing

Death is the confirmation of
The believer’s creed

For the skeptics it is discovery
    Immense and too late

The first sound sleep we get
          On earth
We must be roused on realm away.

Light is never given
 While we fear the dark.

Materiality a blessing all its own.
Spirit -Demons play in fire
 Hoping for cremation.

In terror of their immortality
           They envy dying humanity

[_Stefan_]

Since when did Steven Hawking abandon Big Bang Theory?

Alan, it is not about what you do or don't like. If you propose a "theory", it needs to have a grounding in reality outside your own mind.


Soul Surfer,

I understand the human need for community, however religious communities are certainly not the only caring ones.

I hope you are not suggesting that religion has a monopoly on or is the origin of morality, and without it there would be societal chaos. There are such things as laws, for one, and for another, Homo sapiens sapiens has a strong innate biological moral sense.

To address the issue of symbolism, it seems like you need to perform all sorts of mental acrobatics to make those interpretations. Your interpretations seem to have no logical connections to the "symbols". If there are, you're really stretching them. Also, the authors of the biblical texts likely did not consider  much of what they wrote as being metaphorical.(edit: or they did not intend much of what they wrote to be taken metaphorically)

Further, there is little if any contemporaneous evidence to suggest that Jesus was a historical individual. The Bible, I'm sure you'll agree, is not a historical document. 

[DoctorBeaver]

How am I throwing out the baby with the bath water?

[Soul Surfer]

Beaver you were dismissing religion from a superficial examination of the features that you find absurd rather than looking at the deeper importance of it in human evolution.

I personally consider that without the large scale long term unification of the first complex societies that were greated by religion we would still be roaming around in small tribal groups hunting and gathering and killing people off when things got overcrowded.

All religious texts are by definition metaphors because they are struggling to describe something that is beyond language.  Consider some of the most valued christian sayings.  the parables of jesus  they were clearly never meant to betaken literally but used in context as a guide.

[that mad man]

Further, there is little if any contemporaneous evidence to suggest that Jesus was a historical individual. The Bible, I'm sure you'll agree, is not a historical document. 

No, the bible is not an historical accurate document but there are plenty of other writing of historical value that mentions a character called Jesus or a righteous man = Jesus. Several Greek texts and Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire mention the character and gives their sources.  Josephus and also Tacitus mentions him.

The Dead Sea Scrolls also talk of a Teacher of righteousness = Rabbi which the Jesus character come from.

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

Stephen

Since when did Steven Hawking abandon Big Bang Theory?

Alan, it is not about what you do or don't like. If you propose a "theory", it needs to have a grounding in reality outside your own mind.

Hawking warns Government over 'disastrous' science funding cuts
Stephen Hawking seeks 'Einsteins of Africa'
Hawking: Man must leave planet Earth
"This proposal, with volume weighting, can explain why the universe inflated," Prof Hawking tells New Scientist. By taking into account that we have a parochial view of the cosmos, the team has come up with a radical new take on cosmology.

Most models of the universe are bottom-up, that is, you start from well-defined initial conditions of the Big Bang and work forward. However, Prof Hertog and Prof Hawking say that we do not and cannot know the initial conditions present at the beginning of the universe. Instead, we only know the final state - the one we are in now.

Their idea is therefore to start with the conditions we observe today - like the fact that at large scales one does not need to adopt quantum lore to explain how the universe (it behaves classically, as scientists say) - and work backwards in time to determine what the initial conditions might have looked like.

In this way, they argue the universe did not have just one unique beginning and history but a multitude of different ones

 and that it has experienced them all.

Religion to me when it has become ridiculous nonsense should be thrown out with the bath water , just like we must abandon stupid ideas such as a flat earth or earth centred creation

Alan 

The "new theory" is also attractive because it fits in with string theory - the most popular candidate for a "theory of everything."

String theory allows the existence of an" unimaginable multitude of different types of universes in addition to our own," but it does not provide a selection criterion among these and hence no explanation for why our universe is, the way it is", says Prof Hertog.

"For this, one needs a theory of the wave function of the universe."

And now the world of cosmology has one. The next step is to find specific predictions that can be put to the test, to validate this new view of how the cosmos came into being.

[DoctorBeaver]

Ian - strangely enough, I am actually religious.

[Alan McDougall (OP)]

Religion at its worst killing to help a non exitent peceived god