"to bring about man’s self-salvation in a New Eden..."
Bingo. Obama's utopian socialism.
Posted on 04/05/2009 8:10:35 PM PDT by betty boop
The Atheist Perversion of Reality
By Jean F. Drew
Atheism we have always had with us it seems. Going back in time, what was formerly a mere trickle of a stream has in the modern era become a raging torrent. Karl Marx’s gnostic revolt, a paradigm and methodology of atheism, has arguably been the main source feeding that stream in post-modern times.
What do we mean by “gnostic revolt?” Following Eric Voëgelin’s suggestions, our definition here will be: a refusal to accept the human condition, manifesting as a revolt against the Great Hierarchy of Being, the most basic description of the spiritual order of universal reality.
The Great Hierarchy is comprised of four partners: God–Man–World–Society, in their mutually dynamic relations. Arguably all the great world religions incorporate the idea of this hierarchy. It is particularly evident in Judaism and Christianity. One might even say that God’s great revelation to us in the Holy Bible takes this hierarchy and the relations of its partners as its main subject matter. It has also been of great interest to philosophers going back to pre-Socratic times — and evidently even to “anti-philosophers” such as Karl Marx.
In effect, Marx’s anti-philosophy abolishes the Great Hierarchy of Being by focusing attention mainly on the God and Man partners. The World and Society partners are subsidiary to that, and strangely fused: World is simply the total field of human social action, which in turn translates into historical societal forms.
Our principal source regarding the Marxist atheist position is Marx’s doctoral dissertation of 1840–1841. From it, we can deduce his thinking about the Man partner as follows:
(1) The movement of the intellect in man’s consciousness is the ultimate source of all knowledge of the universe. A human self-consciousness is the supreme divinity.
(2) “Faith and the life of the spirit are expressly excluded as an independent source of order in the soul.”
(3) There must be a revolt against “religion,” because it recognizes the existence of a realissimum beyond human consciousness. Marx cannot make man’s self-consciousness “ultimate” if this condition exists.
(4) The logos is not a transcendental spirit descending into man, but the true essence of man that can only be developed and expressed by means of social action in the process of world history. That is, the logos is “immanent” in man himself. Indeed, it must be, if God is abolished. And with God, reason itself is abolished as well: To place the logos in man is to make man the measure of all things. To do so ineluctably leads to the relativization of truth, and to a distorted picture of reality.
(5) “The true essence of man, his divine self-consciousness, is present in the world as the ferment that drives history forward in a meaningful manner.” God is not Lord of history, the Alpha and Omega; man is.
As Voëgelin concluded, “The Marxian spiritual disease … consists in the self-divinization and self-salvation of man; the intramundane logos of human consciousness is substituted for the transcendental logos…. [This] must be understood as the revolt of immanent consciousness against the spiritual order of the world.”
How Marx Bumps Off God
So much for Marx’s revolt. As you can see, it requires the death of God. Marx’s point of theocidal departure takes its further impetus from Ludwig von Feuerbach’s theory that God is an imaginary construction of the human mind, to which is attributed man’s highest values, “his highest thoughts and purest feelings.”
In short, Feuerbach inverts the very idea of the imago Dei — that man is created in the image of God. God is, rather, created by man, in man’s own image — God is only the illusory projection of a subjective human consciousness, a mere reflection of that consciousness and nothing more.
From this Feuerbach deduced that God is really only the projected “essence of man”; and from this, Feuerbach concluded that “the great turning point of history will come when ‘man becomes conscious that the only God of man is man himself.’”
For Marx, so far so good. But Marx didn’t stop there: For Feuerbach said that the “isolated” individual is the creator of the religious illusion, while Marx insisted that the individual has no particular “human essence” by which he could be identified as an isolated individual in the first place. For Marx, the individual in reality is only the sum total of his social actions and relationships: Human subjectivity has been “objectified.” Not only God is gone, but man as a spiritual center, as a soul, is gone, too.
Marx believed that God and all gods have existed only in the measure that they are experienced as “a real force” in the life of man. If gods are imagined as real, then they can be effective as such a force — despite the “fact” that they are not really real. For Marx, it is only in terms of this imaginary efficacy that God or gods can be said to “exist” at all.
Here’s the beautiful thing from Marx’s point of view: Deny that God or the gods can be efficacious as real forces in the life of man — on the grounds that they are the fictitious products of human imagination and nothing more — and you have effectively killed God.
This insight goes to the heart of atheism. In effect, Marx’s prescription boils down to the idea that the atheist can rid himself and the world at large of God simply by denying His efficacy, the only possible “real” basis of His existence. Evidently the atheist expects that, by his subjective act of will, he somehow actually makes God objectively unreal. It’s a kind of magic trick: The “Presto-Changeo!” that makes God “disappear.”
Note that, if God can be gotten rid of by a stratagem like this, so can any other aspect of reality that the atheist dislikes. In effect, the cognitive center which — strangely — has no “human essence” has the power of eliminating whatever sectors of objective reality it wants to, evidently in full expectation that reality itself will allow itself to be “reduced” and “edited down” to the “size” of the atheist’s distorted — and may we add relentlessly imaginary? — conception.
To agree with Marx on this — that the movement of the intellect in man’s “divine” consciousness is the ultimate source of all knowledge of the universe — is to agree that human thought determines the actual structure of reality.
Instead of being a part of and participant in reality, the atheist claims the power to create it as if he himself were transcendent to, or standing outside or “beyond” reality. As if he himself were the creator god.
This type of selective operation goes a long way towards explaining the fanatical hostility of many Darwinists today regarding any idea of design or hierarchy in Nature — which, by the way, have always been directly observable by human beings who have their eyes (and minds) open. What it all boils down to seems to be: If we don’t like something, then it simply doesn’t exist.
We call the products of such selective operations second realities. They are called this because they are attempts to displace and finally eliminate the First Reality of which the Great Hierarchy of Being — God–Man–World–Society — is the paradigmatic core.
First Reality has served as the unifying conceptual foundation of Western culture and civilization for the past two millennia at least. What better way to destroy that culture and civilization than an all-out attack on the Great Hierarchy of Being?
Thus we see how the gnosis (“wisdom”) of the atheist — in this particular case, Marx — becomes the new criterion by which all operations in (the severely reduced and deformed) external reality are to be conducted, understood, and judged.
Conclusion
Marx is the self-proclaimed Paraclete of an a-borning utopia in which man will be “saved” by being reduced to essentially nothing. With God “gone,” man, as we denizens of First Reality know him, disappears also.
But whatever is left of him becomes a tool for social action. He becomes putty in the hands of whatever self-selected, self-proclaimed Paraclete seeking to promote his favored Second Reality du jour (usually for his own personal benefit) manages to stride onto the public stage and command an audience.
Such a charmed person blesses himself with the power to change human society and history forever, to bring about man’s self-salvation in a New Eden — an earthly utopia— by purely human means.
Of course, there’s a catch: As that great denizen of First Reality, Sir Thomas More, eminently recognized, the translation into English of the New Latin word “utopia” is: No-place.
In short, human beings can conjure up alternative realities all day long. But that doesn't mean that they can make them “stick.” Reality proceeds according to its own laws, which are divine in origin, and so cannot be displaced by human desire or volition, individually or collectively.
And yet the Marxian expectation argues otherwise.
Out of such fantastic, idiotic, specifically Marxian/atheist foolishness have great revolutions been made. And probably will continue to be made — so long as psychopaths hold the keys to the asylum.
Note:
All quotations from Eric Voëgelin’s article, “Gnostic Socialism: Marx,” in: The Collected Works of Eric Voëgelin, Volume 26 — History of Political Ideas: Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999.
©2009 Jean F. Drew
April 4, 2009
Great article thanks for posting it.
FYI!
"to bring about man’s self-salvation in a New Eden..."
Bingo. Obama's utopian socialism.
| "...These two world views [Christian theism vs naturalist, impersonal matter or energy shaped by impersonal chance] stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and also in their natural results--including sociological and governmental results, and specifically including law. It is not that these two world views are different only in how they understand the nature of reality and existence. They also inevitably produce totally different results. The operative word here is inevitably. It is not just that they happen to produce different results, but it is absolutely inevitable that they will bring forth different results..." - Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, page 2. |
BFLR
Just somethign I posted in another thread that shows these atheists just how wrong and dangerous hteir actions are!
Notice what God said through the prophet Ezekiel after Israel fell into captivity: "Moreover I also gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between them and Me, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them. Yet the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they did not walk in My statutes; they despised My judgments, which, if a man does, he shall live by them; and they greatly defiled My Sabbaths...They despised My judgments and did not walk in My statutes, but profaned My Sabbaths; for their heart went after their idols" (Ezekiel 20:12-13, 16).
"'My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge...The more they increased, the more they sinned against Me...They set their heart on their iniquity...So I will punish them for their ways, and reward them for their deeds'" (Hosea 4:1-3, 6-9). Just as God punished ancient Israel for its sins, He plans to punish its modern descendants for their persistent disobedience.
At the beginning of Israel's history as a nation, God inspired Moses to write: "Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known" (Deuteronomy 11:26-28).
"Also today the LORD has proclaimed you to be His special people...He will set you high above all nations which He has made, in praise, in name, and in honor, and that you may be a holy people to the LORD your God, just as He has spoken"
We have been blessed TO BE HOLY! Our sin is that we have eshewed our blessed state, preferrign to have the wealth, but to also indulge in sin. We have turned our backs on the opportunities God has given us to show His Holiness through our blessed state and obedience to Him! God WILL punish!
Why will God allow this time of trouble? Through the prophet Zephaniah God speaks of His anger at the hardness of heart of the nations in the last days.
Our hardness of heart, and the troubles we face because of it, as punishment, are both individual hardnesses of heart, and national.
God promises that He will punish or spare each individual human being according to his attitude and conduct. He explains: "When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he shall die because of it. But when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is lawful and right, he shall live because of it...I will judge every one of youaccording to his own ways" (Ezekiel 33:18-20).
The Sabbath aint for partying! Let us not forget that lest we be destroyed by provoking God to Wrath!
Through Ezekiel He says: "Say to them: 'As I live,' says the Lord GOD, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?'" (Ezekiel 33:11).
God also tells us He "now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world ..." (Acts 17:30-31). His warning applies equally to Israelites and non-Israelites alike. Yet, He promises protection from the coming storm to a group of those who do turn to Him in true repentance (Revelation 3:10; 12:13-17).
This ALSO includes protection TODAY!
Jesus similarly tells us: "Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36, NIV).
Ping to one of our own!
Mark for later.
Thanks for the ping!
Also, discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
For more guidelines pertaining to the Religion Forum, click on my profile page.
Ooops, sorry!
"But whatever is left of him becomes a tool for social action. He becomes putty in the hands of whatever self-selected, self-proclaimed Paraclete seeking to promote his favored Second Reality du jour (usually for his own personal benefit) manages to stride onto the public stage and command an audience.
"Such a charmed person blesses himself with the power to change human society and history forever, to bring about man’s self-salvation in a New Eden — an earthly utopia— by purely human means."
***
The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have 'taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho' and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please. In all ages, no doubt, nurture and instruction have, in some sense, attempted to exercise this power. But the situation to which we must look forward will be novel in two respects. In the first place, the power will be enormously increased. Hitherto the plans of educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them -- how Plato would have every infant "a bastard nursed in a bureau", and Elyot would have the boy see no men before the age of seven and, after that, no women, and how Locke wants children to have leaky shoes and no turn for poetry -— we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.
The second difference is even more important. In the older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by the Tao [the Natural Law] -- a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. They did not cut men to some pattern they had chosen. They handed on what they had received: they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which over-arched him and them alike. It was but old birds teaching young birds to fly. This will be changed. Values are now mere natural phenomena. Judgments of value are to be produced in the pupil as part of the conditioning. Whatever Tao there is will be the product, not the motive, of education. The conditioners have been emancipated from all that. It is one more part of Nature which they have conquered. The ultimate springs of human action are no longer, for them, something given. They have surrendered -- like electricity: it is the function of the Conditioners to control, not to obey them. They know how to produce conscience and decide what kind of conscience they will produce. They themselves are outside, above. For we are assuming the last stage of Man's struggle with Nature. The final victory has been won. Human nature has been conquered -- and, of course, has conquered, in whatever sense those words may now bear.
The Conditioners, then, are to choose what kind of artificial Tao they will, for their own good reasons, produce in the Human race. They are the motivators, the creators of motives. But how are they going to be motivated themselves?
For a time, perhaps, by survivals, within their own minds, of the old 'natural' Tao. Thus at first they may look upon themselves as servants and guardians of humanity and conceive that they have a 'duty' to do it 'good'. But it is only by confusion that they can remain in this state. They recognize the concept of duty as the result of certain processes which they can now control. Their victory has consisted precisely in emerging from the state in which they were acted upon by those processes to the state in which they use them as tools. One of the things they now have to decide is whether they will, or will not, so condition the rest of us that we can go on having the old idea of duty and the old reactions to it. How can duty help them to decide that? Duty itself is up for trial: it cannot also be the judge. And 'good' fares no better. They know quite well how to produce a dozen different conceptions of good in us. The question is which, if any, they should produce. No conception of good can help them to decide. It is absurd to fix on one of the things they are comparing and make it the standard of comparison.
To some it will appear that I am inventing a factitious difficulty for my Conditioners. Other, more simple-minded, critics may ask, 'Why should you suppose they will be such bad men?' But I am not supposing them to be bad men. They are, rather, not men (in the old sense) at all. They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what 'Humanity' shall henceforth mean. 'Good' and 'bad', applied to them, are words without content: for it is from them that the content of these words is henceforward to be derived. Nor is their difficulty factitious, "We might suppose that it was possible to say 'After all, most of us want more or less the same things -- food and drink and sexual intercourse, amusement, art, science, and the longest possible life for individuals and for the species. Let them simply say, This is what we happen to like, and go on to condition men in the way most likely to produce it. Where's the trouble?'
But this will not answer. In the first place, it is false that we all really like the same things. But even if we did, what motive is to impel the Conditioners to scorn delights and live laborious days in order that we, and posterity, may have what we like? Their duty? But that is only the Tao, which they may decide to impose on us, but which cannot be valid for them. If they accept it, then they are no longer the makers of conscience but still its subjects, and their final conquest over Nature has not really happened. The preservation of the species? But why should the species be preserved? One of the questions before them is whether this feeling for posterity (they know well how it is produced) shall be continued or not. However far they go back, or down, they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at once petitio.
It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artifacts. Man's final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.
Yet the Conditioners will act. When I said just now that all motives fail them, I should have said all motives except one. All motives that claim any validity other than that of their felt emotional weight at a given moment have failed them. Everything except the sic volo, sic jubeo has been explained away. But what never claimed objectivity cannot be destroyed by subjectivism. The impulse to scratch when I itch or to pull to pieces when I am inquisitive is immune from the solvent which is fatal to my justice, or honour, or care for posterity. When all that says It is good' has been debunked, what says 1 want' remains. It cannot be exploded or 'seen through' because it never had any pretentions. The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. I am not here speaking of the corrupting influence of power nor expressing the fear that under it our Conditioners will degenerate. The very words corrupt and degenerate imply a doctrine of value and are therefore meaningless in this context. My point is that those who stand outside all judgments of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.
We may legitimately hope that among the impulses which arise in minds thus emptied of all 'rational' or 'spiritual' motives, some will be benevolent. I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. I am inclined to think that the Conditioners will hate the conditioned. Though regarding as an illusion the artificial conscience which they produce in us their subjects, they will yet perceive that it creates in us an illusion of meaning for our lives which compares favourably with the futility of their own: and they will envy us as eunuchs envy men. But I do not insist on this, for it is a mere conjecture. What is not conjecture is that our hope even of a 'conditioned' happiness rests on what is ordinarily called 'chance' -— the chance that benevolent impulses may on the whole predominate in our Conditioners. For without the judgement 'Benevolence is good' -- that is, without re-entering the Tao -- they can have no ground for promoting or stabilizing these impulses rather than any others. By the logic of their position they must just take their impulses as they come, from chance.
And Chance here means Nature. It is from heredity, digestion, the weather, and the association of ideas, that the motives of the Conditioners will spring. Their extreme rationalism, by `seeing through' all 'rational' motives, leaves them creatures of wholly irrational behaviour. If you will not obey the Tao, or else commit suicide, obedience to impulse (and therefore, in the long run, to mere 'nature') is the only course left open.
At the moment, then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely 'natural' -- to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man. Every victory we seemed to win has led us, step by step, to this conclusion. All Nature's apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals. We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on. What looked to us like hands held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us for ever. If the fully planned and conditioned world (with its Tao a mere product of the planning) comes into existence, Nature will be troubled no more by the restive species that rose in revolt against her so many millions of years ago, will be vexed no longer by its chatter of truth and mercy and beauty and happiness. Ferum victorem cepit: and if the eugenics are efficient enough there will be no second revolt, but all snug beneath the Conditioners, and the Conditioners beneath her, till the moon falls or the sun grows cold.
-- C.S. Lewis, the Abolition Of Man, 1943
I didn’t save my reply nor did I intend to offend. Would you please pull the portion that offended and post the rest. I think it’s relevant and meant only to shed light where there seemed to be confusion.
Wow. Never knew that. Thank you.
This info will come in very handy. Especially here in the The Utopian Socialist States of Obama.
Ok, I’ve posted an apology. Privately apologized and still, no luck getting one of my replies to post.
I guess you have to be a Christian to have an opinion worth sharing about Atheism? What gives?
This clap trap arrived on our shores courtesy of the Frankfurt School. One of the first colleges they took over was Columbia and we all know who went there.
I read the post. There was nothing personal or offensive in it that I saw.
“..For reason is only a faculty of knowing something indirectly in the absence of direct vision, while God is known directly, the same way one knows one is alive, perceives reality, or is aware of free will. In order to see something, it is not necessary to logically prove the existence of sight. Many of the most important truths are known simply by their “superabundance of clarity,” by pure intellect, not by the reason which is its servant. Reason is not Intelligence in itself, only an instrument of intelligence. Few things create more mischief than reason in the hands of an unintelligent or immoral wonker. .[..]Not for nothing did Richard Weaver say that “every attack upon religion is inevitably an attack upon mind.” Naturally there are many forms of stupid religion, for there is nothing touched by humans wonkers that cannot be made stupid. But at least religion as such does not exclude the possibility and priority of Intelligence, and therefore, Truth. ...” ~ Gagdad Bob The Absolute Science of the Center and the Darwinist Religion of the Periphery
I am an atheist. I don’t need anyone else to be an atheist. I am comfortable in my own skin no matter what anyone else’s belief. Although I am probably not the norm, I get tired of hearing how ‘bad’ I am. Oh, and as an atheist, I am not likely to follow a BRAND of atheism. It takes all kinds...ALL kinds. Please start appreciating people who are different so that we can find common ground. I probably SHARE more views with religious folks than differ with them. (and yes, I loathe Obama. I am not a troll but I am not a republican either.)
I am not endangering anyone by being atheist. I think Jesus was a very wise and kind man. I just don’t believe he was the son of God (a god, whatever one is comfortable with). That doesn’t mean I expect anyone else to think or believe the same and it serves as NO THREAT to anyone. People’s religious views are personal. Why should anyone attack them?
I respectfully disagree. Seems to me that religion is an egocentric view inherently. But if it comforts someone who has lost loved one or someone who needs fellowship, I wouldn’t begrudge them. I don’t lay claim to all the answers—on the contrary, the religious do.
Yes, I believe a lot of good comes from religion. And I believe a lot of good comes from atheism. You can have it both ways.
“For an atheist to reject religion means only that he has failed to understand it, precisely. A confession of atheism is simply an honest confession of ignorance of any realities that transcend the human ego, nothing more, nothing less.”
Thank you. You saw it the way I intended it anyway...but I tweaked my wording.
I’m curious, and with all due respect, as an athiest, do you believe we have inalienable rights? If so, what makes them inalienable?
Without a divine creator God of the universe, we’re all just random chemical reactions and Hitler’s actions were merely an example of natural selection.
Rather than telling you you’re bad, whatever that means, let me share this from Romans 1:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
And from Psalm 53:1
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; There is no one who does good.
That “no one” part includes me, and you, and everyone else.
But here’s the good news from Romans 10:
That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
Peace, A
I mean no disrespect, but I would ask you to carefully examine the philosophical bases of atheism and reconsider them in the light of reason. The greatest minds the human race has ever produced all found atheism to be bankrupt and unsatisfactory; I suspect that, upon serious reflection, you will as well.
“do you believe we have inalienable rights? If so, what makes them inalienable?”
Yes, I do believe that we have natural inalienable rights. Why? For me, I love my life AND I love people in my life: my family, friends... When you have love, you realize, you wouldn’t want anything to happen to that love or to those loved ones. For me this is the core of my moral code.
I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my family or my friends, so I wouldn’t hurt anyone else’s family or friends. That’s not a cycle I want to be a part of. Hurting another person physically or psychologically teaches others to do the same.
From what I can see, people that don’t get that kind of love in their life, well, they don’t learn that lesson very easy. And they can’t be taught it and I am skeptical with good reason that they can simply be told that God (a god) loves them and expect that to replace human love. They have to experience it. It’s harder for them, I know, but they must respect this inalienable right. There are consequences for the blatant disregard of human life, because crime is a cancer. Domestic violence is a cancer. Hate is a cancer.
So.. I support causes that may seem wishy washy to some, because I truly believe that unless the unloved get loved, they are facing an obstacle that’s going to be pretty hard to overcome. They don’t learn to respect the pain of others.
Of course this is an oversimplification and I am sure you can see how I apply this in all different kinds of ways. For instance, some love isn’t healthy and doesn’t do a thing to ingrain natural inalienable rights. But my overall logic is much the same as a Christian or Jew or Mormon....I just don’t get it from the Bible, it comes from within.
Is that so dangerous?
“The greatest minds the human race has ever produced all found atheism to be bankrupt and unsatisfactory;”
“The greatest minds”: that’s subjective
Bankrupt? how so?
Unsatisfactory? Only if you have to know you have salvation. I don’t need to know that I guess. I have other motives that drive me in this world. Less self-serving motives, IMO. I dunno, I just don’t get that: “unsatisfactory.” Who says?
[[I am not endangering anyone by being atheist.]]
I am referrign to those atheists who are trying to change our constitution, change our way of life, and force everyoen to accept their ‘moral values’- I don’t htink you fall into that category
[[People’s religious views are personal. Why should anyone attack them?]]
Beleive me a great many atheists are doing just that today- I might also add secularists to that category- A prime example of atheists tryign to force their minority view on the majority of Americans who hols the universal moral code in high esteme are people like Michael Neudow who is personally attackign Christian values, and tryign to tear down our constitution and moral values
My post was NOT directed at individual atheists who are content allowing America to be made up of many different faiths or a non faith if one so chooses, like yourself, but rather it was directed at activist atheists and secularists who won’t be happy till our country has denied God and destroyed itself in the process
“resulting in salvation.”
Yes, I don’t need this. I am not interested in what I get when I die. I am only going to make my energy as positive as possible so when it leaves it’s physical vehicle—my body, it is positive energy. Afterall, enrgy is neither gained nor lost.
Even if my energy goes into a lightbulb, I shall burn brightly and happily.
“My post was NOT directed at individual atheists who are content allowing America to be made up of many different faiths or a non faith if one so chooses, like yourself, but rather it was directed at activist atheists and secularists who won’t be happy till our country has denied God and destroyed itself in the process”
Thank you. Believe it or not, I needed to hear that.
I found common ground with conservatives during this election. I am not willing to give that up. Let’s go with it.
Yet somehow, dear brother in Christ, I sense or feel that you would have the time and interest.
Please weigh in if/as you can.
Are you aware that Science is philosophically unsound, proceeding as it does from unproven and unprovable premises?
Might Makes Right.
That 'philosophy' tends to permeate religion too. Do I need to point out a few typical examples?
I would ask you to carefully examine the philosophical bases of atheism and reconsider them in the light of reason.
You are confused. Atheism like Science is not based on philosophy or logic. It is based on evidence or the lack thereof, in the case of religion.
Personally, I don’t like anyone who forces their beliefs or non-beliefs on anyone.
On that note, despite my several posts and the lengthy one, I am not here to convert, I just want to assure you.
[[On that note, despite my several posts and the lengthy one, I am not here to convert, I just want to assure you.]]
Too late- I’ve renounced my salvation, and just hope and pray I’m making hte right gamble and that there is no eternal hell after life- I hated beign secure in the knowledge I’d be with God for eternity- I’m much rather gamble. J/K
There’s no such thing as proof. Evidence perceived via the senses is fallible; for all you know, the Universe is a figment of your imagination, and you are dreaming all of this.
Nothing can be proven in any objective sense; the best we can do is examine the data conveyed to us by our fallible, subjective senses and decide on the basis of faith alone what relationship (if any) these sensory data have to a universe external to and independent of ourselves (if any).
The only things you can know for sure to exist are those things that you directly experience, rather than things you perceive via the senses.
I have nothing to add to nor detract from your beautiful testimony.
May God ever bless your truthful inquiry!
Prove it.
Prove it.
[[Yes, I don’t need this. I am not interested in what I get when I die.]]
I don;t understand htis- why, if there were the real possibility, that God is who He says He is, and htere is indeed a heaven and hell- which will both be eternal, and hell is eternal suffering, woudl you gamble on your life beign nothign but energy with no soul? I just don’t get it. The risk of eternal damnation is simply too great to gamble in my opinion. When life is over, there’s no chance to say “Whoops- Maybe I was wrong”-
IF it turns out htere’s no God- then when I die, I’ve lsot absolutely nothign by believing- IF however, there is a God, then I’ve not risked eternity in hell by not bel;ieving (And let me just state quickly, that we who accept Salvation find God to be true to His word, real, and personally itnerested and active in our lives- so I am speakign fro mexperience here when I state I know God to be real- I know you find it hard to beleive peopel can know God personally, because you feel He doesn’t exist,, but htere it is- one gets to know God is real when one puts their trust in Him, and not until- one can suspect, of course, but can’t really know for sure until they take that one last step- at which point God imediately confirms His identity and existence in that persons life)
I’m not goign to preach- you beleive what you do, but just wanted to know why an atheist is willing to take such a gamble with such severe consequences if it turns out God really is who He says He is- As a Holy God, He MUST punish sin- sin and holiness can not coexist together- but fortunately, He did provide a way of compelte forgiveness- once for all. Why trust a mind only capable of partial knowledge when we can trust the Omniscient all knowing mind? The risk- to me, simpyl is too great that hte beleif that God doesn’t exist is true. There’s nothign to be lost by beleiving in Him- nothign at all, and everythign to be gained.
I don’t have to prove it. You are the one claiming that “proof” exists. It is up to you to “prove” that your claim is valid.
I can demonstrate rationally that “proof” is a meaningless concept, however. Please feel free to advance a definition of “proof” and I’ll be happy to demolish it for you.
Pascal’s Wager...
Well good grief, MissTickly. What the hail is "the norm?" Exactly whut the hail passes for "normality" these days? And whut the hail standard exists that can tell the good from the bad that would be of interest to the currently prevailing public mind?
I imagine that it might be the failure to discriminate between good and bad that makes it impossible to objectively define what "normality" is in the first place.
So, if you feel the society around you does not "judge" you as "normal," well — join the freaking club.
Personally, I'm always glad to greet the new members.
As I have mentioned before I perceive three different kinds of atheists: 1) the ones who don't believe but don't mind if you do, 2) the ones who don't believe and want to tell you why as if they only have questions or need proof, and 3) the ones who are activist anti-God and usually more specifically, anti-Christ.
God is not a hypothesis. He lives. His Name is I AM. I've known Him for a half century and counting.
So it is tempting to chuckle whenever an atheist tells me that God does not exist.
The first type of atheists are unreachable, they simply don't care. They are content in their "Second Reality." This is where the Marxists would like everyone to live.
And the third type reek of rebelliousness. Why would they work so hard to attack some one or some thing they do not believe exists? It will not end well for them:
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, [saying], Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. – Psalms 2:1-5
And we are reminded that doubting Thomas was an Apostle, too.
So we continue in the debate, serving up words of God intermingled with our testimony and reasoning.
The bottom line is that if a person has "ears to hear" he will.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Cor 2:15
Prove it.
Wanna bet, Blaise? ;-)
“I [love] being secure in the knowledge I’d be with God for eternity- I’m much rather gamble.”
I am happy for you, really.
Fair enough. I guess it just takes more for me to be convinced than you or someone else...
There’s no such thing as proof. Evidence perceived via the senses is fallible; for all you know, the Universe is a figment of your imagination, and you are dreaming all of this.
Nothing can be proven in any objective sense; the best we can do is examine the data conveyed to us by our fallible, subjective senses and decide on the basis of faith alone what relationship (if any) these sensory data have to a universe external to and independent of ourselves (if any).
The only things you can know for sure to exist are those things that you directly experience, rather than things you perceive via the senses.
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