Posted on 02/04/2013 9:53:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
"I feel sorry for the church next door, waiting for their three people to trickle in," says Nick Julius, glancing at the small adjacent hall that will shortly be hosting its own gathering.
There are still 40 minutes before the Sunday Assembly, an atheist service run by two standup comedians, is due to begin, but a queue of eager congregants is already forming outside a grand but crumbling former church in Islington, north London, hands shoved deep into pockets against the cold.
Julius arrived an hour early, just to be sure of a place at the service, which is described by its organisers as "a godless congregation that meets … to hear great talks, sing songs and generally celebrate life". But why? "I came last time and really enjoyed it. It's got all the good things about church without the terrible dogma. I like the sense of community – and who doesn't enjoy a singsong?"
This is only the second time Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans have hosted the monthly event (motto: live better, help often, wonder more), and they admit to being a little overwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which the event has already been greeted.
More than 200 people came to the first event; today there are perhaps 300, with several dozen more carrying on a parallel discussion in a local pub. Inside the nave of the deconsecrated church, volunteers have been bunching chairs closer together, adding extra benches and children's seats in every scrap of space. It is not a problem most vicars struggle with on a Sunday morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Just thinking the same thing! I have escaped into small home churches centered on prayer and Bible study.
In response to the title, an atheist who fears this life is all he has may cling to it more dearly but historical experience shows that atheists in power consider other peoples lives to be anything but “precious.”
It is easy to forget about the Lord when times are good but we become crying babies when we hit hard times... These people are going to have a very empty feeling when they really need some help and refuse to let the Lord carry them.
I'd like to see their dying and hospice ministry, that would be a very tragic comedy of errors. "We're here to help you carry onto absolute darkness..."
Humanism, Atheism what ever you want to call it offers ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but an emptiness especially when people are at their lowest. It cannot explain anything when people are at their absolute highest either - birth of a child, marriage, a great curing of the body. It makes no sense to be an Atheist.
I’ve gone a similiar direction with several athiests I have encountered. I am proud that I have at least enlightened a few (I can’t honestly take credit for converts as I don’t know).
...So you don’t believe in that which can’t be proven, seen, touched, heard, experemented with etc.? Right? Let’s talk science then.....
Mathmatically speaking what are the “known” chances of our existence in our current state? It can’t be calculated it’s so small.
Tell me about how precise all the laws of physics work, according to the best and brightest, say Stephen Hawking. He has droned on about the perfection of the universe. It’s so perfect that even the chaos can be calculated, measured and predicted. It’s mathmatically pure all the way up to the start of it all.
Let’s talk about Big Bang. Theory, fact or hypothesis (sometimes you need to help them with definitions here)? It’s somewhere between hypothesis and theory because the Catalyst cannot be reconciled with known physics. They are still working on that.
Now I believe God started it all and gets credit for all the rules that so amazes the likes of Hawking. You believe that all the mass in the universe always existed but was compacted into some microscopic particle that blew up. It takes as much faith for you to believe that crap as it does for me to take your belief just one step further.
So.... how is your faith different than mine? You believe in something that can’t be proven. At least if I am wrong, no harm, no foul. I just return to matter to be recycled as energy. BUT, if I am right and you are wrong....yikes. Given the pretty even odds, I’ll just go with the safest bet. Put me in the Beleiver category.
(Keep in mind, your audience is athiest to Agnostic. Preaching won’t get you far until you first open the mind to ideas.)
I can’t stand the modern music they play at my church. It has no meaning, it plays on too long with chanting one liners... The old hymns had much more meaning to them.
The traditional service is at 8 am so if I over slept one morning I feel the 9:30 service is punishment for my laziness.
I think you have lost the plot.
Lived near there but I have to wonder how long these morons will enjoy this. Muslims are taking over London and branching out. I wonder if these enlighten atheists will take their message to the Muslim communities, since they are soooo sure about their message.
But why does it matter how we live? Why help often? Says who? As athiests, what right do they have to tell others how to live? From what authority do they get their rules?
“Not believing in God makes life more precious”?
Of course it does!
You see, when there’s an expectation of NOTHING after your death, you want life to be precious....because once it ends, that’s it. This also makes the abortion thing make sense in their twisted logic....A) there are less people to take resources from THEM so THEY can stay alive, and B) they can get rid of anything that interferes with their “enjoyment” of life (like no-consequence sex). Pure, unadulterated, 100% selfishness.
No wonder all these libs and atheists want to be uber-healthy and do whatever they can to extend their lives...it’s all they have.
(And I daresay....there is a sneaking suspicion in the back of their minds....niggling, eating at them....that this is NOT all there is....and THEY are missing the boat!)
LOVE IT, you’ve had some fascinating chats.
BTW, what encourages me are all the discoveries by Quantam Physics and other sciences that prove, among other things, that time bends and is not constant throughout our universe, or even throughout time as it turns out, which means, dang it, that time and space ulitmately are the same thing! (Only God, and not Hawking, can justify this).
You are confusing too concepts.....selfishness versus a belief that all life is precious. Atheists only think THEIR life is precious, but not the life of others.
Big diff....
Point taken, CEW. I think that’s what I was trying to say, put with the improper syntax. My bad, and thank you.
Nobody ran you out of the Church. Man up, YOU chose to leave instead of fighting the forces of evil, some of whom hold authority in the Church.
That's a fun one too. Time. What is it? Who "invented" it? We did. It was likely one of the first things that compelled the invention of language. Organization starts with coordination and is our most basic unit of measure.
How long does it take? How fast does it go? When to plant? When to sleep? When to meet? When to migrate....you get the point
What need does the universe beyond human existance have for that which we call time? A God certainly does not keep time. Now that you consider the reason we measure and keep time, how long would one of God's day's be?
I surmise it is day #7 at about noon on God's calendar. But who am I to speculate?
Well, and then there’s the entire concept of entropy, proving that the earth is finite - because if it were infinite, everything would necessariy be the exact same temperature (think about it) and no energy production would be possible.
And for the 7 day thing? Quantum Physics (above my pay grade) proves time has sped up greatly, meaning our “concept of time” and 7 Days may not be a contradiction at all. Humans are prisoners of time and space, and even prisoners of the defintiions of time and space, and yet some insist there is no God. How obtuse when you think about it (which they haven’t).
I'll second that. I've been disgusted with the Catholic Church leadership myself. I've been only midly vocal about it but have sent some letters that got some attention.
I'll fight for that which I cherish as a value. I do not believe that specifically Catholism is the only Christian route to salvation. But it is what I know and believe.
Yes, mildly putting it, many of the US bishops leave something to be greatly desired. Thankfully, things seem to be gradually improving as the old bishops get replaced (Though there is still a long way to go). The Progressives that have been so influential in the Church over the past few decades can be pretty vicious to conservatives in the Church. In fact, the progressives run a lot of good Catholics out of the Church to push their modernist, "progressive" political/social agenda.
Modernism is a condemned heresy that essentially argues that you can change the meaning of dogmas of the Church to mean something that was never believed by the Church. (In other words, modernists teach that truth can change based upon your own opinion). This heresy allows "progressives" to nullify doctrines that they don't like by redefining them to mean something that contradicts or undermines the original meaning of the dogma. It's kind of like in Constitutional law, when progressives ignore the principle of original intent to interpret the constitution, and instead turn to the idea of a "living constitution" whose original meaning can be changed at their whim. This method of ignoring original intent allows the progressive to ignore the restrictions and limitations placed upon them so that they can do what they want anyway, and is usually used because they know that they could never amend the constitution honestly or quickly.)
In any case, if you can find a traditional Latin mass or perhaps an Eastern Rite/Byzantine Catholic Church in your area, you should seek one out. (Eastern Rite masses are typically in English). Those Byzantine and Latin Mass Catholics tend to hold very strong values and actually teach the Faith instead of the modernist/ Marxist claptrap that affects many Catholic parishes. The focus of those more traditional masses seems to be more on God than man. You may find them to be much more nourishing to your spiritual life than the "socialist" communities promoted by bishops who just don't seem to get it yet. You can find the location of a Byzantine Rite or Latin mass at the links below:
This is fun. One step deeper into space and time?
The universe is moving. There is no set stationary monument from which to measure distance, and by consequence time. So we use calculous, geometry and physics to understand the movement of mass through the universe. We have even mapped it. But here is what we do know.....
Our galaxy is moving in space. Our solar system is moving in this little arm of our galaxy. Our galaxy is also spinning (and probably rolling). And our planet is moving in our solar system. Even if you could control time, you’d still be lost in space.
Let’s say you could travel into the future (travel at light speed through the cosmos). After a year traveling at light speed, you could return to earth about 360 or so years in the future. But where would you go to look for earth in 360 years? It wouldn’t be where you left it.
Ironically, phycists can’t tell us for sure where we will be in the universe relative to all other matter at any given time. The idea of time and space is an illusion that intelligence has created to bring order to our understanding of our existence. It also explains why it so confounds physicists. We invented it and are trying to write rules to make it fit our theories.
(The science is obviously necessary and fruitful as we are designed to be inquisitive and curious. It’s the absract metaphysical conundrum that fascinates me.)
You say that like it's a good thing?
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