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TripL7
Trad climber
'dago
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Nov 21, 2009 - 03:05am PT
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weschrist- "Don't test me God...you will wish you hadn't".
Surely you jest weschrist. The only reason God hasn't snuffed you out is because He is long-suffering, hoping that you would turn from your evil/self indulging ways. He knows your every thought and has numbered the hairs on your head. More importantly He loves you weschrist. Every bit as much as He loves me.
Nothing under the sun is new to God.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 21, 2009 - 03:17am PT
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"Would you want someone, a wife, husband, or child to have to love you, to have to follow you?"
When I hear this kind of talk, I only consider it valid from those who don't believe anyone is thrown in hell for being an unbeliever.
Cause being faced with an eternity of torture is not a real choice.
I also don't believe the motive of creation was to create us so we could Love God. Why do such a thing and then make yourself virtually undetectable (at least on this planet) and allow religions to distort you into a petty, violent image?
I don't see the evidence for "God created man to get love from him" in any scripture.
People have been foolish to think they could butter up a divine Being with praise that wouldn't work on the most shallow bimbo. Let's hope God isn't as lame as we are
peace
karl
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TripL7
Trad climber
'dago
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Nov 21, 2009 - 03:17am PT
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weschrist- "sleep=tight".
"You shall fear only the Lord your God..." Deuteronomy 6:13.
I fear only Him.
I have no fear of death. "O'death where is your victory, O'death were is your sting"?
I have met Satan, and with the power of the Holy Spirit overcame him, and you do not even come close weschrist.
I will say it again weschrist. I have no fear of death.
Trip~
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TripL7
Trad climber
'dago
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Nov 21, 2009 - 03:26am PT
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weschrist- "they trained you well".
Who trained me?
Over the last 40+ years I have read and studied the Bible. Period. It is all there'
Is that what you felt fear? I was simply sharing prophecy with you. It is there to prove to you that it is true. Period.
You are the one attempting to cast fear out with your petty little kids games and sleep well tonight.
It is pretty obvious something struck a cord with you because you are the one reacting so bitter and sarcastic.
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TripL7
Trad climber
'dago
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Nov 21, 2009 - 03:36am PT
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Karl- "I don't believe...so we could love God".
Karl I would suggest reading the Gospels again, start with the book of John.
If you believe in some other mixture of New Age formulation, that is your choice.
You are forming an image of God as you think He should be.
It may seem like a myth, but there is a battle waging for your soul.
I would take a close look at what Jesus Christ had to say. All that I have said here is primarily said or confirmed by Him.
Peace, Trip~
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TripL7
Trad climber
'dago
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Nov 21, 2009 - 03:47am PT
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weschrist- "How did they arrive at their convictions"?
Not through a personal relationship with a loving God.
I new little about Jesus Christ when I called on His name at eight years old. He responded and saved my life. He is a presence. He is a powerful presence of Peace. He is a Person and can reveal Himself to you, just as powerful if He chooses.
I don't know why they choose to do what they do. From what I here, they brainwash them in the madrases and a life of poverty is the only choice. Among other lies of course is the 72 virgins at a very susceptible age.
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TripL7
Trad climber
'dago
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Nov 21, 2009 - 03:49am PT
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weschrist!
Also Muslim is a religion.
Jesus Christ is a personal relationship. What I have been attempting to convey here.
EDIT: I have to be up before 6AM. Good night! And Peace.
PS: Muslims are adherents of the religion Islam. Allah being their god.
Thanks for correcting me in regards to this. I was tired and did notice and should have corrected it then. Peace.
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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Nov 21, 2009 - 05:53am PT
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"remember that creationism and belief in god are not the same things. 99% of Chrisitans reject creationism for the ignorant head in the sand superstition that it is."
" Jaybro, I wish that was the case, but it's much closer to 90% believing in Creationism."
According to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32 percent of mainline Protestants and 31 percent of Catholics.
The following evangelical denominations preach against "Darminism" from the pulpit: Assemblies of God, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Pentecostal Churches, Southern Baptist Convention, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Pentecostal Oneness Churches.
These mainline Protestant sects preach against "Darwinism:" Free Methodist Church, Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.
Non mainline/ non evangelical denominations who preach against "Darwinism": Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists.
Survey suggested 81 percent of Buddhists, 75 percent of Hindu and 77 percent Jewish accept theory of evolution.
Many Muslims accept an old earth conception (from their interpretation of Koran), but mentioning human evolution has led to near riots. In Islamic countries, your lineage is what determines your worth.
There are indications that Islamic creationism is actually stronger in Western countries, as a reaction to non-Islamic influences.
A Gallup poll claimed 39 percent Americans believe in theory of evolution 25% do not and 36 % say they don't know. And found that about 5% of scientists (including those with training outside biology) identified themselves as creationists.
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Nov 21, 2009 - 08:13am PT
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The stars are hung by nothing we've done,
it's just circus-de-God, ok!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 21, 2009 - 08:30am PT
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(upthread 777 maintained that God created the world so people would Love God)
777, I'm no stranger to scripture. I don't believe God's motives for creation are sufficiently detailed in the gospels for you to make the assertions that you have.
Personally, I feel that if people on this planet could have a clearer sense of God, God would be the highest priority and love in people's lives, for the essence of the purest Love itself would be recognized as God's own nature.
Instead, the experience of God remains somewhat esoteric while the public image of God in traditional Christianity, Islam and others paints him as a despotic dictator whose punishments make Hilter look soft hearted. There is no greater blasphemy than the sadistic interpretations of a God that demands blind acceptance and love based on a book with trillions of years of pain being the cost for failure to accept without evidence. I love to let everybody have their own views but I cry foul on that, particularly when the messengers try to spread this message of fear to promote religion worldwide.
In your heart, you know it isn't true either. That's where the battle inside your soul might be.
God may have created as an expression of God's Love but not to create servants to Love him even as his presence in this world is obscured. That's a human interpretation as our egos seek love from others.
If you give it some mature thought, I bet you'll admit that we are far more fulfilled by loving than by being Loved. For a man whose mind is confused and whose heart is not open does not even feel the Love directed at him. Look at all the miserable celebrities who are treated as gods but go to rehab. But for a person who loves those around him and expands that Love to all, the world is a paradise.
Peace
Karl
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jstan
climber
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Nov 21, 2009 - 10:32am PT
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latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-climate-madagascar21-2009nov21,0,3695358.story
CHANGING CLIMATE, CHANGING LIVES
Children starve in parched southern Madagascar
As temperatures rise, drought, crop failure and deforestation have combined to create a crisis of malnutrition.
By Robyn Dixon
November 21, 2009
Reporting from Anjandobo, Madagascar
Foreigners have come to Anjandobo village, a cluster of wooden huts on the desolate red dust of southern Madagascar. They're vaza -- outsiders.The vaza are sweating. They wear hats and carry cameras and plastic bottles of water.The sun exhausts the vaza: four journalists and a group of aid workers from UNICEF and the World Food Program. Scorpions bristle under rocks. There's little shade.
A small Anjandobo child watches the vaza with their water bottles.
"I'm thirsty."
"No water," replies the child's mother.
Her younger toddler chimes in. "I want to drink water."
"No water," the mother repeats, matter-of-fact.
Madagascar's rainfall has decreased 10% in the last 50 years, and its temperature has risen 10%.
 The World Bank
The spiny forest that once grew everywhere is a memory not much mourned here. It was a tangle of spectacular triffid-like trees with reaching, spiky arms, full of thorns and terrible creatures such as owls, snakes and lemurs.
Here, snakes are bad spirits that strangle children. Eyes popping, an old man named Valiotake clamps his hands on his throat, making dramatic choking noises, miming a child being attacked by a snake. He hoots loudly, mimicking the call of an owl, which heralds death. Lemurs aren't lucky either.
Valiotake, 85, is the oldest man in Anjamahavelo. He founded his village with his brother in 1971 and helped to name it "At the Lucky Baobab," after a common tree on the island. Like many people in the area, he has one name. His face is as dry and cracked as the bottom of a dry riverbed.
"I sacrificed a big fat sheep. I hoped we'd flourish and grow."The second thing, after the sacrifice, was to slash and burn every bit of greenery. It took only a day. And the wood made good houses.
Madagascar has lost 90% of its forests.
The World Wildlife Fund;
the World Bank
Sometimes people from international aid organizations come to tell the villagers that cutting down trees means less rain. Valiotake listens politely. He knows about the droughts, the crop failures. But he has no inkling of the great forces that are also baking his land to desert: global warming.
In his heart, he doesn't think it's because of cutting down the trees.
"I think the big God is unhappy.
Young people are killing each other for nothing. They don't respect the taboos. It never happened in the old days."………….
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2009 - 01:08pm PT
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way upthread Karl wrote:
Ed wrote
"As I've said before in many posts, the existence of god makes sense only as an idea... the physical properties that would be a part of the "god hypothesis" are easy to be seen as improbable to the point of impossible."
That's only if you have preconceived ideas about what God is based on ancient religions (the science wasn't better than religion back then either)
What aspects of a "God Hypothesis" do you see as essential and how do they conflict?
and then he goes on to hypothesize god himself.
The "god" hypothesis need not be very sophisticated or preconceived. I believe it starts with trying to make sense of the order which we perceive in the natural world around us, and in trying to resolve a sense of helplessness over our lives.
The order is real, there is the daily cycle, there are lunar cycles, seasonal cycles, annual cycles and a whole host of events that happen regularly and have been noticed by our ancestors, and exploited.
Things that are nearly cycles, like long term rainfall patterns are only now being understood in such a way as to allow accurate predictions to be made. Yet viewed back 10 thousand years the reason for the interruption of the cycles were understood to be due to something completely different.
It is at least a human perspective that we design order, that we make it happen through our technology, and so it is a totally plausible interpretation that the order in nature is also "designed" by something like us, only on a much grander scale. Following that line of thought, we might also interpret the interruption of order to be a willful act.
There are also the feelings that there is a "bigger truth" out there, and that we play some role in it. It gives our lives, and our deaths, meaning. This feeling is very powerful and provides motivation to survive in situations which might be lost to the feelings of despair, the feeling of hopelessness in an impersonal universe. After all, what is the point of life if there is no deeper meaning?
My feeling is that these are all ideas and feelings that we have from a young age, most spiritual beliefs are constructed to look like human relationships and human interactions between inferior and superior subjects. There is a ranking in all these realities, and we start out inferior in our knowledge of "reality," depart on a path of life and depending on our journey, end at a place which our journey is judged... did we go the right way or the wrong way?
Stripped of the spiritual overtones, it is a repeat of important human activities, a metaphor, but lifted from the simple scale of daily living to the grander scale of universal order. All the while, it stays within the boundaries of human experience.
There may even be evolutionary adaptations which require such beliefs, they may have an overall positive affect on species survival.
So my "god hypothesis" is that our mental model of how the universe works requires that some agent be at work to explain the things that aren't apparent to us. Those things could be things like: how did the universe come into existence, why are there the types of animals and plants, is there life beyond our area, why are there stars in the sky, what makes me feel the way I do about Debbie, what happens when we die, etc...
Science, while depicted as some arrogant practice, actually is a relatively humble endeavor which proceeds step-by-step, actually answering little questions. Perhaps one can level a charge of arrogance because scientists believe that they can understand things through science, but even they cannot say how, exactly, it works. They point to a list of things that do work, and say that the other things that we don't know will eventually be known, there is nothing that precludes that belief.
Feynman came upon his wonderful ideas about Quantum ElectroDynamics (QED) by wondering how to explain the motion of a dinner plate on a table, you all have seen it... a disk wobbling on its edge, is also rotating.. how do you describe the motion? Or equally, Schwinger generalizing his work on RF waveguides during his WWII days working on radar, to a theory that explains the same things that Feynman did, and Dyson looking at it all and feeling that they should be equivalent, and then showing how the mathematics is related... that they are equivalent...
And out of QED all the wonderful and terrible things of our technology. Yet they didn't start out along any of those paths.
In analogy, we start out down the path of science, but we have "rules" for deciding how to advance. First we have to have some idea of where the path will go, an explanation. The explanation must be rigorous enough to allow us to predict were the path will go. The mathematically rigorous theory. Then we test if the path actually goes there. A quantitative test through observation and experiment. We also then tell everyone about it so they can verify the prediction and the test.
My image is a bunch of people moving slowly down a path with their noses just off the ground not paying attention to the long and winding road ahead... but sometimes we look a bit farther than that.
Sometimes the path goes in a completely unexpected direction. But most people will choose that direction than to stay on a course they thought was the right one...
If is slow work, but it is work that we know produces understanding where there was none, and new ways of explaining the order that we perceive, both directly through our senses and indirectly through those instruments that extend our senses.
The modern philosophical problem of science and "spirituality" have to do with the expansion of scientific knowledge to areas which have been traditionally the domain of spiritual explanation. It is were the "battle" is joined the most fiercely.
What is the human "position" in the universe? Copernicus and Galileo ran into trouble on this one... modern cosmology demotes us even more...
What is the origin of the universe?
What is the nature of love?
What is consciousness?
and of course, Why is any of it here?
Slowly, science works down the path, now braided into many branches, answering little questions and building up a large network of paths through the wilderness presented by the order around us. And as it does that, there is less and less domain left to the spiritual.
We want there to be things that are unknown and unknowable, we fear the (probably false) idea that we ourselves may be knowable.. and cling to some need for a "higher meaning" than just mere existence, as wonderful as that is in its own right.
So we have this 3000+ post thread which comes down to this issue, essentially. Is there a deeper meaning to life, to our lives.
Science is not an enemy here, though it is so perceived to be. Science is a friend who tells us things as they are, not as we would want them to be. It is a consul of what is real, and what we reliably understand and what we do not understand.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 21, 2009 - 01:15pm PT
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ntelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'
People with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to a
new study.
Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.
A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded "simplistic" by critics.
Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.
A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.
A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.
Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts.
He told Times Higher Education magazine: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God."
He said religious belief had declined across 137 developed nations in the 20th century at the same time as people became more intelligent.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2111174/Intelligent-people-'less-likely-to-believe-in-God'.html
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 21, 2009 - 01:54pm PT
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It's a fine post Ed.
Here's the thing, I have trouble defending the history of organized religion (or politics for that matter) because so much human myopia and superstition get lumped in it. I like to respect other's beliefs and in many cases it doesn't matter that what we believe is usually off. It becomes a problem when somebody uses the teaching of religion and the technology of science to kill and oppress people. Both Science and Religion have been used as tools by people wishing power.
You write
"So my "god hypothesis" is that our mental model of how the universe works requires that some agent be at work to explain the things that aren't apparent to us. Those things could be things like: how did the universe come into existence, why are there the types of animals and plants, is there life beyond our area, why are there stars in the sky, what makes me feel the way I do about Debbie, what happens when we die, etc..."
Both Religion and Science have been attempts to make us feel safer in the world, manipulate our environment and give us the comfort of knowing WTF is around us and why. Science has used more rational means for sure.
I WIll stick up for spirituality, which aim to do an inner experiment within own consciousness to experience "God" My hypothesis is validated by my own experience and I don't find that it conflicts with anything science has discovered. I didn't start with the desire to explain anything or have comfort. I had experiences that contradicted the materialist view and sought to explore them. In fact, other mystics have said for several thousand years that the world is made of energy and that time and space are relative. Science, if anything, seems to be catching up with those ancient mystics.
I'm hoping in the future, Mystics will purge the superstition that, over years, has attached itself to some teachings and that religion will do that far more even. I"m hoping science will gain subtler and subtler knowledge that will lead it to discover that underpinning the physical world are finer and finer realities as well. Plus, I'm hoping that intelligent people everywhere, especially scientists will quit whoring for power mongers who want them to create more and more powerful and harmful weapons as our ability to engineer bugs and bioweapons only gets greater and the ability to kill and assassinate with secrecy or fool with the weather, or just nuke the planet....If the people don't start saying no, we're hosed.
So both science and religion have a piss poor record of contributing hell as well has heaven to this world. We're still growing up. Let's keep our minds open
Peace
Karl
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 21, 2009 - 02:39pm PT
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So both science and religion have a piss poor record of contributing hell as well has heaven to this world.
That's not true at all.
Modern religion and modern science maybe .....
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 21, 2009 - 02:55pm PT
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For the last 500 years they've been say that.
And they have failed miserably.
And failing even more miserably today.
And for the future they are already predicting failure before it even happens.
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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Nov 21, 2009 - 04:24pm PT
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"Even Newton knew that and dismissed god after genesis... god was the watchmaker, and once the spring was wound everything just worked."
Pardon me, Ed, I give great attention to your posts..... but Isaac Newton was a devoutly religious man to whom philosophical and theological issues mattered in profound manner. Few historical figures have been viewed mistakenly through modern atheist bias than he. Today, there is little mainstream attention to his theological writings (which were profuse).
Wasn't the "God as watchmaker" analogy originally stated by William Paley? Newton's conceptions were somewhat in contradiction to that. And he rejected Gottfied Leibniz' thesis that God would necessarily make a perfect world which requires no intervention from the creator.
In Opticks, Query 31 Newton wrote:
"For while comets move in very eccentric orbs in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in orbs concentric, some inconsiderable irregularities excepted which may have arisen from the mutual actions of comets and planets on one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this system wants a reformation."
Leibniz countered with:
"Sir Isaac Newton and his followers have also a very odd opinion concerning the work of God. According to their doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."
Newton did not dismiss God and he invested immense time studying original texts of biblical books. He was critical of several mistakes in the King James translation, especially those regarding trinitarianism. He was a devout believer but very critical of the Papacy and Anglican orthodoxy.
In Principia, Book 3 and Short Scheme of the True Religion he wrote:
"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."
"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. […] This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called "Lord God", or "Universal Ruler". The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, [and] absolutely perfect."
"Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors."
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 21, 2009 - 04:26pm PT
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"So both science and religion have a piss poor record of contributing hell as well has heaven to this world.
That's not true at all.
Modern religion and modern science maybe ....."
I suppose it depends how generous you are Werner. Science has been giving us weapons from the beginning thus making killing on grander and grander scales possible. Science has given us the technology of which poisonous pollution, resource depletion and climate change are the ultimate byproducts. We now have the power to destroy the world in one day. How long before some president loses his mind and goes Postal? Better hope there's a God to prevent it.
and Religion. Of course we have many hundreds of years of wars justified by religion with inquisitions and crusades. Tons of wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita but hey, it's a story about all these wonderful heros of God who are brothers and then kill each other to nearly the last man because of greed, pride and the result of gambling a woman away in a drunk dice game.
Caste has been abused horribly and ideas of Religion used to oppress people around the world. Sure, we can blame human misuse instead of religion itself but the two in intimately linked.
There's no getting around that we live in a challenging and pretty dark place here where sh#t happens and keeps happening. There's no proof of ANY good old days, except if you get back into mythological periods. If beyond archeological history is where you go looking for virtue, then we can expect it to return in Satya yuga. We've got plenty to figure out in the meantime
Peace
Karl
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2009 - 05:52pm PT
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perhaps, Jennie, we are guilty of projecting what we now know and justifying some of Newton's reservations. For instance, in Optick's, he has a very logical, and very wrong explanation of why light is particle, not wave, in nature.... it was his misunderstanding of the nature of light, that it is a transverse excitation not a longitudinal excitation... we respect Newton so highly that we sometimes give him a pass on the things that he got wrong in physics. Of course, his work in Optick's was, for a long time, the very defining data on the wavelength of the colors, even though he did not accept that interpretation.
In his cosmology he does not know how gravity acts, "action at a distance," for which his famous statement hypothesis non fingo is remembered I feign no hypothesis. He did not know about fields or field theory, that would wait until Faraday first and Einstein later.
Newton's explanation could certainly have hidden in the assumption of some help from a god.
And yet in spite of his deeply religious beliefs, he still got much of the science correct. Perhaps his personal motive was to know more the creator and the creator's work, but he also knew not to fool himself by false understanding, thus his utilization of the scientific method.
It is a testament to science that it doesn't care what you believe, if you do it right, you'll get the right answer... you'll be able to understand something you didn't understand, or even know about, before.
To me, Newton's religious beliefs are a historic oddity.
I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. I. Netwon, 1726, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 21, 2009 - 06:07pm PT
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There seems to be very considerable disagreement as to what, if any, Newton's religious beliefs were. We can never know what he really believed, and can only in retrospect guess, based on the context of his times and life, and what he said and did. He lived at a time when it was dangerous if not fatal to not have religious beliefs, or to have non-accepted beliefs, and was a very public person. He certainly seems to have thought and wrote a great deal about religion and related matters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Religious_views
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_religious_views
Here is a photo of an obelisk placed in Newton's memory, erected at Stoke Rochford Hall (http://www.stokerochfordhall.co.uk/);, just south of Grantham in central England, and very near his birthplace. I was there three years ago.
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