Vicar Philip

Thug, I have a question for you. When you think of "God's Creation," called to mind by the verse you posted, what do you think of? Pretty sunset, rolling green hills, star-filled sky, a beautiful woman, etc. Right?

Now why aren't god's other creations called to mind? Fer instance, poison ivy. I personally am extremely allergic to poison ivy. If I even see the shit I break out. Why isn't that glorified? Didn't god make it, too? It's paradoxes like this that make me blow the whistle and call "bullshit." Here is one of my favorite passages written by Robert Ingersoll:
From Gods. That guy kicked some serious ass.

Thugpreacha

As you all probably already know, this argument stems from the Original Sin event early in the development of humans.
Genesis may be but a fable, yet consider the way that the fable mimics reality..
Serpant=devil. Serpent says that if you think for yourself and try anything that you want to try, ye shall be as gods...knowing good and evil.
If evolution were a total fact, pond scum evolves into plants...animals...humans...who then continue to evolve into....gods?
The basic Lie that theologians point out is that humans do not need God.
Humans by nature seek to evolve and establish a society based on agreed upon values. The message of the Bible, by contrast, indicates that humanity will never be able to perfect or even improve the society around them without allowing the perfection of a Holy Spirit to guide them and lead them.
Thus, one way is to raise up and be your own saviors while the other way is to humble yourself and allow the perfect Spirit to guide you and change you.
Now....if we have to "prove" that this Spirit exists, we can. To ourselves.
To those who do not choose to allow the possibility of surrendering their cherished self actualization, no proof will ever be able to manifest.
Such is life.

Nasreddin

Oh, that depends. First "you theists" would have to agree that it's "God", not "Goddess", "Gods" or "Life force"...then you'd have to come to agreement on how exactly it is "real" - physical, spiritual, immanent, transcendent, one in three, three in one...and after that, you'd have to figure out whether he/she/it/they wants you to sacrifice anything, literally or metaphorically or any other way.

Then an atheist would come along and point out that, even though through some borderline-miraculous feat you have all managed to come to agreement, that still doesn't mean that the atheist has "gotta" agree with you.

Me, I suppose that a bald person will never understand the urgency of styling implements in the paradigm of hirsuteness. Never happen, that. Yes, even though most of them once had cranial foliage themselves.

My money's on the plants. Though, come to think of it, dolphins are going pretty strong as well...

The Advanced and the Expert Lie are what said theologians do for a living.
(May I point out that using "you need God" as a basic premise in a conversation with an atheist isn't likely to result in a productive discussion, Thugpreacha?)

Hey, Ma, look - I can point a finger, too!

"To those who do not choose to allow the possibility of surrendering their sanctified superstitions, no reason will ever become evident."



I've got to admit you've made me pretty curious, Thugpreacha. In your world, is it just theology that's outside an atheist's understanding, or are we perhaps also clueless about the role of churches? About the sociopolitical role of organized religion? About religious mythology? What do we understand, where religion is concerned?

Yahzi

At the risk of being repetitive: you clearly do not understand evolution. The goal of evolution is not "better" or "higher" or "up;" it is "eat any food supply that is available."

2,000 years of Holy guidance don't seem to have done very well. How much longer, exactly, does Christianity need before it can demonstrate this perfect society?

So if I don't bow my head and become a willing slave of your God, he can't make me? He only has power over me if I let him?

Suppose you found a man keeping slaves in his basement. Suppose you threw that man down, broke open his basement, and freed his slaves. Suppose they then went crawling back to their master, begging to be chained again. What would you think of them?

You enslave yourself to God when you know full well that He cannot force you to it, He can only wait until you make yourself a slave. Should any merely mortal man come along and see you prostrate before the empty sky, and make of you his own slave, one could hardly blame him. Should he allow you to teach your doctrine to your children, so that they may make of themselves slaves for his benefit, again, one could hardly be surprised. And thus the world has turned, for many ages.

miata

How can an atheist define Theology?

Science can define theology but few religions want to hear the answers; unless science could prove the eath is 6000 years old and the earth is flat ect.

joedad

Atheistically speaking, I think theology is best defined as "discussion of the existence and/or worship of pseudo-entities."

jbernier

This strikes me as a bit of a straw man - after all, I have not met many theologians who seriously say that the earth is 6000 years old. One should not assume that all theologians are fundamentalist, any more than one should assume that all biologists are Lamarckian.

That having been said there is a more general question of the relationship between the sciences and the humanities. Some would say that the humanities should follow the same scientific method as the physical sciences; some would say that this method would be inappropriate given the specific subject matter of the humanities.

Also, I think that one needs to clearly distinguish "theology" on one hand from "religious studies" on the other. They, of course, deal with similar issues but "religious studies" has generally been more secular than "theology", insofar as research in this area usually is not rooted in a particular faith tradition.

A further point to be made here: Two of the most brilliant amateur theologians I have ever met are atheists (one of whom has decided to do graduate work in theology). I have learned as much about ethical living and notions of transcendant from them as I have from anyone else. Theology means "Talking about God"; even talking about the non-existence of God is "talking about God".

jbernier

Hmmm...this may go beyond the scope of this thread but is not the term "pseudo-entity" problematic in the sense that you seem to be using? If we assume that the root noun "entity" refers to "something that exists" and that the adjectival prefix "pseudo" modifies that noun to suggest that said none is "false" or "deceptive" would a pseudo-entity not be a "false or deceptive thing that exists"? In short would you not be suggesting that the entities discussed do exist but that they are false. They would be false existents yet existent nonetheless.

This is a very difficult linguistic problem to get around. If "entity" contains within itself the notion of existing how can we can pair it with any adjective which suggests that it does not exist - which is to say that the notion of an "non-existent entity" is absurd. Or, to tack a slightly different tack, can one ever say that an entity has the property of non-existence given that an entity by definition exists? Thus can any atheist definition of theology refer to God as an entity given that by definition atheism denies that there is an entity called "God"?

However, this is where it gets really tricky - there clearly is an entity called "God", at least insofar as it is what we could perhaps call a "social entity", a thing that exists in the social world. Thus we must be very clear when we talk about the "existence" and "nonexistence" of God - what do we mean by "existence", for "God" certainly does have some sort of existence by the very fact that we use the word to refer to an existent concept.

Note, this is not some sort of convoluted argument for the existence of God - it is simply a statement that we must be very clear with our word-meanigns when we start talking about existence, entity, etc.

miata

Ask a Baptist Christian School how old the earth is. My son went to one, sent by his mom. I took him out for this and 100 other reasons. I hope I am wrong but please ask. I am in the deep Southern Bible belt so you have have a different situation. The church said that was the story of creation. They refused to teach evilution.

joedad

I basically agree. It is, for example, impossible to separate love from loving behavior. No matter how "love" is defined, "love" never becomes an existent entity or object. Likewise, I can only linguistically separate redness from a red wavelength. All linguistic utterances are so limited. "God," etymologically speaking, is also a behavior, and exists no more independently than does "love."

By "pseudo-entity" I meant non physical, an obvious fabrication, objectively speaking. If I said to someone, "show me your god," and they began to cry out, that would make a bit of sense.