luvluv

Family Man:

I don't know about you, but I don't need to be told to be awed when I see a beautiful sunrise, or a waterfall, or the birth of a baby, etc.

I think that what is learned is seeing these things in cold, scientific, logical terms. Most people will react emotionally, with awe and wonder, until they are trained to see in these events nothing but the interactions of particles.

Awe and wonder are innate responses. You don't have to learn to feel humbled and overjoyed at awesome sights. You have to learn NOT to be. And from this, many have seen the divine.

I'm sorry, I'm mixing terms. I am not saying that a Creator-God concept is innate. I'm saying that a sense of the divine is innate. The concept of what the divine is varies, but generally speaking every culture has this, and has to UNLEARN it in order to lose it. It is the materialistic view which is alien to man in his natural state. He has to lbe taught to stop seeing the divine.

I don't know exactly what you mean here. My point was that every culture has a concept of the divine, nearly every culture has SOME KIND of god concept. It may not resemble that of the Judeo-Christian concept, but it has impressions of the nouminous.

What I am arguing against is the unstated premise of this thread, that the natural condition of man is athiestic. I think any experienced anthropologist would laugh such a notion out of the room. Natural man sees gods everywhere.

And I question how you folks believe that the fact that your children do not mention God is indicative of how a child exists in his natural state. Your children, if they are old enough, know that you are atheists. That might explain why they haven't asked about God. There's no such thing as a religiously neutral household. And there's also the possibility that they have a God concept and they just haven't asked you questions about it, perhaps even BECAUSE you are atheists. You don't know that your kids have no God concept because they've never asked you questions about God.

Jinto

You're equivocating. The definition of divine is as follows:

divine (adj.) -
1.

1. Having the nature of or being a deity.
2. Of, relating to, emanating from, or being the expression of a deity: sought divine guidance through meditation.
3. Being in the service or worship of a deity; sacred.

2. Superhuman; godlike.
3.

1. Supremely good or beautiful; magnificent: a divine performance of the concerto.
2. Extremely pleasant; delightful: had a divine time at the ball

4. Heavenly; perfect.

A sense of the divine(3) is NOT the same as a sense of the divine(1). Stop pretending they are.

Nearly all persons and cultures have a sense of the divine(3). Not all cultures have a sense of the divine(1).

Materialism is not incompatable with a sense of the divine(3). In fact, in some cases it even enhances it: I personally would not be awed at the sight of stars and galaxies if it wasn't for the fact that I KNEW how far away they are, and that the elements for life were being created inside them.

Really? And considering that the Chinese didn't even have a word for God until AFTER Christian missionaries showed up?

No, natural man doesn't waste his time worrying about Gods. He has more important things to be concerned about. Only philosophers and storytellers think that God exists. Unfortunately, in the absence of scientists, philosophers and storytellers tend to be given more credit than they are due.

In other words, just because you can think of a semi-plausable explanation for why they might not mention their belief in God that you are qualified to just ignore where the evidence points. Frankly, I can't say I'm surprised.

T. E. Lords

I fail to understand exactly what wonder and awe have to do with divinity. I'm still awed by beautiful sunsets. Wonder and awe don't have to be anything except being wonder and awe.

The concept of god developed out of man's need to understand the world around him. We didn't have science yet so we got creative and guessed. I think religion played a very important part in our development as a race but it's time has come and gone. There hasn't been a need for it since darwin.

I was thinking about our founding father's the other day who were almost all transindentalists who believed in a God concept but not exactly the christian god. Christians always point to them and say "look the founding fathers believed in god" well the only reason they did is because the concept of evolution had not come around to give people an alternative to the creation story yet.

CX

How so? It seems to me that denying something is to nonethless make a positive claim whereas not affirming something is essentially to not take a position. Could you demonstrate otherwise without resorting to scriptural references?

CX

That is an interesting question and one I don't have the answer to as I suspect the origins of theistic thinking are lost in the mists of time. Looking at history what we do see however is that theistic systems of thought appear to start somewhat loosely structured and animistic and have developed over time into more rigidly structured and prescriptive theological systems. My original statement concerned the modern notion of a monotheistic anthropomorphized god who prescribes things to human beings and intervenes in human affairs. I'm suspect left completely unexposed to any theistic concepts as well as modern scientific methods, an individual would likely develop the kind of animistic systems of belief we see in aboriginal societies. I.e. things (plural) relatively like us only not visible and infinitely more powerful control the various aspects of existence we are familiar with but do not understand (meteorological phenomena, birth, death, sickness, misfortune, unexplaiend suffering etc.)

CX

Well, such is actually ongoing as I have an interest in Xian theology, text criticism and Xian origins. Nothing I could write a dissertation about certainly, but enough to convince me. I should make clear that my interest is mostly in the NT. Specifically, text criticism, development of the Canon and canonical texts, history of early Xianity, MSS history and the like. It consists of:

1)Reading the NT in English
2)Studying Koine Greek
3)Comparitive study of the Greek and English texts
4)Investigation of the MSS evidence (and where possible examination of said MSS)
5)Reading of NT commentaries and intro texts
6)Directed study of the theology of specific portions (I'm currently listening to a recorded study of 1 Cor focusing on the Xian perspective of Pauline attitudes toward women)
7)Other materials written by biblical scholars on the topics that interest me.(i.e. Metzger, Aland, Pagels, Schnelle, BAR, Friedman, Goulder, Crossan, Mack, Borg)
8)Occaisional reading of Xian apologetic works(I.e. Lewis, LT Johnson, Zacharias, Strobel, McDowell, Early Church Fathers)
9)Comparative study of the NT and Early Church Fathers
I've also gotten a wealth of information moderating B,C&H

Family Man

I don't disagree with any of this. But it strikes me as sloppy thinking to equate sense of awe == sense of divine. That's quite a leap of logic.


All you've really demonstrated is that man responds to things emotionally.

Yes, I will agree that most CULTURES has a sense of divine. So what? My son and daughter made no mention of any sense of the divine until they were taught about it elsewhere. Each culture views this "sense" in quite varying ways, which implies there isn't a common source for this alleged sense.

Here's the two problems you have, luvluv. How are you going to distinguish an emotional response from this "sense of divine", and what test can you propose that would demonstrate that this willing to attribute our innate sense of awe to the divine is innate and not a product of cultural indoctrination?

You need to familiarize yourself with Confucianism, Buddhism, animism, paganism, (possibly Shintoism), and the mystic religions of the American Indians, none of which had a god concept -- only the sense of another spiritual world.

Furthermore, if there was a true innate sense of the divine, then one would expect similar experiences throughout the world and thus similar religions. For example, if the world at all times were filled with religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, I'd say you had a point. But that isn't the case, which suggests that this "sense of the divine" is a product of human imagination, not an innate sense. The evidence is against you.

I don't think the an experienced anthropologist would come to the conclusion that there is a innate sense of the divine. Man sees spirits (not Gods) everywhere, but is that because of an innate sense or because man is quite imaginative?

Actually, they didn't. Since we're not religious, we simply didn't talk about religion. Until they heard about he concept outside the home, they had no idea about what God or religion was. What do you think I did, hold "anti-God" classes for them every Sunday morning?


Really? Are you seriously suggesting that one cannot live a life without religion being seriously discussed while young children are being raised?

My, but you do expect pre-school children to understand some difficult concepts. You haven't spent much time with them, have you?

That would imply that they were scared to ask me. However, they did ask me questions, but only after they learned about the concept from other kids. No, they didn't hestitate to ask me because I was an atheist. I doubt an pre-school kid could even understand what an atheist is, especially if they don't really know what a god is yet.

ComestibleVenom

You know luvluv, feeling wonderment about things that you are learning more and more about is richer than wonderment at creatures of the imagination. My sense of wonderment at nature lead me away from the supernatural because imaginary friends are far less interesting than the ghastly magnitude of the cosmos.

ComestibleVenom

I frankly don't believe that religions based upon a cynical leader are all that common. They may be hungry for power, but I believe that most of them are more deeply deluded and self-deceptive than their followers. Conviction is contageous.

Luvluv,
Luvluv, I think that being *disappointed* what science tells us is not merely a bad attitude, but one born of a failure of the imagination and a half of a half of an education. Yes, if you lack the intellectual discipline to follow the incredible consequences of the scientific image to it's logical conclusions, you will be horribly deflated at mere matter.

The 'sense of the divine' is NOT innate. It is learned. Some form of awe is innate but it is only 'a sense of the divine which does not care for reality' if we train it to be. We can correspondingly train our children to find 'a sense of nature which does not care for the divine', a sentiment already deeply engrained in my own heart.

T. E. Lords

The real world is pleanty interesting with out the addition of abstractions.