Your arrogance is starting to really shine. You started out seeming so reasonable, but that didn’t really last very long. it should be obvious that I’ve given a lot of thought to my reasoning. It was so much easier when I had a nice community that was helping in a poor neighborhood and getting together on Sunday to sing about. There was so much less introspection required.
Then I tried being a Sunday School teacher who didn’t tell children that there was one answer and once source of all things. That would seem “consistent” on the surface, until you start looking at how things don’t always work out for those who think they are following the rules laid down by that one source. 10 year old boys are really good at seeing that.
Maybe what you want to call “arrogance” is really your foundation cracking under simple logical questions.
My foundation is really strong because I approach it, not from indoctrination or coercion or peer-pressure but from free will.
My foundation is strong because even when faced with things such as human suffering, which are like earthquakes to my foundation, I still don’t fumble.
So if you are strong in yours then explain to me : What evidence and logical conclusion would be for the word “beautiful” based on your position?
Funny that, a few decades back I have one of those little epiphanal moments regarding Deep Time and Earth’s evolution, that left behind, this little mantra, that’s followed me around, a distance echo coming out of some recess in my mind ever since, and chiming like a cathedral tower.
God is Creation.
** {As in God is Earth’s biosphere and the Evolution that created it.}**
Nah, that sounds like game playing with the word “god”
What’s the point of this “god”, or is it “God”, you embrace?
How does this God inform the way you live?
What would you lose if you were to embrace Earth’s journey through deep time?
Many would say something about believing in God saves us and ensure an ever-lasting after-life.
What do you think of that?
(sorry gonna be catch up for a while, this comment comes from way back at 41, …)
This isn’t a game at all good sir because we have two different approaches which go back centuries (or millennia for believers).
In the believers case they simply believe and try to find evidence . This is their approach.
In the case of science starting since the time of Isaac newton, we observe, test and verify and explain a process.
So if we are at the point where we reduce everything to “cells” and where every sentence from one side begins with “what’s your reasoning and evidence” then we also need to apply that same question to the people who are doing the questioning.
Makes sense?
So this isn’t a game at all because millions of people are invested into a line of thinking or another without knowing why or thinking about what implications their reasoning has for themselves if they applied it as strictly as the questions they ask others.
I thought I answered that in my story about the Fall colors. If you understood that, you’d see you have fumbled, and that you don’t look for evidence. But I see you are set in your beliefs. There was a glimmer a hope when you reduced your confidence in the boy with the past life, but we’ve only known each other for a couple days, so I’m not going to set my hopes too high.
When I look at a beautiful vista, it’s not a random opinion about what beauty is. Millions of years of evolution developed that sense of feeling happy, comfortable, and appreciative of that scene, because it is full of things that nourish us. The fact that not everyone feels the same about it is not a disproof of that science. Evolution is not perfect, so people are not perfect. In fact, part of the reason that evolution works is that we are different. When the environment changes, as it always does, the species with a diversity of survival mechanisms will be more likely to survive.
Does a bee think in terms of beauty when it moves toward a flower? I don’t know. Not that long ago, scientists were not interested in that question either, but fortunately a few who had both an eye for beauty and a mind for science managed to get their degrees and then the funding to look into that. If religion and science had not been fighting for a thousand years before that, we could have had this mix of poetry and data a long time ago.
So, question to you, you say you don’t fumble when it comes to suffering. That’s a common problem presented to Christians, or whatever it is you call yourself. Are you saying you have a solution?
That is, if God loves us and can help us, and can create a perfect world, why is there suffering in the world now?
Okay so this is where I’m also going with this line of reasoning because it’s also what I believe. Science and Faith are not enemies despite the fact that religion has been at war with science.
I personally, as a user and guest in this planet, don’t see them as enemies.
So we don’t need to have an extreme approach and reasoning but be more middle ground in our approach.
With this statement you show that you’re not extreme.
This is a very difficult question for me, in fact THE most difficult question.
My only answer to this is : Christ was here and suffered with us. He told us of a few things to come too.
So I don’t grasp all the details and reasons of suffering but His suffering gives me a sort of explanation which goes beyond my understanding.
Except you’ve been contentious since your first few posts. I’m going to assume that you accept my reasoning with regards to beauty.
And you consider that “consistent”. That’s what I don’t get. As long as I’m alive and learning, that’s consistent with my beliefs. I consistently say that I don’t know everything and consistently leave out any “sort of explanation” about there being some conscious above mine.
In the late first millennium AD, the Vatican started looking at the stars and had scientists on staff. Then things shifted toward the crusades and eventually the inquisition and the shutting down of their universities. They reopened, but they told their professors to lay off questions of god. We are still living out the consequences of that.
[quote=“eli1, post:64, topic:9361”]
So if we are at the point where we reduce everything to “cells” and where every sentence from one side begins with “what’s your reasoning and evidence” then we also need to apply that same question to the people who are doing the questioning.
Makes sense?
Not at all. Theists look for confirmation in scripture, where the only thing they find is “irreducible complex” creation.
Scientist look for confirmation in nature, where they find evolutionary traces from simpler forms.
Are you familiar that after 2000 years , 2 popes on advice of the Papal Academy of Science, have conceded that evolution is true.
So this isn’t a game at all because millions of people are invested into a line of thinking or another without knowing why or thinking about what implications their reasoning has for themselves if they applied it as strictly as the questions they ask others.
Indeed, it is sad that so many people are ignorant of the marvelous simplicity that evolved into the most wondrous and beautiful complexity by billions of years of small changes that made objects more symmetrical, balanced, durable and beautiful.
A simple tree tells the story of billions of years of natural selection of variety in species. “The tree of life”, a perfect example of fractal iteration.
Yes I’ve read that and I also know of priests in Italy who believe in evolution.
But I don’t regard evolution as true but simply as “the best explanation at the moment explaining the rise of cell based organisms”.
But you are a product of this planet plenty of physical evidence for that.
Seems to me, you rely on faith, which is confined to your imagination, then you deal with others who confine their thoughts to within their imagination, faith, and regard the physical is irrelevant.
Okay I take a fundamental leap of faith that I believe in the physical processes I see, and experience, around me, no need, nor even room for a personal god, let alone this personal Jesus as key to some everlasting life, AFTER I DIE.
On the other hand, seem to me you keep it totally within my heart and mind, I do have a deep appreciation of Jesus as a guide and teacher. Jesus is all about his Passion Play, as dramatized in the stations of the cross. Burning on the cross of one’s own making, metaphorically dying and being resurrected as a transformed person. etc.
Jesus is about helping people grown and get through their life here on Earth, while the flesh and the spirit are bound together.
Our answers are only as good as our questions.
You say you have proof in “Christ as a real person”
Do you know what "proof’ is?
What is your proof for Christ? Can you share that?
Cc I am in agreement with your first half of the post where you say that you “take a leap of faith” in believing the fundamental forces that you see and I’m also taking a “leap of faith” believing in the things I do because if we had absolute proof one way or another about all the immaterial, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
This response is for both cc and write4u;
As far as denying Christ as a historical person then according to Wikipedia (which has a left leaning bias) you are considered part of a “fringe group”.
His historicity is well established and if you doubt that, then anything prior to photographs in history is then un-believable.
Right. His historicity is well established.
As far as what’s said in the gospels …. That’s not considered history and that’s where one takes a leap of faith.
Nor can you ever hope to achieve any sort of proof it’s IMMATERIAL.
You can believe it with all your heart, but that’s not “proof” that’s “faith” - you can’t bring any of your evidence over into this realm that we physical exist within.
