Whenever I hear people say that they do not just believe in God but experience God or Christ as a watchful presence in their lives, I am not impressed with the reality of their faith. Rather, I fear for their sanity. They are cultivating a delusion. Even if there is a God, what else is going on in their heads but the cultivation of a delusion?

The Pilgrims and the Puritans did not come here to establish religious toleration. On the contrary, they wanted to be in a place where they could be tolerated, not tolerant. The founding fathers must have known this well because the First Amendment calls for the separation of church(es) and state.

First the Anabaptists, then the Quakers, the Shakers, the Ranters, the Levellers, the Diggers, the Calvinists and the Methodists (not to mention the non-denominational institutions or churches). Martin Luther must be “rolling in his grave.” So many sects and the process has not stopped nor is it showing any signs of slowing down. The Thirty Years’ War ended with Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism gaining the right to existence. These three forms of Christianity tolerate each other but sadly none of them seem to tolerate anyone else.

Where does toleration come from? If I accept your right to believe differently from me, but I think I believe the truth and you think you believe the truth, then what has become of truth? And then what are the implications of toleration for “truth”? So many questions, so few answers.

What would make you give up your position on god, and how would you feel about it?

The observer has been observed and now the observed has become the observer. And so it goes.

However, if the observer wants to be observed then by definition he/she gives up his observerhood.

I suppose it’s possible to be observed while observing. I guess it all depends on your power of observation.

True happiness is being an unwitting sower of jealousy. 🙂

Ralph Scherer lost the track of his mind there for a sec. 🙂

Ken Ryder
You’ll find it Admiral Angle.

Ralph Scherer
It’s just that I don’t know which story is true. The one they told you or the one they didn’t tell me. 🙂

Ralph Scherer
And who is they, exactly? Someone needs to do an exposé on who they is/are. 🙂
50 minutes ago ·

John Knouff
When that happens, make sure to check under the couch cushions. It sometimes will find its way there.
38 minutes ago ·

Ralph Scherer
Doh! New Web site search engine: find what you need at www.underthecouchcushions.com. Google needs some competition. 🙂
2 minutes ago ·

Maybe nothing we do now will matter in a thousand years, but IF SO, then it also would seem that nothing that will matter in a thousand years makes a difference now, either. In particular, it doesn’t make a difference now that in a thousand years, what we do now won’t matter. –JAP

Life is momentary. There are happy moments and sad moments and to experience life to its fullest you must stay in the moment. I think I understand what all the monks meditating out there are doing. They are making a valiant effort to stay in the present moment.

I submit this is impossible to do because there is no such thing as the present moment. The future is feeding on the past.

It takes more energy for good to reside in evil than it does for evil to reside in good.

…. and not bad is better than pretty good.

🙂

The world is fleeting, and so am I. Maybe I should learn to surf instead of drowning.

… of scripture and their intellectual dishonesty is more than skin deep. You guessed it, it goes right down to the bone.

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

–Benjamin Franklin

I am disgusted by the cult of personality dominating the media at the moment. Wake up people. There are more pressing issues in the world than the death of Peter Pan and a Charlie’s Angel. I wish that the media would just let MJ’s memory be rather than drag it around for days like some carcass of a once-proud show horse paraded around for the sake of sentimentality and ratings.”

Theists are afraid people will think for themselves; atheists are afraid they won’t.

Science has given us much. What has theology given us?

Theology has given us hell.

Here is the list Moses got the third time around, the final authorized, edited and proofed version of the Ten Commandments:

1. Thou shalt worship no other god. (The same as Exodus 20; so far so good.)
2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. (So, graven images are okay now!)
3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. (My family never did this.)
4. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest. (Another match with Exodus 20.)
5. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks. (What is this? When is this?)
6. Thrice in a year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God. (Boys only? And how, exactly, do they get up there every four months?)
7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. (What?)
8. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left until the morning. (Because the meat will spoil overnight?)
9. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. (This applies to farmers, so most of us are off the hook.)
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. (No problem. That one’s easy to keep.)

These are the real Ten Commandments? They only have a 20 percent match with Exodus 20. Did the rules change between Moses’ visits? Did God lose his memory? What happened to homicide, theft and perjury. Is adultery okay now?

If I were still a Xian, I might be embarrassed that the God I thought I admired could be so forgetful and so petty. Not to mention so weird.

• Anger at religious immorality
• Disgust with superstitious anti-intellectualism
• Fear of the dangers of Xian intolerance
• Dissatisfaction with the way religious divisiveness interferes with true compassion
• Empathy for the victims of sectarian bigotry
• Outrage at the hypocrisy of believers
• Impatience with the churches that actively retard social progress.

Atheism is exquisitely vulnerable to disproof. Theism is not.

Most Xians and Muslims would rather earn devotion points within their co-believing community than give any credibility to some Lone Ranger atheist.

The issue is not so much what we think, but how we think. Epistemology.