Omega Green
Member
25th September 2016,
This is my first attempt at a journal; and if we can unanimously agree that it sucks, then it will also be my last. I thought I would say a word or two about juxtaposing opposites in the larger aim of finding balance. I was an evangelical Christian for basically 3 years. With the contextual aid of a spiritual experience or two, I was adamant that the Christian agenda was the best thing for us as a people. Then I started to wonder if everything i'd witnessed/experienced, could potentially be accounted for in purely psychological terms, Looking back I can see this question was the first move towards unraveling the mindset; as such I reflected to myself and noted that i'd given three solid years of voluntary service to a church youth ministry, and due to this quest for balance - I basically just switched and told myself that I would spend the following three years researching atheism.
Before knowing anything about atheism I wanted to equal the time i'd invested in church - in the studies of reason itself; because i'd ultimately envisioned the dichotomy turning me into something hardcore. None of my church-going friends were as enthusiastic or quote-besotted with atheism as I was. But in conversations with those to whom I kept close ties, they knew that i'd undoubtedly turned away from faith-based thinking, most likely once and for all, insofar as I kept pointing all my friends to the many virtues of a humanistic approach.
About 8 years after beginning my explorations of atheism; through an accumulation of stress and worry; I found myself bizarrely tempted with theistic assumptions all over again. You wouldn't understand it unless you felt the same worries yourself, that time was so subjectively obscure and absurd, and I was so encumbered with worry over a situation that needs not be mentioned here - that I actually found myself figuring that it might be beneficial to cast my cares onto a sky god once again. I wish now that i'd gripped onto my atheistic convictions all the more harder when that temptation presented itself - because the relapse, sufficed to say, cost me my job and much of my well-earned social standing, and now i'm somewhat of a recluse who is regretting the influence of theism in my early life on a daily basis.
So when I talk about a synthesis of religion and atheism; I am emphasizing that - insofar as this juxtaposition is like propositional warfare - atheism has more integrity in my opinion; these people who lived for reason, the absence of belief in a supernatural god was not their intention nor their aim (despite the way that books like the Psalms 14 will depict the unbeliever as a group of people, amongst whom there are none that does good) but it was one of their outcomes of living for reason. When Charles Darwin first published the Origin of Species, he used to include in the publication - a copy of a letter from a Christian admirer of the text, who exclaimed: "all my life I've believed that God created man, but I never had any idea about how he did this until I read your book". Charles Darwin was - at first - so excited to find approval with a Christian reader that he had to make that letter a part of the book itself. It would not be for some years later that Darwin would dwell further on human suffering - theodicy, even suffering within the animal kingdom that he observed - over time - cast a great shadow of doubt on the belief in a supernatural providential God, and then enduring the death of his daughter moved him into what he called Agnosticism, but which - given the popular current day definition of Atheism that is in play for most atheists, Darwin then qualified to be amongst their number.
But many of these thinkers weren't opposed to a case for the belief in a supernatural god, infact in the course of establishing their intellectual contributions to life, some were hoping to discover god all the more closely. Amongst the great scientists who did not seem to waver on faith in a supernatural god, perhaps Isaac Newton is the most prominent, to have held to his theological guns throughout all of his academic career.
It took an Einstein to significantly develop upon Newtons achievement; and Einstein is an interesting source to consult on the debate for God, I've observed that both theists and atheists are tempted, in debate, to claim Albert Einstein as one of their own. Unfortunately for theist debtors, there are just too many writings from Einstein where he goes into detail about precisely what he means by the word "God" - and if you've a hint of the evangelical - it just ain't about that kinda God. Einstein seems to have held to a very mystical / pantheistic understanding of God, he credited Spinoza (“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”) - It certainly seems that for Einstein, doing science was the ultimate way to see more of God in detail, but he does not mean an anthropomorphic being of any kind, who thinks and wills and plans in ways comparable to us humans. Some of Einsteins statements rip true holes in theology and as such, i'm always surprised when I see a Theist claiming that Einstein was one of them.
It is still the case for me that the word "God" describes something that I reject - I still feel that way even though I've been spending ages trying to savor the mystical non-theistic god talk of people like Bishop Spong and Karen Armstrong; for me - and it's probably habit - the word "god" when I hear it in a sentence, brings about more of a cringe than anything else: "No No No! Please don't get me thinking along those lines again!"
I'm retraining myself to associate the word "God" with statements like the Ground of All Being; or a presence at the very heart of life. It will be interesting to see how the ongoing feud between Atheism and Religion takes its forms, now that we have Bishops and former Nuns sharing in the atheists exclamation; that one is better off not believing in the existence of supernatural beings - what Spong and Armstrong represent is religions future given these conclusions; they both admit that Atheism can be and usually is a natural outcome of the attempt to be religious, Armstrong even suggests that church's "Leave them Alone" when they start losing faith. It's as though religious authorities themselves can appreciate the will towards unbelief. Should we count Spong and Armstrong as two concessions to atheism? In many respects they assert themselves as such, but then they go further to talk about the possibility of meaning to be found in religious traditions even after we have dispelled with supernaturalism. Atheist Sam Harris has one major criticism of this initiative: that - since people are using the same words in different ways - defining "God" as some metaphor for energy and life, is misleading, because that is now what the majority of believers mean when they say "God". And Harris suggests that the out-there liberals are ultimately still giving cover to fundamentalism. Well, from watching Spong and Armstrong talks, they seem to think it important that those who get involved in religion focus on what really matters and avoid become literalistic in their textual exegesis.
It's surprised me how corroborative Bishop Spong's sermons are to many of Marilyn Manson's statements. I eventually liked what Manson had to say so much that I studied his influences; Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and so it looks to me almost as if Bishop Spong has consulted some of the same texts, because he is outright rejecting the literal ideal of Jesus as a sacrifice from a supernatural being who died for our sins; this Spong suggests gives us a strange view of God as a hanging judge and punishing parent, a strange view of Jesus as the designated victim "Someone's Gotta Pay!" and a strange view of humanity as something which in and of itself has no meaning, hence it's meaning and significance and value must be redeemed. Spong is of course, not preaching Genesis as the story of our origins, he's testifying to evolution and rightly so. You can go outside now and lean against any tree of your choosing - doesn't matter, it's still a distant cousin of yours. Something like 40-Something% common DNA with homo sapiens. But the point is that we could not have been created in an initial perfection (and if you accept Adam and Eve as the sole, first two humans, then you'd be trying to tell someone like me that original creation was oh so perfect that Eve must have wound up having sex with either Cain or Abel - whichever one survived I get muddled - but "perfect" and "inbred" don't fit well in the same sentence) from which the race later fell. Rather, we evolved and are still evolving, hence perfection is something out there in our futures, yet to be achieved. I used to think that the way the church taught the total story of the bible was cool, - the way in which different events tied into one another; but after a few founding fathers quotes, cool became ridiculous: The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up. (Thomas Paine). But it must have just been the efforts of a theologian or two who strung together these links in the first instance, to try and make everything fit together. St. Matthew goes rather ridiculously far in his gospel. adding a resurrection of old testament saints at the time of the crucifixion; Zombies - if you prefer - and yet not one of the other gospel authors mentions this. It becomes quite clear that Matthew was out to tell the Christ story in a way that made him appear as foretold by prophecy as possible. Matthew even changes around some of Christs teachings as they appeared in Mark, with which Matthew sourced as he wrote his gospel.
So isn't it funny when a Bishop starts agreeing with the views of an androgynous rock star who used to rip up the bible and throw it at the crowd in 1996? See, I knew that was good music at the time!
Spong essentially represents Jesus as an example for the ideal of cultivating a fuller humanity. Jesus, for Spong, not only stood against the ignorance of his time, but taught those around him to live fully and love wastefully. This is a sensible message whether your an atheist or not. So far, from my chair; beholding the religions getting the theism sapped out of their marrow is a real joy to witness, because I was always spooked by the sayings of those who claimed to be sensitive to the voice of God; and I always had my doubts that what they thought that was, wasn't something psychological. I'll leave you with the saying:"When a person tells me God had spoken to them in a dream, they've told me nothing different than that they dreamed God spoke to them"... And from this dream we've got proponents on both sides, Armstrong and Spong, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all saying the same thing... Now it's time to wake up.
Good Day/Evening. O.G.
This is my first attempt at a journal; and if we can unanimously agree that it sucks, then it will also be my last. I thought I would say a word or two about juxtaposing opposites in the larger aim of finding balance. I was an evangelical Christian for basically 3 years. With the contextual aid of a spiritual experience or two, I was adamant that the Christian agenda was the best thing for us as a people. Then I started to wonder if everything i'd witnessed/experienced, could potentially be accounted for in purely psychological terms, Looking back I can see this question was the first move towards unraveling the mindset; as such I reflected to myself and noted that i'd given three solid years of voluntary service to a church youth ministry, and due to this quest for balance - I basically just switched and told myself that I would spend the following three years researching atheism.
Before knowing anything about atheism I wanted to equal the time i'd invested in church - in the studies of reason itself; because i'd ultimately envisioned the dichotomy turning me into something hardcore. None of my church-going friends were as enthusiastic or quote-besotted with atheism as I was. But in conversations with those to whom I kept close ties, they knew that i'd undoubtedly turned away from faith-based thinking, most likely once and for all, insofar as I kept pointing all my friends to the many virtues of a humanistic approach.
About 8 years after beginning my explorations of atheism; through an accumulation of stress and worry; I found myself bizarrely tempted with theistic assumptions all over again. You wouldn't understand it unless you felt the same worries yourself, that time was so subjectively obscure and absurd, and I was so encumbered with worry over a situation that needs not be mentioned here - that I actually found myself figuring that it might be beneficial to cast my cares onto a sky god once again. I wish now that i'd gripped onto my atheistic convictions all the more harder when that temptation presented itself - because the relapse, sufficed to say, cost me my job and much of my well-earned social standing, and now i'm somewhat of a recluse who is regretting the influence of theism in my early life on a daily basis.
So when I talk about a synthesis of religion and atheism; I am emphasizing that - insofar as this juxtaposition is like propositional warfare - atheism has more integrity in my opinion; these people who lived for reason, the absence of belief in a supernatural god was not their intention nor their aim (despite the way that books like the Psalms 14 will depict the unbeliever as a group of people, amongst whom there are none that does good) but it was one of their outcomes of living for reason. When Charles Darwin first published the Origin of Species, he used to include in the publication - a copy of a letter from a Christian admirer of the text, who exclaimed: "all my life I've believed that God created man, but I never had any idea about how he did this until I read your book". Charles Darwin was - at first - so excited to find approval with a Christian reader that he had to make that letter a part of the book itself. It would not be for some years later that Darwin would dwell further on human suffering - theodicy, even suffering within the animal kingdom that he observed - over time - cast a great shadow of doubt on the belief in a supernatural providential God, and then enduring the death of his daughter moved him into what he called Agnosticism, but which - given the popular current day definition of Atheism that is in play for most atheists, Darwin then qualified to be amongst their number.
But many of these thinkers weren't opposed to a case for the belief in a supernatural god, infact in the course of establishing their intellectual contributions to life, some were hoping to discover god all the more closely. Amongst the great scientists who did not seem to waver on faith in a supernatural god, perhaps Isaac Newton is the most prominent, to have held to his theological guns throughout all of his academic career.
It took an Einstein to significantly develop upon Newtons achievement; and Einstein is an interesting source to consult on the debate for God, I've observed that both theists and atheists are tempted, in debate, to claim Albert Einstein as one of their own. Unfortunately for theist debtors, there are just too many writings from Einstein where he goes into detail about precisely what he means by the word "God" - and if you've a hint of the evangelical - it just ain't about that kinda God. Einstein seems to have held to a very mystical / pantheistic understanding of God, he credited Spinoza (“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”) - It certainly seems that for Einstein, doing science was the ultimate way to see more of God in detail, but he does not mean an anthropomorphic being of any kind, who thinks and wills and plans in ways comparable to us humans. Some of Einsteins statements rip true holes in theology and as such, i'm always surprised when I see a Theist claiming that Einstein was one of them.
It is still the case for me that the word "God" describes something that I reject - I still feel that way even though I've been spending ages trying to savor the mystical non-theistic god talk of people like Bishop Spong and Karen Armstrong; for me - and it's probably habit - the word "god" when I hear it in a sentence, brings about more of a cringe than anything else: "No No No! Please don't get me thinking along those lines again!"
I'm retraining myself to associate the word "God" with statements like the Ground of All Being; or a presence at the very heart of life. It will be interesting to see how the ongoing feud between Atheism and Religion takes its forms, now that we have Bishops and former Nuns sharing in the atheists exclamation; that one is better off not believing in the existence of supernatural beings - what Spong and Armstrong represent is religions future given these conclusions; they both admit that Atheism can be and usually is a natural outcome of the attempt to be religious, Armstrong even suggests that church's "Leave them Alone" when they start losing faith. It's as though religious authorities themselves can appreciate the will towards unbelief. Should we count Spong and Armstrong as two concessions to atheism? In many respects they assert themselves as such, but then they go further to talk about the possibility of meaning to be found in religious traditions even after we have dispelled with supernaturalism. Atheist Sam Harris has one major criticism of this initiative: that - since people are using the same words in different ways - defining "God" as some metaphor for energy and life, is misleading, because that is now what the majority of believers mean when they say "God". And Harris suggests that the out-there liberals are ultimately still giving cover to fundamentalism. Well, from watching Spong and Armstrong talks, they seem to think it important that those who get involved in religion focus on what really matters and avoid become literalistic in their textual exegesis.
It's surprised me how corroborative Bishop Spong's sermons are to many of Marilyn Manson's statements. I eventually liked what Manson had to say so much that I studied his influences; Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and so it looks to me almost as if Bishop Spong has consulted some of the same texts, because he is outright rejecting the literal ideal of Jesus as a sacrifice from a supernatural being who died for our sins; this Spong suggests gives us a strange view of God as a hanging judge and punishing parent, a strange view of Jesus as the designated victim "Someone's Gotta Pay!" and a strange view of humanity as something which in and of itself has no meaning, hence it's meaning and significance and value must be redeemed. Spong is of course, not preaching Genesis as the story of our origins, he's testifying to evolution and rightly so. You can go outside now and lean against any tree of your choosing - doesn't matter, it's still a distant cousin of yours. Something like 40-Something% common DNA with homo sapiens. But the point is that we could not have been created in an initial perfection (and if you accept Adam and Eve as the sole, first two humans, then you'd be trying to tell someone like me that original creation was oh so perfect that Eve must have wound up having sex with either Cain or Abel - whichever one survived I get muddled - but "perfect" and "inbred" don't fit well in the same sentence) from which the race later fell. Rather, we evolved and are still evolving, hence perfection is something out there in our futures, yet to be achieved. I used to think that the way the church taught the total story of the bible was cool, - the way in which different events tied into one another; but after a few founding fathers quotes, cool became ridiculous: The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up. (Thomas Paine). But it must have just been the efforts of a theologian or two who strung together these links in the first instance, to try and make everything fit together. St. Matthew goes rather ridiculously far in his gospel. adding a resurrection of old testament saints at the time of the crucifixion; Zombies - if you prefer - and yet not one of the other gospel authors mentions this. It becomes quite clear that Matthew was out to tell the Christ story in a way that made him appear as foretold by prophecy as possible. Matthew even changes around some of Christs teachings as they appeared in Mark, with which Matthew sourced as he wrote his gospel.
So isn't it funny when a Bishop starts agreeing with the views of an androgynous rock star who used to rip up the bible and throw it at the crowd in 1996? See, I knew that was good music at the time!
Spong essentially represents Jesus as an example for the ideal of cultivating a fuller humanity. Jesus, for Spong, not only stood against the ignorance of his time, but taught those around him to live fully and love wastefully. This is a sensible message whether your an atheist or not. So far, from my chair; beholding the religions getting the theism sapped out of their marrow is a real joy to witness, because I was always spooked by the sayings of those who claimed to be sensitive to the voice of God; and I always had my doubts that what they thought that was, wasn't something psychological. I'll leave you with the saying:"When a person tells me God had spoken to them in a dream, they've told me nothing different than that they dreamed God spoke to them"... And from this dream we've got proponents on both sides, Armstrong and Spong, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all saying the same thing... Now it's time to wake up.
Good Day/Evening. O.G.
).