United With God

[Luce NDs]

Control comes with the word "avarice" few understand it as it Bs ... thus it goes on in politic ... ecept those interned in that space ... unseen mediums with ink blots ... impure thoughts contrary to the comptrollers of corruption ... theretofore failed?

Humanitarian flaw in the Sunday Morning Sidewalk! MOG ... where did that come from? Frosty sensations ... it may not be as it appears ... purely in car nate! Moving wisdom ... often out of balance with science (observation) and intellect (that missing from gross emotional domains)!

Is MOG broader based ... the golden hynd ... a great end to confront with ani ... mocking bird, nightingale ... a burr ID that fitz as spike ... or on the go like roadrunner ... hard to define! Perhaps in car tomes arid perspective ... Oasis!

 

[revsdd]

The church has a long, long history of trying to control "what" people think. This is evendent in it's doctrine of hell, scaring people into thinking what they want people to think. They often site John 14:6 where Jesus said "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me", confusing this statement with religion, e.g. claiming that "Christianity" is the way, the truth and the life. Another mistake, I believe, is how some confuse the "word" with the Bible. The latter is a set of scriptures, written and interpreted by men, while the former is the "logos" of our system, either planetary or solar.

I like this paragraph. I agree with your interpretation of Jesus words in John 14:6. Jesus was not referring to "the way" as a set of religious rituals, but as a way of life - the way of love that he taught. What is not loving cannot be the way of Jesus (although, conversely, I would add that what seems loving is not necessarily the way of Jesus.) Scripture, for example, deliberately teaches not that "love is God" but that "God is love." That, of course, is a much more complicated issue to sort out - but I agree that the way of Jesus is the way that leads us to truth and to true life. I also agree with your rejection of the idea that the word is the Bible. My own view would be that the "word" - "logos" - is Jesus, and that the Bible is a revelation of that word - Jesus. The Bible bears witness to "the way, the truth and the life."

If you want an answer to why we are here, religion is perfect. If you care that the answer you believe is real, religion is useless.

If people really wanted to know, they'd be funding scientific research instead of church renovations. I can buy that religion is a source of inspiration or fills a need for some people. What it is not, is any sort of requirement or source of scientific knowledge.

I disagree with your idea that people who want an answer to "why" we are here should fund scientific research. It is not the purpose or role of science (at least not the natural sciences) to answer the "why?" question, nor do I believe science is capable of answering the "why?" question. "Why?" is essentially a philosophical question, addressed by things like philosophy and religion. I do agree with your point that religion is not a source of scientific knowledge - nor should it ever have been seen as such, nor do I think Scripture was intended as such by those who originally wrote it.

As I see it, and simply put, science addresses the questions of how things happened - it's a process question - whereas religion addresses the question of why things happened - it's a purpose question. Science demands empirical evidence and analysis, religion demands experiential evidence and reflection.

One could also point out that many choose to interpret the Bible as a sort of history textbook, which I'm also not convinced that it was intended to be. There are historical elements to the Bible - Paul's letters are historical documents (primary sources) that address real issues within real communities of faith and that reveal a lot about those communities and the surrounding community - but fundamentally history attempts to address questions such as when did things happen and what exactly happened and to analyze cause and effect, whereas Scripture (and religion more broadly) is a particular interpretation of history; a form of mythology in the best sense - not fake or deceitful, but an interpretation of events and the world in general from a particular point of view and to promote and reinforce a particular worldview. Thus, in interpreting Scripture I get less fixated on the question of whether something happened exactly the way it's described, and I'm more interested in what the way the events are told is pointing us to. From a spiritual point of view - at least in my opinion - this is the way to deal with Christmas and Easter, for example: not to get bogged down in the nitty gritty details, but to ask what the broad narrative is revealing to us.

 

[Luce NDs]

Sounds like the challenge between absolutionists and the great imaginary mind that sees things could change from hard authoritarian stances on either side ...

Thus the need for suspension bridges between two difficult poles. Bring on the spiders ... web makers ... the essence of the fisher man ... could be a neurological aspiration ... a mire dream with smoke and mire on either side?

Yet the medium is left in the fissure ... human crack?

 

[paradox3]

If people really wanted to know, they'd be funding scientific research instead of church renovations. I can buy that religion is a source of inspiration or fills a need for some people. What it is not, is any sort of requirement or source of scientific knowledge.

No doubt there are some religious people who see the bible as a source of scientific knowledge. For many people of faith, however, religion and science are two different realms altogether.

I am mindful that we have covered this ground many times on WC and WC2.

 

[Luce NDs]

No doubt there are some religious people who see the bible as a source of scientific knowledge. For many people of faith, however, religion and science are two different realms altogether.

I am mindful that we have covered this ground many times on WC and WC2.

Yet the poles and posts deny any connection or reconnection ... thus segregation al attitudes toward things unknown. Can you observe (science) in biblical terms that we should carry some light unto the unknowns and unknowing?

But then if they are hard set on knowing due to staid attitudes towards the tree of knowledge ... down she comes ... fallible?

Could there, on the other side of the imaginary mire, be a peculiar reflection of reciprocal nature that could be described as upsetting, or leading to up the down staircase of Jacobean observation that the wee people should be hammered own?

Why in the beginning, word had a sense of conflicting dimension ... or dementia for those that lost the sense of depth perception?

Confronted with such complexity of hoards ... who'd know? Thus simple emotions rule ... in the here and now visions! Here I sit as an outsider without a single wing to rise on ... doddering fools of dodo's sinking into subtle thoughts lost by the young and endocrine infested ... aD ole essence and they too stop and smell th'Eros es ... and observe the wars thereof from outside ... thus the way ... oude 'Eire ... Ir-anus ... one of the f' udders of the church ... a' breast of the base functions ... the rod and shaft are predominant ... posted, or post NG?

 

[Jaebius]

If you want an answer to why we are here, religion is perfect. If you care that the answer you believe is real, religion is useless.

If people really wanted to know, they'd be funding scientific research instead of church renovations. I can buy that religion is a source of inspiration or fills a need for some people. What it is not, is any sort of requirement or source of scientific knowledge.

And it isn't supposed to be a source of scientific knowledge. It is rather, as you suggest, a source of inspiration for millions around the world.

 

[Luce NDs]

And it isn't supposed to be a source of scientific knowledge. It is rather, as you suggest, a source of inspiration for millions around the world.

Gasp .. the opposition of aspiration, and the means of destroying the dreams of lesser folks ... some of the wee people being blinded by their own need to rise up ... and be really successful!

Thus light as Christ comes and goes based on quantum functions beyond physical conception ... stuff of the sol as a dark entity ... verily Shadowy as holographs ...

 

[Neo]

And it isn't supposed to be a source of scientific knowledge. It is rather, as you suggest, a source of inspiration for millions around the world.

Yet there are millions of young Earth creationists who would disagree with you.

 

[Mendalla]

No doubt there are some religious people who see the bible as a source of scientific knowledge. For many people of faith, however, religion and science are two different realms altogether.

Science and spirituality are two different realms that nonetheless can inform and illuminate one another. My faith is certainly grounded as much in the knowledge gained through my reading of scientific material as in any spiritual text. Carl Sagan put it well in The Demon-Haunted World.

In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind.

“Spirit” comes from the Latin word “to breathe.” What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word “spiritual” that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science. On occasion, I will feel free to use the word. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

I try to live what Sagan says in the passage above. It is, to a great degree, my faith.

And think again on that last sentence, "The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both." That invites both sides to see each other as a positive, as a partner, not as a foe.

 

[Jaebius]

Yet there are millions of young Earth creationists who would disagree with you.

Really. I don't know a one.

I do know some who think the Genesis accounts to be right and science to be wrong when it comes to the origin of things.

 

[Pontifex Geronimo 13]

And all the combined science, knowledge, computing power of the entire earth is not even close to demonstrating how the simplest form of life came into existence. But they are darn sure it was an accident.

 

[Luce NDs]

God made an accident ... screwed up ... and now we have them ... people?

 

[Neo]

Really. I don't know a one.

I do know some who think the Genesis accounts to be right and science to be wrong when it comes to the origin of things.

You don't know one?? I thought you saw one in the mirror everyday?

 

[chansen]

No one is really 100% sure what Jae believes. Half of it is just to rile us up. Deciding which half, is difficult.

 

[chansen]

And all the combined science, knowledge, computing power of the entire earth is not even close to demonstrating how the simplest form of life came into existence. But they are darn sure it was an accident.

Turns out, abiogenesis is difficult.

What is telling is how dismissive you are of people who don't have all the answers. I'm more skeptical of people who declare and proclaim things that they insist are so, with no backup. The people who aren't so sure are the ones I'd rather listen to.

 

[BetteTheRed]

I'm not sure why a very evident "impulse towards order" necessarily implies a central intelligence. The whole idea of a golden mean, a sacred geometry, merely means that the universe(s) exist within a series of logical, mathematical premises.

So, the universe can tend towards increasing sophistication of phenomena (like Earth, and Her inhabiting species) without any need for any external "God" being.

 

[Jaebius]

You don't know one?? I thought you saw one in the mirror everyday?

The young Earth creationists I know see science and the Genesis accounts as different explanations as to the origin of things. They then say that where the explanations disagree, the accounts are correct and science is in error. They do not, however, conflate science with the accounts.

 

[Neo]

The young Earth creationists I know see science and the Genesis accounts as different explanations as to the origin of things. They then say that where the explanations disagree, the accounts are correct and science is in error. They do not, however, conflate science with the accounts.

I read once that a young Earth could have just as likely have occurred because God can do anything. Seemed like a pretty frail argument to me.

So what does "conflate science with the accounts" actually mean? They, the young Earth creationists you know, do not combine science with the experience? Does this mean observation of the natural world leads to error?

 

[Luce NDs]

No one is really 100% sure what Jae believes. Half of it is just to rile us up. Deciding which half, is difficult.

Tis a mire split vision ... reality versus virtue ...

 

[Luce NDs]

I'm not sure why a very evident "impulse towards order" necessarily implies a central intelligence. The whole idea of a golden mean, a sacred geometry, merely means that the universe(s) exist within a series of logical, mathematical premises.

So, the universe can tend towards increasing sophistication of phenomena (like Earth, and Her inhabiting species) without any need for any external "God" being.

Is central intelligence just beyond us so as to allow reciprocal #'s?