A “saved by grace” Christian on the APE FB page asked why
all the atheists are so careful to clarify that they don’t consider each
experience they’ve had since the start of the project to be a “revelation.” He
wondered “Why
is everyone so afraid to Just call Him God for the duration of this experiment…?”
He suggested we were afraid our intelligence would evaporate if we had a
genuine experience. It's only a matter of time until someone accuses us of "thinking too much."
If the other skeptics are like me, they’re not necessarily
obsessed with their intelligence; they just have more experience than most
people at having to admit when they’ve been wrong. If it happens to you enough, you learn to state
things in a more open-ended way.
Certainty is a luxury that only comes with blind faith.
Personally, I do stay away from the word “god” on this project, but only because I think any supreme being that might exist would be insulted by
that label. None of the gods men have written about seem up to the task of
imagining, much less running the universe we live in. They may be far more
powerful than men, but there are worlds of difference between our concepts of
deities and what it would take to create multiple infinite universes. Any being that could accomplish that is going
to have a perspective too large to be “jealous” for the worship of a
pseudo-intelligent species like ours.
Here's my issue, Atheists have had life experiences but so have Christians. It's ridiculous to suggest otherwise or that any conclusion resulting in the belief of a loving God who is indeed very interested in us is simply a result of blind faith. Listen, how can you on one hand be so certain that there is no God to sign up for an experiment so confident He will not connect with you but then make every excuse in the book to do as you said in your post here choose not to refer to Him as God because of offending Him. I mean that certainly raises an obvious question. Do you think God does not exist or do you simply believe he's going to get mad at you? What if Christians are right? What if there is an amazing God who loves you, created you, is the source of everything good, and wants to change your life in amazing ways for the better? If we were right I'm sure you would agree that God would be worth knowing about right? SO why not try praying something like "God, if your real, Show yourself to me. If you God are real like the Christians suggest and you are loving, then I want to know you." That's where I get confused about what I thought was that type of an experiment and not just another forum to go on and on trying to justify not even making an effort at all. It really honestly does seem to me, speaking as respectfully as I know how via text, that yes the majority are afraid to really make any effort to connect to the real God that Christians are talking about.
ReplyDelete@Justin Lewis… SO why not try praying something like "God, if your real, Show yourself to me. If you God are real like the Christians suggest and you are loving, then I want to know you."
DeleteHow is that different from what I've been "praying?" I don't think it is substantially different. I've outlined on this very blog how I could have been wrong in my past assumptions, and those assumptions include the ones that led me to walk away from Christianity. I'm not willing to do is ignore my experiences in life up to this point, but that doesn't mean I couldn't be shown where I was wrong in the assumptions I made based on those experiences.
Yesterday morning, I had a little time because I was waiting on some furnace maintenance at my house, so I visited your sites. I really like your work, by the way. Is your "pure art" of a similar flavor to your professional work?
I couldn't tell what your religious experience had been, other than that you are now, at 30, a saved-by-grace Christian. You have had experiences, just as I have had experiences, but our approach, and our responses to them, is going to be different.
When you became a believer, you were almost certainly welcomed with open arms into a fellowship of believers. You have shared goals with a group of people who spend a lot of thought time trying to fit what happens in the real world to the claims of Christianity. If one day, your beliefs changed, that would be counted as a FAILURE for you. To a Christian, failure to believe the right way will result in eternal suffering. Aside from that, you'd lose a lot of friends, and there wouldn't necessarily be new friends to take their place. You'd be shunned by your support group, and though they might still be concerned for you, your deconversion would terrify them because of their own fears and doubts.
In other words, you have every incentive in the book NOT to change your point of view, and you have a hell of a lot of disincentives for changing your mind.
I don't have those same obstacles. If I change my mind to your view, I'd be adopting a belief that I'd live forever. Any mistakes I made "in faith" would be covered and erased by the blood of Jesus. I'd have a lot of people patting me on the back and trying to use my experience to convert others. In exchange, I'd have to follow a few new rules and live a life of submitted obedience. Fair exchange, by anyone's point of view. I've got an ego, like anyone does, but since I'm already experienced at admitting when I'm wrong, why wouldn't I do that NOW if I didn't have legitimate reasons to think I'm not wrong? It wouldn't cost me anything I'm not already used to paying.
Hello!
ReplyDelete"Any being that could accomplish that is going to have a perspective too large to be 'jealous' for the worship of a pseudo-intelligent species like ours."
What do you mean by that?