I'm kinda lost here. Usually ( 90 % or so ) it is the liberal "Christians" who deny any reality to Satan, they do not tell Virginia that there is a Devil. I get the point ( twice over ) that we all need to understand it when people do bad things because of stupidity which the Devil had little to do with, or when they do bad things partly because of happenstance, like being born in Juarez rather than Highland Park. Let's give situations their due and not always take the easy way out and never give such things a second thought because the Devil is the ultimate cause. Regardless of circumstances we can count on Satan messing up whatever can be messed up. But it is a real help to identify what is wrong that we can actually do something about. As well, we aren't perfect and we also can rise above circumstances, even Highland Park folks can commit crimes, etc, and people born in Juarez can turn out just fine. Also, while I think I understand your points about the differences between R & L religion, I am lost about cause and effect . Muslims are really strict monotheists yet they follow a religion that , in effect, promotes all kinds of crimes. Christians are also monotheists but their religion is against crimes. In what way, then, is there a connection between theological beliefs and the kinds of behavior you regard --I'd say by and large very rightly-- as wrong a or irresponsible. ? Just thought I'd ask Billy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------- message dated 12/14/2010 7:43:44 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
>From the conservative point of view (and libertarian, too, for that matter), the problem may be summed up by the P. J. O'Rourke quote below. Government is really their god because they seem to desire that all means of assistance are offered via the Government. The church is to agitate for peace and more programs from Government to help the poor and downtrodden. A pox be on conservatives because they want their church to do it, and we know that all conservative christian churches really hate the poor and downtrodden. No matter how many sandwiches your church distributes in downtown Dallas. QED. Or, you know, NOT. No matter how full of Bovine Excrement that next-to-last sentence of the first paragraph may be, that is the message generally received by conservative church folks. It is OK for them to politicize their churches, but that "radical religious right" (no matter what nutter of the week they have chosen to represent them all) is DANGEROUS for politicizing their churches. Separation of church and state seems to only be separation of conservative church and state. Gay clergy openly proclaiming the gay lifestyle in liberal churches does not violate separation of church and state, but pro-choicers are another thing entirely. And both the "Yes, Virginia, There is a Devil" and the "God is Dead (well, maybe just comatose)" brands of liberal theology have no absolutes, everything is relative. What is a sin for you may not be a sin for you except for a pro-choice position or an anti-gay one, which are always sins, even to those who really don't tend to believe in sin. Pot and Kettle analogies and beam and splinter analogies are often applied to this situation. Fittingly. David _ "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."--P. J. O'Rourke On 12/14/2010 12:03 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: What is wrong with "liberal religion" Not that I am all that impressed with many forms of conservative religion, either. Exactly why should we presume that the ONLY alternatives to questions about teleology --purpose in the Universe-- reduce to Atheism vs Monotheism ? Given obvious problems with either viewpoint, a very reasonable case can be made for Deity consisting of X number of "Gods" or gods. Or for a God and Goddess, or for Agnosticism, radical inability despite best efforts to really know how to answer basic questions But leaving all that aside, what seems to be the main problem on the religious Left is dismissal of Satan as a Big Problem and as forever wrecking the Good. To toss out Satan as a factor in the world is to give us, IMHO, false choices, either God did it, or nothing did it except blind nature. To me this paradigm is totally absurd. Below is an example of the best of the spiritual Left which, you may agree, ultimately misses the most important considerations. I am someone who enjoys debates between Atheists and Christians But to only convene debates between Atheists and Christians is to close off any number of potentially useful alternatives. >From a Christian perspective to ignore what --for instance-- Buddhists are saying, is to close our minds to a really important part of humanity, exactly the wrong choice in a world which is existentially pluralistic. And it closes off the value which may be gained FOR Christians FROM other faiths. Sure, anyone who tries can identify weaknesses in Buddhism ( or Hinduism, etc ). As they can --like it or not-- identify Christian weaknesses. I would still say that Christians do well in comparisons, but think of the potential gains if lessons from an area of strength of Buddhism, psychology based on principles for living a fully aware and moral life, could be internalized. And this is only one issue. In all of this there are dangers, obviously. But isn't globalism , 21st century awareness that we are interlinked with people of other faiths, THE BIG CHALLENGE and, it may be said, the problem which "God" ( your choice of exact terminology ) requires us to solve for ourselves at this time in history ? My view of the matter, anyway. Billy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Huff Po _Rabbi Alan Lurie_ (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-alan-lurie) Posted: December 13, 2010 08:38 PM _Can the Existence of God Ever Be Proven?_ (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-alan-lurie/can-the-existence-of-god-_b_794308.html) Recently I watched a debate on YouTube titled "Does the Universe have a Purpose?" This debate, which was held in Puebla Mexico, pitted three prominent atheists against three prominent theists, and to accentuate the contentiousness of the topic each individual was invited in to the middle of a boxing ring to argue their positions, where they could land verbal punches against their opponents. Over the last several years, in the wake of 9/11, debates between religion and science -- faith and reason -- have become very popular and very once combative. But these kinds of debates are by no means a new phenomenon. CommonSenseAtheism.com lists 564 such debates dating back to 1948, although these debates date from well before then. 2,400 years ago Plato wrote, "Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding," and 300 years later the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger proclaimed, "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." And the debate continues unresolved. One need only look at a series of blogs here on the Huffington Post, along with the many strongly worded comments, to see that we are no closer to coming to a conclusion than were Plato and Seneca. The two main topics of these debates are the nature of religion and the existence of God. It is crucial, though, that these two topics be examined separately. It is possible to constructively debate the merits or problems with religion. We can all concede that people have acted wickedly in the name of religion, that dogmatic, fundamentalist religion has caused much suffering, and that the refusal to accept the findings of science which are in conflict with one's doctrine is a foolish and small-minded position. To simply dismiss all religion, however, is not a rational or informed position, because we can also concede that religion has brought much good to the world, that most believers are not literalists, that religion itself is a very diverse and complex institution, and that insecurity, ideology and greed for power, not religion, have been the causes of most wars (and that to call Communism, Fascism, Nationalism and Nazism "religions" is to so distort the definition as to make it useless and unintelligible). When the debate moves on to question of the existence of God, though, the dialogue hits a brick wall. The atheist side typically presents the position that belief in God is an immature science and that God is a provable or disprovable hypothesis for why things are the way they are, which, they argue, can be easily disproved: Evolution eliminates the need for a creator, double blind tests prove that prayer doesn't work, psychology has demonstrated that human beings often mistake random pattern for meaningful purpose, observation shows that we are an insignificant spot in the midst of a vast chaotic universe, and the death of a single innocent child makes the belief in a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God absurd, or even offensive. The theist side then responds with arguments to rebut these points: The universe is too fine-tuned to be an accident, without a loving God there are no objective standards or source of values, and the very fact that we can comprehend the workings of physicality with our minds demonstrates the existence of a purposeful creator. Atheists then counter that there is absolutely no objective, quantifiable proof that God exists, that religion is ignorant of, uninterested in or dismissive of modern science, and that to believe in something without proof is inherently dangerous, especially when one thinks that he is acting on divine authority. The theist responds, and so on. The debate about the existence of God hits a brick wall because there is an essential misunderstanding about the nature of God: None of the proofs that atheists are looking for, or any counter argument from the theists, would be adequate proof. In the Peubla debate, Michael Shermer said that he'd find convincing proof, "if you could have God grow new limbs on amputees from the Iraq war, Christian soldiers, praying for them to be healed. This has not happened even Apparently God can not do even what amphibians can do." But even if this did happen, it would not prove the existence of God but would instead prove that there is some kind of regenerative force or energy that responds to the right kind of conscious thought. Likewise, a glowing presence and booming voice appearing on the White House lawn proclaiming "I am the Lord your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage" as the waters of the Potomac part, would prove that there is an entity with powerful technology, and would be no more a proof of God than an airplane to a cave man. And irrefutable proof that Moses really did write the first five books of the Bible, that Jesus died and was resurrected, or that an unearthly being appeared to Muhammad and Joseph Smith to dictate new texts, would support some of the claims of religions but does not prove that there is a purposeful, loving Creator and Sustainer. The truth is that nothing -- no thing -- can prove the existence of God. The attempt to prove the existence of God through the scientific method of hypothesis, controlled experimentation, observation and documentable repeatable results is somewhat akin to trying to discover the cause of a person's response to a deeply moving work of art. We can examine the painting, analyze the composition of the canvas and pigment, study the arrangement of shapes and colors, discover the historical context of the work and the biography of the artists, or even conduct psychological experiments and CT scans, but none of this will do anything to explain, understand and share in the person's aesthetic experience. This person may try to explain her experience, but she will ultimately fail to convince someone who only sees pigment on canvas, and who may conclude that her experience is delusional, and that the study of aesthetics is a waste of time. To the person who was so deeply impacted by the painting, though, such an assertion completely misses the point, and does nothing to convince her that her experience is not real, and that she was not touched and expanded by her encounter. In this way, arguments and experiments can not prove the existence of God because God is not an hypothesis. For human beings, God is the experience of a transformative relationship with creation itself, in which we know that the Universe is inherently meaningful, that we were created for a staggering purpose that will unfold over eons, that love and gratitude are the essential actual materials of our lives and that we are holy beings. The experience of a relationship with God is not one of religious doctrine, does not come from statistics, experiments or argument, and is certainly not in conflict with science and reason in any way. It is also not about righteous certainty or judgment. The experience of God expands the possibilities for our lives and increases the feeling of mystery and intellectual curiosity about the world. Reason and observation are crucial elements in faith. Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive and are no more in conflict than civil engineering and poetry. As a rabbi and person of faith, I have no interest in proving the existence of God and certainly do not want to convert anyone to my religion or way of thinking. What I am passionate about, though, is helping bring others to an experience and relationship with God because I know that such a relationship can create powerful positive personal and communal transformation. One brings another to the experience of God not through philosophical or material proof, but through living the example of gratitude, purpose, compassion and love. No doubt the debates about the existence of God will continue, and we can enjoy the spectacle, but I suspect that no amount of clever verbal exchange will do anything to convince anyone either way. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community _<[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
