THE FINAL RELIGION BLOG (Prove Yourselves)

I love to think about what he said, or is quoted to have said. I love the Aquarian Gospel of Christ. I have thought that I would not mind being a Christian, that perhaps I could fit in, but I don't think I can.

In some ways I can say to myself I am a Christian, but then I know that most Christians wouldn't think so if they saw inside my brain.

Here is one reason why:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seAPQ9WihN0&feature=related

I am pasting my response to the video that I initially posted on wombels' blog.

Please don't take offense, I am only sharing this because I want make a point that *I can* love Jesus and not be a Christian.

"Now that I have watched the Oprah link
Submitted by turtlesuds on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 11:32pm.

I feel like throwing up. I just don't get it. My eyes were opened too. I was reminded of why I can never be a Christian. I have been trying to reconcile myself with Christianity, in terms of not throwing Jesus out with the polluted bathwater in almost every Christian baptismal. I am realizing that my "feelings" are just too big for a traditional Christian church. Apparently they condemn me, and Oprah to eternal damnation in Hell for that. As I have said before, i am not afraid of eternity in Hell, especially not with such good company.

This made me angry. Ok, I need to chill. this isn't every Christian or every Christian church. I am more interested in the Unitarian Christian churches and the like that see a Christianity that melds with ancient eastern spirituality. The only church that I have ever been to where I felt like I belonged there was the Self Realization Fellowship in Fullerton founded by Paramahansa Yogananda. http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=yogananda+paramahansa&tag=goog...

The Self Realization Fellowship http://www.yogananda-srf.org/ has an altar with pictures of Yogananda, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, and some other "saints" I don't know. The whole service is song, prayer and meditation, ushering in healing and pushing away disease of the mind, body and spirit of the world.

Ok, that's a tangent. I have been exploring the teachings of Jesus in this light for awhile. Seeing this video I realize I have made an association with a Christianity that I, and many of the rational, as well as spiritual world hate.

I am reminded of how blasphemously Jesus' name can be tossed around to represent a belief system akin to Nazism and anti-semitism. That whole "One Path" imagery just creeped me out.

I am just glad that most of the world is not so ignorant. This election, and the large margin with which it ended, gives me hope that people are waking up, and are recognizing religious interests in the minds of certain policymakers, and are not allowing with the advancement of religion governing policy."

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As long as you are looking for "a word to describe infinite mystery in the universe that does not imply religion, but does imply some form of consciousness," you will probably not be able to escape the baggage, since the lack of any sort of actual, objective evidence for such a consciousness is the central point of contention between reason and religion.

TTFN,
Blackout
---
A question of love.
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Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.

"And, there reason there are so many words and so many separate meanings is that, frankly, they're all imaginary and since the possiblities in people's imaginations are infinite, so too are the descriptions they come up with to describe their delusions."

Can you prove it?
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"they're all imaginary"

I could agree with (not prove) your statement if you replace imaginary with conceptual. The subtle difference being that imaginary presupposes that they are also not real. Which you cannot prove.

"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it."
--Andre Gide

I was aware of the first three opinions in jewish theology, but I have not heard of the fourth before. Could you provide a link to a rabbinical source that proposes and/or discusses "the idea that you live on through your children, and just die when you die?" Assuming that you can, how do you reconcile that belief (and I realize that this is not necessarily YOUR particular belief)with the contents of the Torah?

TTFN,
Blackout
---
A question of love.
---
Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.

Begging the question is a logical fallacy. It applies in any situation where the conclusion of an argument is just a restatement of the premise of that argument. All theistic arguments, including yours, rely upon this fallacy. Your weird "reality=god" equation is just a poorly phrased expression of pantheism, and is just as flawed as any other religous construction that asserts additional qualities (such as intelligence) onto objects which do not in fact demonstrate those qualities. The only way that your definition works is if one begs the question that the qualities you assign through definition (rather than through objective observation or valid logical inference), are actually true. Its the same old fallacy, repackaged...nothing more.

"Love" is a biochemical response that occurs in the human brain (and possibly in the brains of some higher animals). There is no evidence that would suggest that this response occurs anywhere outside of those brains. To suggest otherwise means that either you don't understand what "love" really is, or you are expressing yourself so poorly though your misuse of the English language that understanding your position as stated is impossible.

Not at all. But there is not evidence that emotion or intelligence occurs ANYWHERE other than in the human (and possibly in some animal) brains.

It depends on what you mean by "rare." Compared to the mass of our planet, the mass of humans and other animals that can be shown through evidence to actually possess intelligence and/or emotion is rather small. Compared to the full contents of the admittedly tiny portion of the universe which is sufficiently within our reach to actually gather direct observational evidence, that mass is even smaller. So yes, I would suggest that these qualities are rare, at least within our cosmic neighborhood.

Allowing for the extreme vagueness of "the beginnings of intelligence," all of the characteristics normally associated with the term "intelligence" are not found in single-celled organisms. There are two major "consensus" defintions of "intelligence."...

First, from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, a report of a task force convened by the American Psychological Association in 1995:

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions.

A second definition of intelligence comes from "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was signed by 52 intelligence researchers in 1994:

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

Both of these definitions describe a phenomenon that takes place in the brain, and perhaps to a lesser extent in the proto-brains of some less evolved animals. There is, however, no evidence at all that would suggest that this phenomenon occurs anywhere else, and certainly not within the inanimate material that makes up the great majority of the universe (or again, at least in our little corner of it).

This is a logical fallacy of composition. Just because a part of a system exhibits a property does not mean that the entire system also exhibits that same property. In fact, the evidence in THIS case suggests exactly the opposite.

The truth-value of your statements has nothing to do with my interests or moral judgments. They are either supported by evidence, or they are not. The are either logically framed, or they are not. In both cases, here, the latter is the case.

I don't know what you were trying to hit, so I cannot say what you may have "missed." I will, however, note that none of the things that you said indicated that there is any kind of intelligence or emotion that occurs anywhere other than in the human mind, which would seem to suggest that you are anthromorphosizing.

Until you can proive actual, objective evidence that would in fact prove that your "god" exists and is capable of human emotions, your assertion remains logically flaws and begs the question at hand.

TTFN,
Blackout
---
A question of love.
---
Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.

it is not something I can argue with those who do not already understand.

I can attempt to explain it to you, but I cannot *prove* it and don't wish to try. It would taint what I consider to be Holy and True.

Many understand Infinity conceptually based on math. Math is also the basis of music, which is something more than its formula that has qualities that speak to human consciousness on every level. It causes physical and emotional responses. *That* is not so easily explained by math or science. Math and science simply illuminate the blueprint, they do not *contain* the function or purpose.

What my comment to chillbill was about can be best understood by the rules of inter-faith dialogue

http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/gehall/Hall_Panikkar.htm

The Religious Encounter: Rules of the Game
according to Raimon Panikkar (1918- )

Panikkar's primary principle for religious encounter is that it must be a truly religious experience. He develops this with respect to a number of subsidiary principles.

1. It must be free from particular apologetics. The Christian, Hindu or Buddhist must not approach the dialogue with the a priori idea of defending one's own tradition over or against the other.

* 2. It must be free from general apologetics. Those involved in interfaith dialogue should not see their task in terms of defending religion in general against the non-religious or anti-religious attitudes of secular society. This would turn the religious encounter into an ideological movement as well being simplistic in its rejection of modern secular consciousness.*

(insert comment by turtlesuds: this is *the* most applicable rule which I would like to see adhered to more here on ProU.)

3. One must face the challenge of conversion. To be involved in religious encounter is a challenge and a risk. The truly religious person is not a fanatic who has all the answers but a pilgrim who is always open to the experience of grace and truth. One may lose one's life or even lose faith in one's own tradition--but one may also be born again and one's own tradition transformed.

4. The historical dimension is necessary but not sufficient. All religions risk limiting themselves to particular, historical interpretations which quickly become truncated ideologies. Religious encounter is a meeting of religious persons who both carry the power and burden of their own religious traditions; yet they also carry the power and burden of reinterpreting that tradition anew, not breaking with past history, but carrying it forward in imaginative ways. Religious persons like all others belong to history; they also change history through responding to life's contemporary challenges.

5. It is not just a congress of philosophy. Religious encounter is a meeting of persons, not simply the meeting of minds. This does not deny the place of philosophy including the possible comparison of various religious systems. Nonetheless, doctrinal comparisons must be genuinely dialogical, that is, taking into account the reality of profoundly diverse worldviews. Much damage has been done by well intentioned western scholars who assume that only western philosophy has appropriate categories for understanding the world's religions. If anything, eastern philosophy has a more sophisticated system for appropriating religious truth.

6. It is not only a theological symposium. Theologians have an important role, but religious encounter is not primarily concerned with theological systems of thought. Theologies emanate from a particular experience, revelation or event that is ipso facto specific to the particular religious tradition in question. Theologies are primarily concerned with religious beliefs; religious encounter is concerned with religious persons in their entirety. The meeting of persons is not at the level of belief, but at the level of faith in a truth that transcends beliefs, doctrines and theological systems.

7. It is not merely an ecclesiastical endeavour. Admitting that official encounter among representatives of the world's religious traditions is today an inescapable duty, these must be seen as separate to and independent of the religious encounter of ordinary religious believers. The former will be primarily concerned, as they must, with the preservation of their own traditions in a religiously pluralistic world. The latter will be freer to try new ways and risk new solutions . . . and to be genuinely open to the multireligious experience.

8. It is a religious encounter in faith, hope and love. Whereas beliefs, ideologies, doctrines and theologies divide, faith unites. Hope is at once a truly human and a profoundly religious attitude, often linked to the religious notion of sacrifice: one's eschatological hope for the world and ourselves enters the heart of the dialogue overriding fear, weakness and prejudice. Love seeks truth, but it also impels us toward our fellow human beings, leading us to discover in them what is lacking in us. In faith, hope and love, one yearns for the common recognition of truth that does not obliterate the differences or mute the voices of any tradition.

9. The primacy of intra-religious dialogue. Before entering into an inter-religious dialogue, one must first depth the reality of one's own tradition. This is to say that intra-religious dialogue is primary.

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I find the first 2 rules to be fundamental to *any* kind of progressive dialogue about religion. It really does make me wonder what exactly the "Apologetics" class that respectlife is in is teaching.

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