A Note To Atheists.

He's involved in our lives, loves us more than we'll ever know. Made a way for us to be reconciled to Him. Had He just sat back and watched we'd be lost in our sin forever.

 

You know this?

You just said that nobody knows the mind of God. But now you say all this stuff about Him as if you do.

 

Very nice. It's not so much a belief as something precious, like a shiny rock found
yet not searched for. And then I took a marker pen and drew on it in a simple way.

 

I know HIs heart but not His mind. From His Word and His deeds it's abundantly clear that He loves us. Take John 3:16 for instance:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

 

There is kindness in creation. Anyone may realize this. Reason and words may wander from there.
Think existence is cruel? That is a sentiment. of pathos.

 

reality has the impartiality of indifference. not intentionally crewel nor intentionally anything.
the mineral universe, and the real universe is 99.999% mineral, is just there, and working as it does, has no dependence on conscious judgement

as for gods or a god;
every belief ever given a name, or even not, could all be completely wrong and there could still be gods or a god, because nothing has to be known in order to exist.

the point is though, the unknown being unknown, why would a god supposedly all powerful, or close enough to it, owe anything, to what one mortal tells another to claim they know about it?
i like to think of gods or a god being more inclined to kindness then not. perfectly plausible to exist, but not be known to any mortal person nor belief known to us.

it can be a mistake to expect kindness, this can lead to all sorts of mental problems when that does not appear to be forthcoming. so of course can expecting the opposite.
the problem is not with what is expected, but with the expecting.

better to accept the goodness of the reality of the diversity of the possible. that gives us a world that can still be beautiful and wonderful, even when it hurts, just as when it is kind.

 

I've noticed even more how obnoxious some Christians are getting (BTW, I am one, but not one of those). Sad to say, but evangelical Christians make up not only much of the Trump support base but that of Desantis, Greg Abbott, and other moral misfits.(They also get some support from conservative Catholics.
How Trump Stole Christmas—And Why Evangelicals Rally to Their Savior
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/08/932263516/2020-faith-vote-reflects-2016-patterns
Who Are the Evangelicals Supporting Donald Trump?
How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism (Published 2021)
Fortunately, not all evangelicals fall into this category Evangelicals opposed to Trump step out of the shadows with new groups and ads but too many still do. The draconian anti-abortion laws, anti-LGBT efforts, and support for DeSantis's "don't say gay" measures come from that side of the spectrum, and they are far from "courteous and polite" about it. My friends chide me about worrying years ago that the religious right was taking over my state of Oklahoma. I try to tell them that the religious right has taken over Oklahoma. Witness the state's stringent anti-abortion law which applies before the woman is technically even pregnant--i.e., before implantation of the fertilized egg.

But getting to obnoxious atheists, there are some of those as well. Militant atheists have been around for a long time--Madeline Murray O'Hare being a leading example, but since the advent of New Atheism and the "Four Horsemen" (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens), they've multiplied and become more vocal--born in response to militant Islam and militant Christianity. Of course, "obnoxious" is in the eye of the beholder. In the past, most atheists in a theistic country knew their place and kept their mouths shut. Better apathetic godlessness than militant ungodliness. In my part of the country, atheists still keep a relatively low profile, although the group I take fellowship with meets openly for meals and discussion. Militancy is partly, I think, a reaction to the militancy and intolerance of the opposition. Then there is scientism, the belief that the sciences provide the only genuine knowledge of reality and there is no domain outside their purview,which is a not uncommon ideological tendency among atheists--as is its first cousin, moralistic rationality. Thomas Ståhl, Maarten P. Zaal, Linda J. Skitka. Moralized Rationality: Relying on Logic and Evidence in the Formation and Evaluation of Belief Can Be Seen as a Moral Issue. PLOS ONE, 2016. Getting moralistic about anything, including science, can be annoying. Atheists, like the rest of us, are humans, and therefore prone sometimes to becoming obnoxious. We live in a country of increasingly vocal, obnoxious people on many fronts, and that can be contagious. I find atheist Bill Mahr to be particularly annoying, as well as uninformed. on religious matters. But generally, I find it useful to hear other points of view, even annoying ones, if the people preaching them are open to reason and argument.

 

Very funny! Just annoying not stinky noxious you are. BTW, I'm coming to the S Ozarks to
do a project. Should arrive in Hot Springs next week and look about the area from there. I
see your name on the regional map.

 

I'm preparing the boiling oil!

 

So sure God in a he and human are you?

 

we can play lets pretend we know what is not known to our heart's content.

It may be mostly harmless.
It just bears not obvious visible relationship,
with the almost entirely mineral universe, we actually live in.

and the unknown being unknown doesn't prevent the existence of anything.
It just doesn't owe anything, to what we tell each other to pretend we know about it.

I feel mostly more comfortable with the honesty of knowing the unknown is unknown,
while at the same time understanding there may be one or many of what we call gods,
and also at the same time, that no one belief, has the slightest idea of their natures nor intentions.

That their existence, should they choose to exist, and yes I must admit, having myself at times,
felt to be in the presence of at least one of them,
in no way requires any known belief,
to have the slightest idea, about anything to do with their doing so.

They are certainly a friendlier presence, such is my personal experience, for what its worth,
then any human who insists on telling you they know anything about them,
let alone demanding everyone pretend to know the same things about them as themselves.

Everyday life goes on just fine without any clear relationship to these things.

It goes on as well, if not better, seen through the eyes of science, which witness the diversity of existence.
It goes on better, healthier and happier, in the beauty of bright colors, and in the honest complexity of both technology and nature.

 

Thanks for sharing your world view. If it works for you, that's the important thing. A bit nebulous and noncommital for my taste. We can experience life as passengers enjoying the view for what it's worth without trying to make sense of it. Or maybe we can go farther, at the risk of getting it wrong.

Nothing is certain, not even that. For all we know, we could be brains in a jar in some mad scientist's laboratory, and the thing we call reality could be a matrix-style virtual reality. Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom gets paid good money while maintaining it is exactly that! I'm willing to have a little of what Santayana called "animal faith": instinctive (and possibly illusory) belief in a knowable world outside the human mind which enables us to find meaning in our lives. I'm basically an existentialist--in relying on my choices , or intuitive risk taking called faith, to give meaning to reality. But unlike Kierkegaard I don't take leaps of faith. (I prefer "hops"). Nor do I go along with Sartre in assuming that my choices are mere subjective preferences or arbitrary acts of will. I rely, as best I can, on reason, available evidence and experience, recognizing the limitations of all of these.

Do we go to college? Date? Marry? Move to a new location, or stay where we are? Vote? Join a political party? a church? etc. I've had to make choices about all of those things. So far, I'm satisfied with them. In making them, I've never resorted to coin flips. I've drawn, as best I could, on reason, evidence, past experience--and then made the choice based on my best judgment, i.e., an intuitive assessment of all of these. I'm one of those who finds it satisfying to go farther, into more speculative realms, forming tentative assessments about the big questions concerning meaning, values and metaphysics. When I do this, I recognized that I'm likely to get much of it or all of it wrong. I'm willing to take a chance, because, as Socrates put it, "the unexamined life is not worth living", and because I think nihilism and extreme moral relativism are ultimately prescriptions for human misery.

I'm a Christian, but not a traditional one. I'm a strong believer in human biological and cultural evolution as the main vehicles for making us what we are, and I'm skeptical about literal interpretations of scripture as sources of divinely revealed truth. I draw on all religious traditions--and atheism--as sources of wisdom and insight. But my main anchors are the teachings and example attributed to Jesus in the gospels: peace, love and understanding, and social justice.

 

If atheists are becoming more obnoxious, it's probably a reaction to religious nutbars and their crooked politicians. Taking away people's rights and freedoms over their ignorant superstitious anti-science agendas.

 

I consider those "religious" folks to be the greatest threat to religion. By pushing authoritarian agendas and backing degenerates like Trump and Desantis, they're turning off younger generations who eventually will replace them.

 

If humans were meant to know the nature of existence / gods--we would know. Those who say they do from "on high " are no more than hucksters. Big bucks in convincing the frightened.

 

Guess we will find out when we die!

 

not so sure there's any guarantee of that. we could just wake up being born on some other world where we think the way people there look is the only way people look because no memories of this life came with us. or we could wake up in a meadow surrounded by forest with no one near by, and the only other people off in the distance, and what would make it heaven or hell would be that it is the same heaven for people from all different world who look all different ways. what would make it a heaven would be for no one to be able to injure or frighten each other. as for gods or a god, who may or may not exist, it might be that even there we never actually meet one. again the unknown being unknown prevents no possibility.

gold streets and mansions? what would be the point, if you were never hungry or cold and so on. and having for ever to listen to the same story teller telling the same story, if that's someone else's idea of a heaven, gates and all, that's fine for them, but an endless densely covered mountainous forest, where i can do my own creating, is way more my idea of a place i would enjoy being. creating my own shelter, even if not needing any, even little trains as infrastructure connecting places that would enjoy them.

its not that any place would have to be any one way. that would not be my idea of a heaven if it did.

 

Time will tell! Thanks for your input!