Not a leap at all, Besty. There is the intellect, and then there are the deeper parts of the psyche.
BTS
Tell me why MY VIEW of Christianity is wrong
by Terry 39 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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AllTimeJeff
I think Christianity is a bit overstated in what it can do.
I prefer for example, PSac views, simply because they allow for other people's beliefs. Also, he has a belief that I would agree with were I a Christian, that not all "gods" are for all people.
However, it can't be denied that even if God is real to you, he isn't real to others, nor can he be pointed to in any kind of tanglible, real way. No theist should think that somehow, because God is real to them, that should make him real to others
BTS, correct me if I am wrong, but in your last post, it sounds more to me like you are talking about the value of faith. Thats different. I think people with a spiritual need and pursue that with worship are alright with me, so long as they can maintain some semblance of intellectual honesty.
It would be VERY nice to hear more of PSac's sentiments, which if I understand him correctly, says. "I believe in god. I can't prove what I believe. My faith is strong and important to me, and that's good enough for me. At the same time, I understand why others don't believe, and I can't give them answers to their questions, although it is my hope that they will be at peace however they choose to answer the god question for themselves."
I might be high on that one, but it'd be nice.
In short (sorry for the rant there) to Terry's point, the lack of agreement even among Christians to me demonstrates that Christianity is a good fit as a personal philosophy, a bad fit for a religion that makes the claims it does. (i.e. the truth for all, the key to eternal salvation...)
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Doug Mason
Terry,
The following words are a compilation taken from several pages in a book on the construction of the NT. I hope you find this relevant. The book was written by a professed deeply committed Christian
Doug
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The earliest Christians, all of whom were Jews seeking to interpret the power they had found in the life of Jesus, feverishly explored the sacred writings of their people, searching for a way not only to understand what the sources of his power were, but also, and more importantly, to make sense out of the fact that the one in whom they believed they had experienced the meaning of God had actually been executed on a cross.
As they processed this internal debate, they found consolation and affirmation in their sacred writings, so that these writings began to shape their memory of Jesus. They fitted his life into this emerging scriptural portrait. Far from Jesus fulfilling the expectations of the people of Israel for a messiah who was to come in some programmed way, they simply told the story of Jesus so that he fitted into this scriptural pattern.
Of course, Jesus could be seen magically to have fulfilled the scriptures if the early Christians began with those scriptures and forced their memory of Jesus to fit those expectations. It was particularly easy to do this since there were no eyewitnesses. The Jesus story could be created out of scriptural whole cloth.
The Jesus experience was real. However, the gospels' explanation of that experience, even the explanation of his death, was anything but remembered history.
A magical view of the gospels was developed which asserted that instead of the Hebrew stories shaping the Jesus story, the events of Jesus' life simply fulfilled biblical expectations and prophecies in some miraculous and preordained way. Jesus, however, did not live out the prophetic expectations. Indeed, this bizarre and false idea has served to hide from us the fact that the Jesus story was actually composed with the Hebrew scriptures open and the memory of Jesus was actually adapted to conform to biblical expectations. In the process both history and objectivity were compromised.
What was there about Jesus of Nazareth that caused his earliest followers to wrap the sacred history of their Jewish past around him and to expand the stories of their religious heroes until they were big enough to communicate what it was that they experienced in this Jesus? -
villabolo
Burns: "Einstein: A Deist, largely in the Spinozan mold. But he said, among many other things (all of these are seperate quotes):"
Einstein and Spinoza were PANTHEISTS not DEISTS. His use of the word "god" was purely metaphoric. He did not believe in a personal god but Nature as God. I have read an excerpt from Albert Einsteins collected letter stating just that. If the poster who made these quotations would have made some real research, instead of selective quotations, he would have known that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza#Panentheist.2C_Pantheist.2C_or_Atheist.3F
"Martial Guéroult suggested the term "Panentheism", rather than "Pantheism" to describe Spinoza’s view of the relation between God and the world."
"In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism, after Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time of being called an atheist."
"The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late eighteenth-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism."
Pantheism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Some western philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and scientists like Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking are Pantheists.
villabolo
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Doug Mason
Terry,
Further to my previous post, I have provided scans of pages from that author on the origins of the NT, which I feel is relevant to your concerns, is available at:
http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=ce1c272b0bb9756988771969da279955
Wait 20 seconds for the "Download" button to appear.
If they don't help, please accept my apologies.
Doug
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THE GLADIATOR
Once again Terry you have demonstrated a most penetrating insight. There is nothing I can add or detract from your perception.
The belief God is not a luxury but a liability; an attempt to bring permanence and stability to a universe that is is constant flux with no set goal or certain conclusion.
There is comfort in embracing the uncertainty of our fragile existence but it takes courage and to accept that our ego is finite and there is no final goal planned for the universe.
AK Jeff - I have enjoyed your thoughtful input on this and many other threads - even though I seldom post much now.
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BurnTheShips
Einstein and Spinoza were PANTHEISTS not DEISTS.
If you only read my post more carefully, you would see Einstein's quote there where he denies being a pantheist. I'll copy that bit here:
I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist.
And I've read a bit of Spinoza, by the way, and I've thought about his philosophy a great deal, so I am not completely uninformed. I really don't think he was a pantheist, Wikipedia notwithstanding. Panentheist is probably a great deal closer. He didn't believe the natural world to be God, at least not the sum of God, but rather to be "in" God. That isn't pantheism, but panentheism.
In your post are distortions made by his accusers, these are hardly proof in my opinion.
Incidentally, there are even strains of panentheism in the NT. For example, when Paul spoke to the Athenians at the Areopagus he said regarding God: "For in him we live and move and have our being". And when he wrote to the Colossians he said: "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together".
I admire Spinoza greatly. What Spinoza went through in his synagogue is quite similar to what happens to a disfellowshipped JW. I recommend this biography to all X-JWS or X-JWS to be. I've currently got my copy loaned out to a friend that is a life long lover of Spinoza. I'm waiting for him to lend me a copy of a book connecting Spinoza with the Scottish Enlightenment and the American Revolution.
BTS
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villabolo
BurnTheShips: I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist.
Einstein said that he believed in the God of Spinoza even though he and Spinoza did not specifically put a label on their beliefs. He also said that his was not a personal god which definitely does not make him a Deist as you said both he and Spinoza were.
You now say that Spinoza was closer to Panentheism. Therefore if Einsteins god was A) That of Spinoza's (Panentheism?) and B) Not a personal god, which Panentheism agrees with (Not Deism like you originally posted) does it not make sense to deduce the strong probability that Einstein was Panentheist?
Distinctions between Panentheism and Pantheism notwithstanding, his well known quote about his god not being personal does nullify your claim that he was a Deist. Deists do believe in a personal god, though not one that interferes in human affairs. Furthermore the spirit in which you wrote that post is signified by your introductory sentence.
"There is NO conflict between Faith and Reason."
Einstein had spirituality but not anything that Christians would call faith. Such faith is invariably bound with the "personal god" that Einstein rejected. That is why he was condemned by the Jewish and Christian Clergy of his day. Indeed, whatever you think of that clergy Einstein would have been damned by New Testament, standards and so would Deists. I thus find it disingenous that you, a Catholic, would quote these men.
villabolo
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BurnTheShips
I thus find it disingenous that you, a Catholic, would quote these men.
That's not surprising.
BTS
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AllTimeJeff
To be honest, Einstein was a bit all over the place with his statements on god. It seemed he, like most of us here, was continuing to grow in his own understanding of god.
Just because he is Einstein doesn't mean his understanding of spirituality was smart. Thats a bit different from quantam physics, math, et al.
I realize that to call someone an "Einstein" can be either an honor or a mockery, but I don't really find his opinions on the subject of god, religion, or spirituality particularly compelling, other then I read of few other theoretical physicists who are as paid attention to.
He was a rather prolific political and philosophical commentator, but his particular discipline was physics. Take that for what you will. I know I do.