Atheist you say?

by Rex B13 53 Replies latest jw friends

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  peaceloveharmony

  Frenchy,

  You are a fine man. *hugs*

  I just wanted to pop in here and say thanks to both you and Abaddon for your posts. A joy to read .

  love
  harmony
• 

  Abaddon

  Frenchy; It is a great pleasure to meet a Christian like you. And very refreshing.

  The horrible thing one finds in many of these discussions is the inability many traditional Christians have in operating outside their very closed conceptual envelope. They are overly bound to a literalistic interpretation of an ancient, much-modified text, and thus they panic and defend things that are indefensible to a more open modern mind than those that wrote what we read there now. The creation account in the Bible is quite a good job for a Bronze Age goatherd... no turtles, no disembowled gods, a tad simplistic, but nicely symbolic.

  Yet these things they defend so stridently, the chapter, the verse, the angels on the head of the pin, have no relevence to what I believe is the fundamental message of Christianity, and at least some other religions.

  Please never think I tar people like you with the same brush I sometimes paint so-called 'Christians' with. The advice in the Bible to judge a tree by its fruits is very good, and your diametric opposition to everything I loathe about 'Christians' is a testimony to your character.

  I find in my journey, the more I realise what god ISN'T, the more I realise what 'god' MIGHT be. This is more diffuse than your concept of god, but that in no way invalidates either of our conceptions.

  I am still not happy with the 'god' word because of all its baggage, and am very happy with my view of nature as a beautiful cold glittering machine, but I think sunsets affect us in the same way, even if we use a different vocabulary.

  For me, the message boils down to telling us we are sons of god. We might be clever primates with opposable thumbs, but we can transcend this; moon-flight, Bach, genocide, dire and wonderful at the same time. We have so much potential, that even though we are only here because the naturalistic processes that control such things mean we are the only thing that could be here, there is something wonderful about it, and we should all grasp that concept and nurture it.

  That way, maybe we can be a little less dire and a litle more wonderful, one genration at a time.

  My girlfriend pointed out, that even though I am an atheist, I am quite Christian at times. If she's thinking of people like you, that's a compliment.

  I agree with your closing comment wholeheartedly... we will talk another time.

  Regards

  Gyles

  People living in glass paradigms shouldn't throw stones...
• 

  ashitaka

  Abad...just wanted to say, that's a helluva first paragraph. Very true. I guess I'm agnostic now, but the belief in God, I think, is much more a personal feeling, like love, that people experience.

  I think the reason they cling to the bible as truth is that they need some physical document to prove to themselves that there is a God, that their love-like feeling has some basis in fact, or history.

  And for some reason, they need it.

  Good thread, by the way.

  ashi
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  Frenchy

  Thank you, Harmony, and Abaddon for your warmth and understanding and..yes, the love that you show your fellow human. Jesus summarized the two greatest commandments as manifested love. It would appear from what I have seen here that this love is present in many persons’ hearts, whether they profess belief in God or not. Jesus taught that it has little to do with what you say and everything to do with what you do.

  I wish to thank also all those that participated on this thread. I learned some things that I think will help me deal with other people. I hope that, if nothing else, it has given us a little better insight into each other.

  --Frenchy.