The Case For God (page 4)

Farkel

: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You sound like the sort who thinks that not only isn't the glass half empty, it doesn't even exist!

Farkel

bebu

I have 3 very wonderful children, but...

My sweet, sweet daughter, even now at 4 who has a language disability, has every day of her life made me thank God. She is more beautiful to me than a world filled with the loveliest butterflies; I've never, never been so awestruck by a simple child before. Just for this very, very simple child, a truly undeserved gift (I cannot call her other than a gift), I will unashamedly thank God. Even if she were to die--even in a horrible death--it will never erase the fact that she lived, so amazingly fragile and innocent and sweet. I am smitten with her.

I will throw every theology book away and write like a drunken fool: I love her, and through her presence in my life, I've loved God more.

Love is foolish, it is mad (crazy!). Yes. I love God madly.

bebu

Phantom Stranger

This is a (whoops - this thing just posted itself!)

This is a great topic.

I used to be a hardcore atheist.

Then I saw some things that I could not explain using what Ken Wilbur calls "flatland" logic.

Now I find myself forced to beleive in forces, connections, and the like, bigger than I am. I still don't beleive in a sole personality (or a triune one either) who fitfully screws with some of us and blesses others. And, I do beleive in a force that I am somehow connected to, that brings order out of chaos and growth in the midst of death, that I can not hope to capture with my intellect but which I occassionally touch with my heart. I beleive that each of us is part of that, and so each of us has the same claim of, access to, and opportunity for a spark of divinity inside.

There - now back to my typical curmudgeonly self.

Eric

Tell us again, uncle Farkle, how the caterpillar is spectacularly unique. Tell us again!

Cups overflow with beauty you may not have imagined. If God is in the details of a butterfly's wings, why can he not be seen in the larvae of its predator? If beauty is seen in a butterfly's wings, why should it not be seen in an early frost which paralyzes it?

If God fits the gap of Beauty, then it is indeed in the eye of the beholder. If God fits the gap of your amazement, perhaps your amazement can be satisfied by education.

But you know this already.

Eric

IronGland

Farkel probably just smoked some weed for the 1st time in a while and it's made him mushy.

gumby

If Farkle smoked the weed I smoke.....he would think a maggot looked cool.

Gumby

Mindchild

I used to be a hardcore Deist.

Then I saw that all the things I used to believe as evidence for the existence of God, was merely magical thinking.

Once upon a time, people used to think that angels told each flower to open and close during the day. Now that we understand botany we can see how ridiculous such a belief is. People used to believe that the stars were angels holding torches, then one day man discovered the sciences of astronomy and astrophysics.

I can appreciate that many people, even smart people, don?t believe in atheism. They don?t understand rather simple elements self-organize to form more intelligent, more adaptive higher-level behavior. This process is called ?Emergence? and it is a bottom up model of how things happen and work, rather than the head Deist being the master planner and engineering everything.

Even without the science of emergent systems if you use the Deist model, you have to factor in that either this Deist is rather dumb or rather cruel or both. There are already several mentions of this in the thread so no point in repeating them here.

Skipper

ros

Ah, well . . . who was it who said:

Some people wonder why roses have thorns. I'm just grateful that thorns have roses.

~Ros

Abaddon

logansrun: re, language - if someone is chuntering along about 'natural evil' when such a concept is patently absurd and contrived, I think it's foresight to point out they are talking rubbish. Haven't you noticed a lot of the time people aren't really clear on what they mean? Do you think its possible to have a conversation about 'ducks' if the two people have different thoughts as to the meaning of the word?

Farkel: You are beliving in god because you want to. Nothing wrong with that, but can I ask... are you getting old?

refiners fire

The way I see it at the moment... We are alive, we exist and have consciousness. So therefore theres at least an equal chance of a conscious being external to ourselves and continued conscious existance after death.

The Case For God

I used to be a hardcore Deist.

Then I saw that all the things I used to believe as evidence for the existence of God, was merely magical thinking.

Even without the science of emergent systems if you use the Deist model, you have to factor in that either this Deist is rather dumb or rather cruel or both. There are already several mentions of this in the thread so no point in repeating them here.

Skipper

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