Thank you BP and George for some thought-provoking Sunday morning reading.

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Dear George,

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It’s nice to hear from you once again.

As far as I can recall, at no point in my life did I ever accept the idea that the existence or non-existence of a god was a question of belief or faith. I was never a “believer”, or a member of the “faithful” as postulated by Paul Ricoeur in his “naïveté” theory. In my mind, even as a very young child, I always considered that either there was a god or there was not, whether I believed it or not. I saw no need for me to believe or not believe. That was irrelevant. All I needed to know was whether there was a god or not.

It seemed to me that there was no question more important in life than that. I could not understand why everybody was so casual about it, why mankind had not mobilised all its resources in order to find out. Nobody seemed to be taking the matter seriously, even those who professed to believe in the existence of a god. How could anybody go about their mundane, daily lives knowing there was a god somewhere of whom he had absolutely no knowledge nor contact ?

My incomprehension increased as I grew older and became conscious of all the horrors, pain and suffering and intolerable injustice in the world.

So, instead of “is there a god or not?”, I finally asked “how did the question of god arise?", "who had the idea there might be a god?" and "why?". Those were the questions which took me back through the long historical development from man-conceived, imaginary, animist gods to monotheism and the sacrificial Jesus until I arrived at the only possible logical conclusion, which became my firm conviction - beyond all reasonable doubt - that there is no god.

I have always been left to find my own way in life – primary school education – no father – shop assistant mother – poor family – raised in the Queensland outback – no guidance – apart from that ... no constraints.

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rewrote george quotE....“before you study Zen,..mountains are mountains >>forming rivlets/MEANS..<<and rivers are rivers;>>FORMING Tao[pathS]/WAYS..and you..is just you/one/alone.

<<..while..you are studying Zen,the WAY TAO..SEEMS Of more importance mountains..are no longer mountains Judged..as nice NOR MEAn..and rivers..are no longer ways..but SIMPLY rivers;..NOT PATHS OF lost souls.

but..once you have..had/the..enlightenment,..mountains are once again mountains..and rivers again rivers”..BUT NOW..YOU SEE the hidden/UNSEEN WAYS ANS PATHS..Where they lead to and when we can GO TO..

THE UNTOLD LIVING...EVEN ON A SEEMINGLY BARREN MOUNTAIN TOP..or pebbled stream full of..living/troUT EGGS..ANd dragon flies.and lilly ponDS SWAMPS AND BU.gs sWEAT BLOOD love/life/logic,..biRTH REBIRTH TRANSMUTATION..MORE slime/Guts chance CHANGE..blOOD/MUCK..And gore..

so much..we are now..aware on..THE UNSSEN/LIFE..EVEN..IN THE SHADOW
..so much more..than the..material mind..OR..MORTAL-EYE alone..can see

many/MINDS EYES..INSTANTLY..KNOWING..A TREE..ON A MOUNTAIN HOLDS INFINITE LIFE..THAT INFINITE TREES..HOLD UNTOLD LIFE..THAT A SIMPLE BADGER..in the Forrest..HOLDS IiFE UNLIMITED WITHIN AND WITHOUT..THAT ITS LIVING FORAGES..as THE MEANS..[taoOF SURVIVAL IN ITS OWN [TAO]..WAY..even ticks have mites...and mites have toes

sorry..i do /it clumsy..the pictures.in my minds eye were more succinct..its like the russion dolls/nesting together..one truth within an other truth..within another add infinitum/joined-in WITH YESTERDAY WALKING TEACHING..OF LIFE WITHIN LIFE WITHIN LIFE

i was shown..how cremation..of the/one..is..yet mass murder..but..is slow death..[upona dying corpse..better karmicl..?..[we]..are living bodies..sustaining trillions of.'other';.living precociousness BEINGS..[WITHIN AND WITHOUT]..A SINGLE DEATH/BY..Dying thUS LEADS..to untold dEATHS..AS..THE OTHER..LIFE forces slowly EBB AWAY[DIE]..EACH OF THESE Living beings surviving ON OUR FLESH AND BLOOD/BODY

EACH HAVE..astral/expression/RADIATIONS..AND
AFTER DEATH MANY.REMAIN TO CLOUD UP..OUR SOUL BODY...as we/our being..is all/they..know.

ps..ASHES ARE NOT JUST...ALL the crushed/remaining whole BONES..tHERE IS lots of dust..SCATTER them..with THy BACK TO THE WIND..NOT OFF A WHARF..Where the updRAFT CAN Blow..the dust into your lungs/eyes haIR CLOTHING

the safest way is to tip..them..[for/life..is many/.while standing iN THE STREAM/INCHES ABOVE..THE Water..THEn ignore the red colors..that mean the marrowe..still had live blood/virus etc[PRE crushing..Thus..be ware of virus..in the 'dust'..THE red colour means there was still..living blood in the 'DUST'..WHO CAN YOU TRUST?..[GOD ALONE]..AND CERTAINLY..NOT..THE EGO-BEAst's..oF ANY*self.

Banjo Paterson,

"Having solved the god conundrum has in no way diminished my sense of awe and transcendence in observing the pursuit of perfection in the construction of places of worship and other forms of art and craftmanship such as sacred music, tainted glass, paintings, woven fabrics, sculptures, icons, mosaics etc., inspired by the sense of the divine in human creation and imagination.

In my view, churches, cathedrals, temples, mosques and other superb masterpieces of human craftsmanship and architecture..."

How right you are. My favourite things to draw are cathedrals and such like. There is a harmony in their architecture which mirrors that of nature. The patterns we see in nature and digest subliminally are reproduced for us in architecture f this kind. Which is why we respond as we do - and also why we don't feel a similar response to the brutal architecture of a multi-storey concrete car park.

Prince Charles put it like this in his book "Harmony":

"If people are encouraged to immerse themselves in Nature's grammar and geometry they are often led to acquire some remarkably deep philosophical insights."

Dear Banjo,

Thanks again for the sincere words. So at no point in your life were you in a state that Ricoeur calls la première naïveté, which roughly corresponds to what all children brought up e.g. as Christians go through (and some people keep on going through throughout their adult life). Sorry for misunderstanding your search for “a god”. Educated 21st century Christians would not expect to find “a god somewhere” like you can find a remote galaxy or an as yet uncontacted tribe. So in this sense we are on the same wavelength.

God that contemporary educated Christians believe in is something quite different, and also attempts to answer the question you rise have kept on changing from prehistoric times to the present, from culture to culture (well, I am not an anthropologist). Something like the physical world (cosmos, universe/multiverse), that we all believe in (and use quantum physics and gravitation theory to explain) is something quite different from what our ancestors a few centuries ago understood by the (physical) world.

Neither of the two differences are easily explained in a few words.

Candied blowing in the wind is just another euthanism such as "at rest, now at peace, " and so on, being a persons imagination at the time of someone's death,sometimes on this site too many take what is said as real and not reading more into what is trying to be said, one doesn't care if the ashes, dust, or whatever are picked up by a lawnmower when scattered or anything else! or kept in a cupboard, it really is all rubbish, please do not analize the word rubbish.